Clever got me this far...

Last night in class, covering the Romantic movement in literature.

Divided into groups.

I've managed my way into the group with the three hottest men in class: a heavily inked rockabilly, an intelligent (but young) jock, and a built gym rat.

We talk. The jock and I flirt, the rockabilly and I alternate between debate and discussion of various forms of literature, I view, with pleasure, the gym rat, tease him and talk with him.

I don't think the last one is used to that, from a girl.

One of our classmates, a woman, politely requested him to stop talking during a presentation and he started chewing her out immediately, even though he was entirely in the wrong.

For as much shit as I give him, he leaves me verbally unmolested. He dismisses me as female because I am not the socially standard female, but not in the way where I become valueless like the other girls.

Masculine dandy, going places where other girls aren't allowed to venture.

Our group is asked to speak on a topic that Mr. Rockabilly and I quite disagreed on. I insist that he speaks first, and he does, does it well enough.

He's bright, but he's inexperienced. The things he has said to me during class and during breaks, about his viewpoints... he has a lot of living to do. But it doesn't seem like he has much interest in doing so. Not everyone wishes to expand their horizons.

Most people don't, I've found.

He speaks, and then I counter-point him.

Off-the-cuff, words roll out of my mouth, stilted... but the content is there. I did not prepare as much as glance at what we were reading and know that my closed-minded, open-mouthed man was wrong, not approaching things from a holistic perspective.

English doesn't teach you to do that.

Sociology does.

Novels are meant to be read as a whole. You can break down the chapters, the paragraphs, the sentences, but in the end it is meant to be taken as a single piece, as a sum of the parts... not just a solitary part.

Reading over the questions on the Power Point slide, answering them as I go, feeling that I am not doing the topic justice, that I should have read this before answering, not as I answer.

Then it's over.

We move onto the next, another classmate goes to answer a question...

But he's interrupted.

The facilitation leader cuts him off and turns to me. Stops the entire class to thank me for my viewpoint, tell me how wonderful it was, and ask me to elaborate further on the topic.

Half-second blank stare, add in a few more sentences that were formed during the shift between questions as my brain continued to construct on the idea I set forth.

There is that moment, that brief glow of acknowledgement. That I am... more. That I am able to set forth ideas and articulate them. I take pride on my ability to break things down to the lowest common denominator, accessibility is something I strive for, and one of the reasons you will occasionally find me ranting about certain authors (*cough*Gibson*cough*).

Mr. Rockabilly said to me, about two weeks ago, that whenever I talk in class, he listens. We goof off so much, read and surf the net, laugh and exchange jokes in whispers. But when I speak, he stops and listens.

That's one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.

Being back in college, sometimes I'm left feeling beyond it. Not quite superior, but just... more. Switching majors like I have leaves me lacking in certain background education most of my classmates have, but I'm able to hold my own and go beyond what they can because of the things I have done, the things I have been through or exposed myself to.

It's an interesting experience.

And now I'm hanging out with the "popular" crowd, making friends instead of having my nose buried in a book.

Who knew?

It'll be okay...

GV8 took me out to the Hard Rock Cafe at Universal City Walk on Sunday.

This is something that has been missing from my Los Angeles experience, as I have yet to go into anything Hard Rock related aside from the casino in Vegas.

We wandered around the City Walk, waiting for a table to open up, GV8 humoring me as I pranced through the sock store they have there, looking at all the cute knee-highs and various leggings and fishnets.

Mid-prance, we were shouted at and he introduced me to two young boys... well, young as in they were in the 22-23 range. You know, nearly two to three years younger than me. It was his nephew and a friend.

It made me wonder what his family thinks of this. Probably not much, with the life-style he's had that they're all aware of in some form or another. Made me wonder what his nephew was thinking as GV8 rested his hand on my waist, a fellow college-student, youth of America.

From what I can tell, the previous girlfriends he has had (not that I'm his girlfriend at the moment) have been in his general age range, give or take seven to ten years. When he sleeps with people in my age range and younger, it seems to be a one or two time thing and he's done, maybe the occasional booty call off and on.

He's says that, essentially, younger girls don't know how to fuck. And he gets sick of it. I know I surprised him with my... er... "talents". When I took him home that first night, he probably thought he was going to get a one-night stand out of the deal.

I'm just full of suprises.

After bidding his nephew adieu, we managed to snag seats at Hard Rock. Wasn't too busy, but the front desk people were not organized at all.

I mentioned to him the realization I posted on here, how we've been together almost five months (and the only reason I know this is because he was making fun of me for not remembering the date we met and I had to go look up the date of the event online) and I've yet to get bored, yet to consider sex a chore, yet to not enjoy myself.

It's a combination of things, most of which I mentioned to him, one which I didn't.

Sex with him is... amazing. It's not mind-blowing (only Riot of Tattoos has fallen into that category), but it is good. He's talented, he's educated, and he pays attention... but never in a submissive way.

But what I realized was the most influential factor is that he really doesn't care if he orgasms. He is the only partner that I've ever had that really, truly doesn't care if he gets off. He enjoys sex for the pleasure, for the touch. If he wants to get off, he says, he'll just masturbate. The point of having sex with another person is to enjoy them.

This man is perfectly content stopping at the end of a three hour session where we have been all over the place, tearing up the bed, and go get food... without ever orgasming. He doesn't say a word. It doesn't even cross his mind.

Sex, with him, doesn't go into that realm of "oh, we're having fun, fun, fun, and now I have to do this particular rhythm or motion for this set amount of time so he can get off". Blowjobs do not go into that part I hate where he's in my mouth for hours and I'm just happy as a little kid at the Disneyland that is his crotch and suddenly I have to spend x-amount of minutes with my lips clenched and my tongue doing the same repetitive motion as always that ends up killing my jaw muscles.

There's no pressure to perform. There's no pleading looks if I tell him my mouth is hurting or I'm wiped. There's no begging of, "Almost there, please baby..!"

When I want to stop, we stop.

And because of that, I almost never want to stop.

This is the first man that has truly believed in the sentiment: "It's not about the orgasm."

I've had many men tell me that they agree with that idea... but then their actions don't line up.

And I hate it so much when my partners lose control, start begging, start panting like mindless dogs in heat, when sex stops being about pleasure and starts being about that one brief moment they're striving for. Orgasm is such a tiny, insignificant part of it. Seeing what you can do to make your partner feel good, to make yourself feel good, the taste of different parts of the body covered in sweat, in nails going down your back or the inside of your thigh, teeth in your shoulder, hair across the chest, angles, contractions...

I feel like I've finally found a good lover.

Like a veil has been ripped off of my eyes and now I know what it's actually like to be with someone who enjoys all the moments of sex, not just the end, so uncaring about the end.

I think he's the only man I have any true respect for on a sexual level.

And I can't believe that I actually said that.

That any man would ever be able to live up to my expectations.

Not of performance, but of philosophy.

Of control and values.

I can't stop wanting him whenever he's around. Because he has perfect control. He has perfect control that rivals, possibly exceeds, mine.

What I did not tell him was that one of the reasons that I continue to desire him is that he keeps me on edge. In our relationship, he's perfectly dominant, perfectly alpha. Not asshole-alpha, but just confident, calm, controlling alpha. He doesn't let me cling, he doesn't let me whine, doesn't let me beg. Doesn't let me know exactly where he stands.

He leaves me doubting, leaves me wondering, leaves me constantly wanting to impress him, to prove myself to him, to please him.

It's perfect game. He balances between concern/caring and ambiguity, possibly without even knowing he does it. Not willing to commit, but open to it "sometime in the future" if things "go that way".

Without reading so many of the PUA blogs, especially The Fairer Sex which, while not only one of my favorite blogs, is a significantly more realistic than some I could name, I would never have recognized this, never been able to manage things as much as I have been able to.

Not that I'm doing a lot of managing.

But I am able to identify his actions and control my reactions.

And I realized yesterday that this constant low-level anxiety he keeps me in, with the spikes of happiness from his acknowledgement and care, is allowing me to learn how to deal with my regular anxiety that I get whenever I meet someone new that I'd be willing to actually date.

I'm getting able to manage it.

The worry, the wondering, the self-doubt.

He's slowly burning out my adrenal glands, getting me used to it, getting me to cope with it. Getting me to believe in myself, to be confident in myself, whether or not he stays.

This is a major breakthrough for me. This is something I've always had a problem with, as much as I hate to admit it.

...he might help me fix this part of myself.

I wonder if he even knows it.

Commercial break...

I've been so busy that I've not been able to do "This Week in Pictures".

So here's "These Last Two Weeks In Pictures":

One of the most horrific shirts I've ever seen, that I would have bought if they had it in my size:


This drawing makes me smile whenever I go into that particular Coffee Bean:


Caffiene zombies!


I wonder if anyone at Disney realized the dirty, dirty things derived from this sentence:


I was staring at this truck for a good ten seconds trying to figure out what was going on.


Outside the Loft:


Stripper stage, pole pending:


I gave my dad this giant bat for his birthday, and he promptly hid it in my sister's bed:


I love stencils.


The rest of however many weeks ago can be found here.

September 22, 2009

Completely incomplete...

He tells me I'm seeking validation.

I look at him from the corner of my eye as he drives, "Why do you say that?"

Everyone is, he says. Look for validation from that special partner, telling them they're worthwhile. Looking for validation from a paycheck. From a job title. Something that simply tells them that they're worth more than they think they are.

That they feel they are.

Hand-holding over the center console.

He's right.

It's not as though a statement like that could ever be wrong as we scurry about, trying to show everyone else who we think we are, who we want to be, who we want to be seen as, desperately hoping that someone believes it and supports it by their own actions.

As much as I try to pull away from it, I know I am searching for that validation.

I know that if he did leave me, as things stand, the pain and generated feelings of anger and embarassment would be over how I feel that I am not enough.

As if anyone could be "enough".

I was not self-confident enough.

That would be the sticking point. I know he finds me attractive, beautiful even. I know he delights in my sexual abilities and my intelligence. My ability to keep up with him and our common focus on survival, on logic, on efficiency, on ability.

We are what we can do.

But those moments of doubt that creep in, sometimes as the over-politeness I hide behind. The quiet, introverted moments where I realize that I do not fit into a social situation, and the best thing to do is step back and let time wash it away from me.

The anxiety, the annoyance with my body, the chemical addiction I try to pass off as something that isn't such a big issue, but it is, oh it is. My frustration at my perceived weaknesses, my lack of faith in ever landing myself one of those corporate jobs that would prove to me I could fit in.

That ever sought need to be able to pass as normal.

Because if you aren't able to pass, something is wrong. I need to know I can slip between the lines of what I am and what everyone else is, and that constant concern that I will not be able to, that I'll always be just slightly outside everything, just making the mass slightly uncomfortable with none of them able to quite pinpoint why but they know, oh they know, something's a little off-kilter.

I know I will never be "normal".

I just want that ability, that choice, to blend when I wish. To show that I am functional and can be in that world should I choose. That my lack of... whatever it is that is so very missing in me, does not handicap me like it does others.

I know it should not bother me. What good is it, to blend in with the mass? Why should I care?

Maybe I'll get over it, one day. Stop trying.

I don't want to change myself as much as learn how to do it. How to be on the inside.

And if I can't be on the inside, yes, I do want that validation. I do want to see, to know, that my oddity, my disconnect, has done something for me. That I'm not going to be a strange little girl living out an average life somewhere in the nowhere-mass of suburbia or wherever I land.

That it meant something.

That these years, all of these years, each of which that contains no memory of me belonging, no matter how hard I tried.

Junior High, I remember that. I looked at magazines and tried to figure out what was "normal", and then my mother took me to the mall so I could pick out "normal" clothes and be "normal" and all of these other kids that I had never met would never know that I had not been "normal" at my last school.

I remember the cute button-up blouses, the thin gold-chain I had borrowed from my mother, the shoulder length golden-blonde hair I used to have, cute jean-shorts, and some shoes from Payless that looked like what was in at the time.

So excited that I could pass, that I could fit in and have normal friends, have a group of close female friends, pass notes in class, go to slumber parties and go on group dates, go to the school dances with my new-found friends. Trips to the mall, to Disneyland, the movies...

It didn't work.

I don't remember why.

I tried. I really did.

After maybe a week of that, I gave up. Went back to my normal clothes. Made a few friends.

And that was that.

I do look back at pictures of myself in junior high and high school. Gold-blonde hair with light streaks from the sun, tanned skin... and I wonder why.

I wonder what happened that causes people to not recognize me now. People that were my classmates in multiple classes every semester for the three years I attended high school see me now and it doesn't compute to them. What I was is so far removed from what I am, it boggles them.

I look at those pictures, look at my eyes, the simpering smile in so many of those pictures. I look weak. I had no idea what was in store for me.

What I would do to myself.

I should have more self-confidence than I do. Just through time, just through events, I should know that I can survive, that I will survive, and that I will do it well. Wounds, both on body and heart, heal.

And, to quote a favorite of mine... "Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the pain. Move on."

We are stardust...

Last night was... good.

Met GV8 over at the Hollywood apartment. The plan was that we were going to have dinner, then I was going to go out on a date with this guy I had no interest in. Wanted to get out of it, but I hate when people flake, so I decided to go.

Show up at the apartment, where a three-minute oral session turned into an hour and a half distraction. Realizing the time, we laughed, grabbed food, and talked over dinner.

About where we are, what we want, what is going on, how I am trying to distract myself from him my dating other men, but I'm lacking the inclination to have other partners. And he did admit that he had been turning down others, that he was lacking the interest, for the most part. That he was happy and content with me, at least for now. We talked about my major ex, how I have an invite to his upcoming wedding, and my hesistant feelings about attending, and how the club construction is coming along.

He does want to see how things will progress with us, but he also wants it to go slowly. So do I. I hate how I fling myself into things at times, and I've been trying to train myself out of that behavior. Doing rather well on that front.

He dropped me off at the place where I was meeting my date so I would not have to give up my parking spot on the street, and so I wouldn't be too late.

I did not have time to shower or to reapply my make-up that had been thrust into a pillow, so I showed up smelling of sex and the faintest smears of eyeshadow and mascara around my eyes.

Not too classy of me, I admit.

But part of me takes great joy in knowing that so many men think it's such an alpha move to show up to a date, lover, girlfriend, smelling of another girl's sex. Would I do it again?

Probably.

The only reason it bothers me at all is it seems a bit rude.

Went on my date, having determined that I would have none of this man, I ignored his gestures, his touches, and subtly dodged his hands with that careful art cultivated over years of experience.

When we were done, he dropped me back off at the apartment.

I had requested that, if he could, GV8 to be there when I return. That I would like to sleep next to him. But he's busy, and his primary office is out in the Valley, so it's a bit of an inconvenience for him.

He stayed anyhow.

I walked into that apartment, eyes searching in the dim light for his form on the bed, and he was there, half-asleep.

Quick shower and I joined him, massaging his neck and shoulders while he dozed, as he had tweaked something during the construction and it was causing him pain.

When he left in the morning, he moved my car to the now-vacant side of the street so I could sleep in... street parking laws are an annoyance in Hollywood.

Grabbed coffee on Melrose (once I had convinced myself that I needed to get up), walking by the closed up store fronts, so many of them vacant now, looking at the decorative graffiti all over, the stenciling that I love so much.

He could really hurt me. I know this.

He could be using me for sex, for companionship, with no plans on staying around once/if I start asking for more.

I could fall in love with him and he could break my heart.

Ha, what a phrase: breaking a heart.

But then I look back, I look back at the winding road and the men, the sex, the lies, the destruction, the bruisings, the damage, the use... I listen to songs I loved when I was 16 and 17, embarking on what would become my life, remembering city buses and long sidewalks.

And I know it's okay.

It's only pain.

Nothing broken. Some tears, some bruised ego, but you dust off your knees and move along.

The flesh, the guts, the entrails, the inner most parts...

VISCERIS



I'd like to take this time to thank GV8 for the strategically placed bitemarks, not all of which you can see.

But this was more for a decent shot of my tattoo (though part of it you can't see, I admit) than anything.

Silent Revolution

This is how it happens.

Roof of the Arclight parking lot on Sunset Boulevard, front seat, reclined, on your back.

1030PM.

Foggy skies, the man next to you leaning over the center console, blue eyes, (dyed) black hair, pale skin.

Soft skin, desk jockey.
Soft lips, thin mouth.

Your hips rock empty against the air, slight rhythmic motions that are neither desperate or contrived... in appearance, anyway. An aching, wild calling, a signal that your body is doing things that your mind is not paying attention to.

But you know very well what you are doing.

Lips, tongue, he's decent, but you're already bored.

Tattoos all over his skin, faded with the years, gone soft as he lost muscle tone.

What a waste.

"God, those squirming hips," he groans against your mouth, "You're going to make me lose control."

A quick grin, "Hardly. You're fine and you know it."

"You don't know that."

"Yes, I do."

And you know it wouldn't matter even if he did lose control. He's too soft. He's experienced, but he's also been out of the true game a little too long. Edges have lost their refinement.

You could eat him alive.

He drives you back to your lover's apartment, though he doesn't know that.

Door to door service.

Keys dangle from your hand, outer gate, apartment, and loft entryway. You use all three, dropping your purse on the bed and finding your partner.

Step through the gate, the metal barriers, wait for him to let you in to the loft itself.

Body contact.

He has lost nothing through the years. Hard and warm, lips are strong and brutal.

His mouth possesses you until all traces of the other man are gone.

From hunter to prey in three minutes.


Tilt your head back and breathe.

Breathing in the things around you...

Went out to dinner with a friend last night, to a little ramen place on Olypmic Boulevard.

He's foreign to me. So quiet, so introverted, this I understand. I have my days, an occasional week or two, where the last thing I want is social interaction and I do my best to avoid contact with others, especially contact with friends because I know it's likely that my desire to be as far away from them as possible will bleed through.

My friend rarely leaves his apartment, other than for work and errands. He's a brain, an up and coming programmer. Constantly plugging away at the keyboard, obsessed with designing things bigger and better.

I was trying to convince him to get out more, to go see more of, at least, Los Angeles. He has so little interest in doing so.

And while I was talking, I quickly realized that he knows who he is, what he's doing with his life, what his interests are. He found his nook early on and there's no further need for exploration.

My nook? Gods, do I even have one? Scouring the streets, the internet, diving through books, talking to strangers, trying to find out what I am missing, where the hell are others like me, where do I fit in all of this, why is it so rare for me to be able to relate to someone? (When) will I figure it out?

My mother says she admires me, how I go out and explore, how I am constantly trying new things and, even when afraid, forcing myself into new situations. Pushing my boundaries, making myself uncomfortable, driven on by the idea that just over that next ridge I'll find what it is I'm looking for.

That those places or people I find that resonate in me, the doorways I step through and know that I've found another piece of something I should know, that one day I'll crest that hill and know I need to go no further.

After dinner, we took a walk.

The big Krav Maga studio, fists swinging into bags, the abbreviated shouts and slam of flesh into canvas, echoing through the glass into the street. I wanted to watch, wanted to see the sweat flying off their bodies, their brutal drive towards whatever goals they've set themselves.

... ... ...

This coming year... my birthday is in about three weeks. SFPlayboy is coming down, both he and GV8 have agreed to my request for DP.

Actually, what Playboy said was, "Fuck yeah, birthday girl!"

They're such givers. So self-sacrificing and noble.

... ... ...

Class is proving to be an interesting place. Returning to college, though I never really left it since I came back, because of work.

Surrounded by, mostly, two types of people.

The kids in their late teens, early twenties, pushing for that diploma so they can launch themselves into the world, and those who got married and started families much too early, and are now returning to school to address their neglected (and usually abandoned) education.

It leaves me feeling old.

And I shouldn't be. It seems silly.

What am I supposed to say, though?

Reading The Awakening, discussing women's rights, sexuality, search for identity, questioning of self, adultery... so many of these kids... it goes right over their heads. Am I supposed to mention what it feels like to be the one pursued by a friend's roving husband? Should I mention rolling around in bed with two men while popping pills? Or the nameless sex searching for a sense of self-destruction? Of what it feels like when you're coming out of a dream of life? Swing clubs and pawing men, straddling someone so much stronger than you, knowing that you are more than they could ever be, and that, as the years pass, this feeling will continue to grow?

Then to Into the Wild. What am I supposed to say? I mean, really. I've hung out with those kids. Trainhoppers, bums, hitchhikers, those who have been on the road for years, living in forests, living off the kindness of others or their own intelligence. Alaska? I've been there. I was caught in a storm while kayaking about fifty miles out from civilization and was nearly smashed on the black rocks of some island in the middle of nowhere. Paddling through iceflows, watching glaciers fall, sliding over sheets of ice.

They go home to their families, to their roommates, their boyfriends, their husbands and children.

I go to my couch for the evening, or a sleeping bag on the floor, or a lover's house and spend the night in exhausted sex. I wake in the morning, get coffee, and go into the office, knowing that the next day will bring something different, a new place, new faces, and I get to watch the world and see what it will bring by my door.

So much has changed.

Sometimes it's like having a beast wrapped around you.

Bedded down in his cave, he breathes quietly, limbs tangled with yours.

And you know if any shining knights attempt to steal you away, he'll devour them.

Protected.


Safe.

You gave up all the golden factories...

Odd weekend.

They're always odd, technically. Hijinks and all.

My life is turning into this strange beast, and I'm looking down the corridor that I've traveled up and realizing that everything I have done in the past, all of those experiences, pushed me towards this, unmistakably, unstoppably towards this lifestyle, towards these people, these ideas, being who I am becoming.

That isn't said with a trace of glory, with exulting in this future, with putting myself as on-high, but more of a curious, introspective glance.

Going to bed with GV8 last night, both of us exhausted in body, not mind, him telling me stories of time spent in prison, crooning me to sleep with his adventures, his lips moving behind my ear as I latch onto his stories and sink quietly into unconsciousness.

What would have happened, if I had not taken the steps I had? If I had not tried to burn love out of my skin, my mind, my self-concept? What would have I been like if I had not thrown my body at any man who looked my way? If I hadn't gotten kicked out of college? If I had graduated with the rest of my class, instead of going early, submerging myself in a world of, to me, adults, when I was so young and inexperienced.

What would have happened if I had (ever) found my own kind, instead of wandering the edges of social groups, never bonding, staring in at them?

I wandered into his arms on Saturday, pressing my body against his, feeling his heat, his strength, the unwavering self-confidence that emmanates from him, from his yellow-green sunset eyes.

Slow sex, horizontal across his bed, our fingers wrapped together above my head, lips touching, brushing, dancing, hips rolling, ankles locked, moving so soft, so gentle. Possibly the nearest I've come to making love in quite some time, though I don't believe I ever truly have.

Sex and love... don't go together for me. It's not something I do.

He's buying me gifts, calling me at a perfect rhythm, nearly doting on me, but not in such a way that would be desperate or fawning.

He would not want me if I was inexperienced. He's glad of the life I have lived, he's glad of my passions and lusts, my technique, my enjoyment of sex. We've been sleeping together since May, I realized, and I've yet to grow bored of sex with him.

I don't think that has ever happened for this length of time.

Usually by now, I'm already onto something new, or having sex with my partner that has become so very passe.

But I'm not bored. We're not a perfect sexual match, but our combined experience, our dynamic, leads to something new, something fun. I'm constantly experimenting with my oral technique with him. He's allowed me to grow so fast with that, so far beyond what I used to be. My ever-loathed handjobs are now something of a delight, to the point where I'm working in my left hand so I can become ambidextrous, at least in that, to a good, capable point.

And he lets me. He encourages me, he gives me tips, and from a man who has received as much head and sex in his life as he has, he's an invaluable source of information.

We're getting closer and closer, quite rapidly. That short push away, perhaps it caused some sort of slingshot...

The loft is coming along quickly. All the glass walls are up, and he's going to be installing the bar this week, along with other work. Hardwood, carpeting, lighting... looking around, watching it come together, hardly daring to imagine what will happen once it opens.

My life... I don't know. Who thought this would happen? I'm just a strange girl meeting strangers and seeing what comes of it. Skin to skin, lips to lips, mind to mind. Making something.

And I'm changing. Slowly, but I can feel it. I can feel parts of me reaching out, stretching for their potential, filling those empty places inside of me.

Becoming everything I could have dreamed, or something else entirely?

My birthday is coming up.

Normally, I don't care. And, really, I still don't particularly care.

But I decided, as a gift to myself, since SFPlayboy is theoretically coming down soon, I'm going to (likely successfully) attempt to arrange a threesome with him and GV8. Because that would be wonderful. Happy birthday, here's some DP.

I know both of them would be up for it.

It's just a matter of Playboy getting himself down here.

On the GV8 front, he's made me copies of the keys to get into the apartment he recently leased, so I've got a Hollywood home whenever I want it, at least until he hires an assistant and puts her up there.

This weekend is something new for us.

He's planning on having the loft mostly operational by next Saturday, which means this weekend is him being busy, busy, busy.

But instead of me just leaving him alone to work, or him taking time off work to hang out with me, he's decided that we should go our separate ways this weekend, but both of us should stay the nights at the new apartment so we see each other.

I'm slightly off-put by this, but also pleased.

I cannot tell if he just wants sex-on-tap, or if he wanted to see me and knew this was the only way to make time, or if he wants to see the dynamic we have in this sort of free situation.

Also cannot tell how much time he expects me to make for him. I'm not going to be able to tell until tonight, until I see him.

We keep having these mini-miscommunications where I know he has a lot on his plate for work and the impending club so I try not to bug him, try not to text him, call him, overburden his schedule with activities. His business is priority, I am not going to attempt to dissuade him otherwise.

But then when I do give him that space, when I don't try to squeeze myself into his schedule, it's almost like he gets hurt that I'm not trying. Not quite hurt, really, more... well, maybe it is hurt. That's not quite the right word. Not offended, not depressed, more like a, "Hey, why aren't you paying attention to me?" almost. Not whining, just surprised and unsettled.

This has happened a few times.

But I'm used to sleeping with busy, busy men whose schedules I have to work around, so they call me when they have time available. To bother them to make time is a death knell. So I have been trained not to do so.

He doesn't seem to want that.

Which is funny, because he's busier than any of the others were in the past.

So, tonight, I'm going to run by the loft and grab the keys, then go out with The Bassist. His (amazing) band has been contacted to do music for a TV pilot, so they're working on the licensing with that company today. After they finish, we're going to go run around Hollywood and the like. Saturday, I'm going out to Hemet (which I've managed to avoid all of my life... until now) for family fun and frolic, and Sunday I'm supposed to have a date with someone new... which I might cancel if things with GV8 look like I should spend time with him instead.

Feeling things out.

Whatever happens, I'll have fun.

There should be grief but there is none...

Waking up on Monday morning, the alarm on my phone doing a half-second high pitched noise that wakes me more effectively than anything ever has.

I lie on the floor on my stomach, my faded sleeping bag, green flannel lining, beneath me, around me.

Rotating ankles, feeling the unwinding of tense muscles created by eight hours in too-high heels the day before, slide a leg past the zipper boundaries, twist the pelvis slowly and feel the pop, then the other side. Arms extend forward, brushing the carpeting, spine rolls, twist onto my back, arch, and sit up.

Shove the sleeping bag down to mid-thigh and wiggle out.

Sunlight through the unshuttered window, pale carpet, white walls, the slight, slight, slight hum of a fan. My friend sleeps behind Chinese screens and I dress silently, sliding off pants, stepping into underwear, balancing on one foot as jeans travel up each leg. Sleeveless tank is switched for bra and shirt, gently tugging hair trapped between flesh and fabric.

Look out the window. Two minutes have passed, nothing noticable in the gaining light. Shoes are laced loosely and sleep-clothes are shoved into the bag, hefted on one shoulder.

I reach for the door knob and notice that sometime in the evening, sometime in my sleep, I moved my faux-wedding band from my left ring-finger to my right.

Unsettled, I leave.

I find you gone...

When I entered, three years ago, the university system, I was thrilled. The idea of going through a program of specialized classes where I would have classmates with similiar goals, ideas, and level of education, where I would make friends with people in my own age group with our similiar backgrounds and interest... the whole thing was very exciting for me.

However, I found that such was not the case. The majority of my classmates were morons. I suppose it was my own fault, choosing a major that was in the humanities field, populated with women striving to be social workers (not the most intelligent decision in the first place).

We shared nothing in common. I was the black sheep in all of my classes. I wanted to explore and question, I wanted to understand different ideas and try to rid myself as much as I could from my ethnocentric view points. I wanted to expand myself.

I found the social worker types to be more of the "define what is healthy, define what is not healthy, anything different must be exterminated" mindset.

This did not quite work for me.

There were no intelligent discussions. There were no new friends, only old ones that happened to be going to the same college, but in different majors. After the first semester, I did not even bother. I read my texts, I read between classes, and group projects were a thing to be avoided at all costs.

I graduated and moved on.

Then it was suggested to me that I go back for my Master's.

Really?

No, not in my previous major. That would be a nightmare.

English. I can do English. Maybe meet other like-minded individuals that love books, love reading, love writing, as much as I do.

I went to examine the path that lay before me.

Pre-requisites. Switching majors means I needed to take classes that would be required for entry into the Master's program.

300-level classes, designed for English majors.

What could go wrong?

Within the first week of school, a man made the comment, "What was that woman's name? The one that... ah, she was French. People were starving so she offered them dessert?"

Then last night.

We were assigned a paper last, choose one of four topics. Introduction+Thesis, supporting paragraphs, conclusion, MLA format. Simple. And the class was for English majors, so these people have been taking the classes needed to get their BA in English. The last few semesters for them have been English focused.

We turn in our papers, she passes them back, as we're to read two of our classmate's papers and critique them.

First paper had beautiful language, an iffy thesis, two supporting paragraphs that did not truly use items from the text to support their thesis, much less relate to the prompt the writer had chosen. The third paragraph, supposed to be the conclusion, was more of a supporting paragraph. It accomplished nothing. No argument was made, analysis was poor, poor enough that a conclusion was not able to be drawn.

I did not know what to say on the critique, so I was honest.

But the second paper, oh the second paper.

I was trying so hard during the entire reading of it not to laugh aloud. It was one of the most pathetic things I had ever read during my college career. The prompt was, essentially, to compare the motivations and ideas behind Locke's "New Negro" to one of the Harlem movement sonnets the professor had provided, and to show how and why that sonnet supported Locke's philosophy.

Epic fail.

I don't even know what this girl did. It's like she said, "Oh, write about a poem, I got it!" and just took a poem and interpreted it. Horrifically. I wanted so badly to steal her paper so I could scan it in and upload it to this blog. It read like it was written by a 7th grader, maybe lower.

So she took Langston Hughes' poem, "I, Too" (which, mind you, was not a poem you were allowed to select for this essay because it was not a freaking sonnet) and interpreted it.

Something like, "Oh, the poor black man has been kicked out of the kitchen but one day America will recognize the worth of the poor negro and let him into the kitchen and let him eat at the table instead of on the floor."

Seriously.

Now imagine four pages of that.

I was rolling.

What made it even better was at the end of the essay, it's like she realizes that she was supposed to bring Locke's work into the paper, so she has two sentences that say something about Locke feeling like he's been kicked out of the kitchen and needs to come back in, too, and that's her conclusion.

Thank you, California education system.

Even with that, I do not believe that anyone in the English program will ever top the biggest Sociology student blunder I have ever seen in my life.

400-level class with possibly the hardest professor in the department. In this class you had to Be On Your Game.

Group project.

Take an assigned reading, interpret, and then make a 10 to 15 minute Power Point presentation for the class. Five students per group. Divide work evenly.

We were assigned Levi-Strauss's "Structural Study of Myth". Easy, easy stuff.

Basic theory is that instead of reading a story in chronological order, you break the story into pieces based on events and group them based on commonalities and read the meaning that way. Really cool idea.

So, of course, someone else starts taking charge of the group. I don't step up.

Five, ten minutes in, everyone admits that they read it and they have no idea what it's talking about.

Except me.

I read it, understood it, and ended up spending the entire rest of the class explaining it until all but one guy got it. And then I assigned workload. The next time we met up, one person had been able to do what they had been assigned, the rest just got confused and did not do anything.

And the one guy, who we will call Steve, had no idea what was going on.

I break it down again. I discuss it with the group. Everyone gets it again but Steve. He doesn't know what to do. I explain it again, sketch out the power point presentation, give it to him and tell him to take what I've written and put it on the slides and bring it the next class when it's due.

Two days before it's due, he emails me a written version of the slides because he can't figure out how to email Power Point.

And he's creatively interpreted it for us.

I look at it, become furious, start laughing hysterically, and hit up my techie boyfriend at the time for a copy of Power Point and end up doing the thing myself.

Class comes around, no one in my group gets it still, so I give the history of the author to one kid and do the presentation and answer all the questions myself, with the rest of my group standing to one side.

What we (I) did the presentation on was a background of Strauss, a summation of the theory, and then application of the theory on Goldilocks and the three bears. Basically, lining up the three experiences of Goldilocks with each member of the Bear family, the story can be interpreted by Strauss' method by saying that Goldilocks tried on the different roles in the family (mother, father, child) and determined that the child role currently fitted her best. Very simple.

The creative interpretation by Steve that I received was:

Goldilocks eats the porridge, blah blah blah (insert tripe here).
Goldilocks sits in the chairs, blah blah blah (tripe).
Goldilocks sleeps in the beds, blah blah blah (more tripe).

His conclusion: children should not sleep in adult beds because they are growing and need posturepedic beds for different support for their backs.

That was when I knew that I should never have majored in Sociology.

Set my sights too high...

Last night I found myself signing up on a recommended BDSM personals site.

I uploaded pictures, then went to filling out my profile, and I realized that it was incredibly likely that this would, eventually, get back to GV8. He has too many friends in the fetish scene.

And it would not be as though I was cheating. We're not in a committed relationship, we see other people.

But I knew it would not go particularly well for me. That he would take that as a indicator of a lack of true interest, as opposed to what it is: me trying to get some stress relief and trying to pull away from him because I'm falling much too fast, much too hard, and I need to slow that descent.

I need a distraction from him.

It also felt bad. It felt wrong.

And this annoys me. I felt guilty about signing up.

So I stopped. I pulled the pictures, emptied the profile. It's there if I want it later down the line.

... ... ... ...

I went to an ex-lover's wedding on Sunday.

I met him when I was 20, he was 28.

Both of us had been significantly damaged by our most recently ended relationship, but in compatible ways.

He ended up with body and sex issues. He hated the way he looked, the way he felt, he was uncomfortable with his performance in bed.

I ended up feeling worthless. I could not find myself desirable, I could not see myself as ever worthy of another partner, that anyone would have interest in me. I was angry, I was low. I could not imagine a decent man ever wanting me.

We slowly fixed each other through that spring and summer. He doted on me as a good friend would, made me see the value in who I was. I worshipped his body, taught him how to enjoy sex again.

Then I met Rick and that lover and I parted ways on a sexual level, remaining friends.

He moved to Arizona, moved to Oregon, and then finally back to California. We did not talk much.

For my 21st birthday, though, I invited him and one of my other old lovers to my birthday party. It was a moment I'll never forget. Rick, my boyfriend at the time, and two of my favorite partners over the years, sitting in my bedroom, waiting for everyone to be ready to go to dinner, and talking. Joking. The three men who had the most impact on my life at the time (and still, I believe), with me.

It was one of my favorite birthdays.

So I received a call late last year, this lover, informing me that he was getting married and needed my address to send the announcement. A week or so later, it came.

I had never met her, but I was happy for him.

Then the wedding came.

I showed up, dressed in my favorite ensemble, and hugged him, was introduced to his groomsmen, his friends, and we made small talk until the ceremony was about to begin.

Them scattering to their positions, I sat down in the third aisle and waited.

The groomsmen and his mom, then my ex, then the bridesmaids and her father, and then her, the girl I had yet to meet.

She stepped through the doors, smiling so widely, and even though she was across the room from me, I could see the liquid shine in her eyes.

As she approached, tears began running down my face.

My relief, my thankfulness, my happiness that this man who had been so wrecked, who had helped me so much, found a woman whose happiness to be with him resulted in joyful tears during the entire ceremony.

I could not ask for more.

For you I turn wine into champagne...

Sometimes I wonder if the morals I so steadfastly cling to are simply a way for me to cope with the world. A way of retaining some sort of identity.

I found, when they were challenged a few weeks ago and I allowed myself to slip in a fit of lust, I found myself wondering who exactly I was. It made me question my concept of myself and the way I have built myself, my so few grasps at trying to understand who I have become and what I have been, to the point of knowing that if I no longer followed that, what I would love to call but truly know otherwise, internal moral compass, I would not be what I consider me.

I would be someone else.

We have a concept of self, some theories state, that is created by a division of self versus not-self. That we identify who we are based on who (or what) we are not.

We look at others around us, at objects around us, at ideas around us, and examine them as a child examines a new toy, to determine if they are or are not something that adds to our not-self, or one of the few things that adds to the self.

There are things I think I know about myself.

I know I feel as though I lack self-definition. I do not know who I am, where I belong, or if I'll ever meet others like me. I know I feel as though I have been through so much that I have a hard time being myself around others because I know it will cause confusion and uncomfortability, so I am constantly play-acting. But I also feel as though the things that I've done in my life, and the things that have been done to me, are not so extreme that I was pushed over the edge into that group of people that are, beyond all, radical survivors.

I feel constantly alone.

Not lonely, usually.

Just isolated. Walking in a world at a different speed than so many others, never quite linking up. Occasionally, I will try to be myself and talk to "normal" people, and I find myself wondering why I even try, knowing the eventual result.

I know I unsettle. I know I can intimidate without ever meaning to. I know the majority of people cannot relate to the things I say and the things I believe that I rarely would say.

I created this blog to have the space I needed to exercise (exorcise, depending on the day) my beliefs, my stories, the things that go on inside my head when I interact with others, things I cannot discuss with the people around me because I know that it would bother them, that they would not trust me, that they would constantly question me.

Which happened recently, actually. One of my male friends was forwarned, by me, that I have certain social tendencies. And, for nearly the last year, he was be watching me, growing more and more uncomfortable, noting things that others would not until, a few weeks ago, he finally confronted me about it.

Sometimes I hate this mix I have, this emotional vunerability that I have tried so hard to rid myself of and this cold, calculating, sometimes destructive beast.

It would make things easier if I was more one than the other.

One would think I would loathe myself. Part of me for the weakness I have, the easy infatuation, the overly sensitive nature. Part of me for the things I have done, the things I would like to do.

I rein it in with my moral net, the guidelines I set forth to define me and stop me.

People don't understand. I'm nearly religious about it.

But you end up hurting so many people, so many people, some dearer to you than yourself. And when you stop, you look at the wreckage behind you and you can choose to rebuild, or to burn the foundations into char.

Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Marlowe ends up back in Western civilization, and he cannot stand, cannot understand, the people around him. He loathes them, he laughs at them, he knows they will never comprehend the things he's seen and done, that words could not convey that self-knowledge that comes with the reversal of identity, the reversal of his external world, and thus his internal self.

He becomes wrecked and haunted, a shadow of a man, even more so than his Western ideal, Kurtz, had become. Poisoned by the workings of Kurtz, poisoned by finding that the man he had grown to idolize had fallen, and what could make such a man fall... first he turns to attacks (for one way of resisting is to attack) and then he recognizes the darkness in the civility around him.

Then he fractures.

And then he breaks.

Without your television...

This irritates me.

I have anxiety issues. I've always had anxiety issues. It blows.

But it's usually managable. I usually can pop myself up at a computer and write it out, so it's all okay and I settle myself down so I look like a sane and stable individual even when my body is going OMG-FIGHT-OR-FLIGHT at me when there's nothing to fight or fly from.

I've been having issues with GV8.

No, not with him as a person, but with my ability to deal with him and his lifestyle.

I'm monogamous. I'm 100%, dyed in the wool, monogamous.

I don't even know if I used that saying right. It's staying anyway.

He's not. He's not polyamorous, either. He's a "I'm going to fuck who I'm going to fuck when I feel like fucking them" type of guy.

But because of who he is (personality-wise) and all the people he knows and places he goes, he ends up having sex all over the place, when he has the time.

It's one thing when we're in a controlled environment, at a swing club, and I look over to see him fucking another girl. That doesn't bother me. It's the clubs and the massage parlors that get me. Not just emotionally, but also on a health-level. I like being STD-free. I wish to continue being so. He has an amazing track record, but it only takes one idiot to start a wave of some random disease.

I don't know if I can handle that risk.

Physically and emotionally.

I want to feel like I can roll with the big dogs, and I usually do feel that way, but next to him I'm an untried puppy and I'm not sure if I want to expose myself to such a lifestyle, engage in those behaviors that I deem unhealthy.

And there's also the concern that, because of his experience, he's more educated than I am, so all my worries and concerns are passe to him because he knows more, knows better. That I sound like one of those kids that is all, "Use condoms when giving blow jobs because you might get the herp" or "Anyone with more than ten partners is a whore and probably has dozens of STDs."

...sigh.

Am I willing to give him up over this? Is this such a dealbreaker that I would go and toss aside all that he offers, on all the levels that he offers?

It hurts me to know that for his last relationship, he gave up intercourse (but not oral) with other people, but I cannot ask him for that. Not with everything that is going on. He certainly wouldn't give it to me, or if he did, I would feel as though he resented me for it. Which I wouldn't blame him for.

Not that we're even in a relationship.

...I'm heaving sighs over here, resting my chin on my left hand.

I told him yesterday, when he asked what I wanted to do when we met up for dinner and the like, that I wanted it mellow, and if he was able to hook up a TV in the new apartment (he's got a few places of residence), then it would be great to curl up and watch a movie with him.

So he went out, bought a $900 high-def flat-screen wall-mounted TV with the sound bar and the computer hook-up and installed it that afternoon. And then we went out to Best Buy and bought a movie, and he also picked up season one of Californication and Dollhouse for me.

Last time I was over there, the first day he had the keys, he bought a bed and assembled it and renting a moving truck so he could bring over two of his mattresses so we could sleep on it and together we set up the bathroom, switching out the showerhead, assembling the floor-to-ceiling caddie and putting up the shower-rod/curtain combo.

We have fun. We get along. We have great sex.

God, the sex this morning was amazing. Just perfect rhythm, perfect movement, perfect angle, with him holding my hands above my head and thrusting into me. Beautiful. Last night's sex was great as well. And the early morning oral session.

I met another of his employees last night. A beautiful, beautiful girl who used to be a major model in Europe, but just couldn't do it when she moved to LA, her look didn't work. She's gorgeous, pretty smart too. Her boyfriend isn't nearly as good-looking, but he's built.

Anyhow, that was a side-track.

I wish GV8 wasn't doing this. The year of partying, the year of weekly+ swinging, this whole club thing... I wish this things were somewhat remotely normal, at least for me. If things were just mellow. I don't want to party anymore.

And, you know, I'm even thinking that maybe, sometime soon, a relationship wouldn't be a bad idea. Not with GV8 necessarily. But if I could actually find someone that suited me... maybe. Maybe I could.

I could date GV8. I could do a relationship. But I'd need the sex to be just us, and he can't do that right now. Since my schedule has gone above the call of sustainable reality, he now fills the void that I leave with other women.

Can I do that?

Can I respect myself if I allow myself to remain in this situation that could be potentially harmful?

Can he even respect me, knowing I'm going against my instinct, going against what I know I need? Am I just placing myself in a situation that is going to end in a mental explosion on my part?

I talked with him about this a little last night. I'm not sure how he took it. He seemed okay, but I'm not completely sure. Earlier, as I blogged, he requested that he wanted to see more of me, see where we could go, so I suggested meeting up tonight, after my family stuff has ended. He hesitated. He told me he didn't have plans for the evening, but he wasn't sure. He totally withdrew and when I questioned him about it, he did not really give me an answer, so I am anxious that my talking about my concerns with him might have thrown him to the point where he needs to spend time away from me to think, or that he just needs to relegate me to a lover only.

I don't know.

I don't like this uneasy place we're at. We're not sure where we're going so I'm not sure if I should open up to him on an emotional level, or if I should keep myself emotionally separate from him, or what. There's something to be said for instinct, and mine says that if he wasn't going to be engaging in so much sex with so many people, we could work. But knowing that he is going to be doing so, my instinct says this is going to crash and burn, even if it's a controlled plummet, it's not going to be particularly good.

I have to take care of me first.

I have to stop being greedy.

I have to be willing to lose him.

Am I willing to lose him?

Often, people mistake submission for weakness.

Unfortunately for him, the man that did that today discovered otherwise.

It's easy to find females weak on a sexual level. Inexperienced, easy to control, easy to manipulate, to con into giving into your base needs, to guide with insults, to wreck and shape.

When I tone down my sexuality, beyond what it already is- I flag no one's slut-dar, it's easy to be lumped in with the rest. It's easy for a man to mistake me for your standard, inexperienced, unmarried girl.

Mostly, it amuses me. It lets me play with perceptions, it lets me educate.

And, sometimes, rare times, a man will look at me, and I will look at him while in conversation with another, and I'll know that he knows that we're similar beasts.

That does not occur often.

The shy men, the young men, the lovers of romance, the inexperienced boys, those I do not understand but will take time out of my day to pass on a little knowledge, a little experience so they're better prepared with the next girl.

The cocky bastards, the rutters, the asshole "alphas", the men who stride around and have the barest amount of sexual knowledge of a female's inner-workings, those are dinner. Those are who I exercise my temper on. If they show weakness, vunerability, if I wear them down, I will cease fire. If they don't, I'll go until they lose their temper, or until I determine that aggressive, objectifying sex is on the menu, then I use them and lose them.

Then you get your "doms". Those men, you know the kind, that strut around in leather pants with the lashes and whips clipped by the handful in carabiner's about their belt loops, their crappy boots (usually purchased at Ren Faires for as cheap as they can find), or you get the "dom" that is a single male, working his life away, no friends, who loves to visit the BDSM clubs and try to pick up an inexperienced, too-young, sub.

And the creepy guys, the ones that never learned game, that can only get laid by seducing young girls that don't know any better.

I, when mellow and withdrawn, attract the first, third, and fourth type.

But once conversation starts, the majority of the third and fourth bolt. Only the stupid stay, as the supposed brave do not exist in that category.

I know it was good for me, to release my anger like that, in a vaguely (not really) constructive way. To finally, finally, finally step out of my so-freaking-polite-all-the-time shell and just let myself be who I am.

I'm a beast.

The majority of men I talk to have the barest drop of experience compared to me, and they don't have the brain to do what I do. I can dance between roles and ideals without issue, can analyze, comfort, attack, and submit, can listen and adore. I can rip someone and their sexual concept apart, or help build it up. I know when I'm with someone that I'm the one in control because my control is near infinite when it comes to sex play because I have the experience and knowledge to back it up.

So it does not usually bother me when a man such as the inspiration for this post approaches me.

Until I realize what he is likely doing to other girls.

And then, then I lose it just a bit.

It's funny, now that it occurs to me. I was so very for the education and sharing of knowledge with others, with working with damaged, aggressive men that use and manipulate women to an unhealthy level.

But being exposed to Roissyism has near broken me of my need to be polite.

I feel like I'm all teeth and claws.

Should probably get this under control.

For you I wear my Sunday best on Tuesday...

I've been listening much too much to a particular De/Vision song called What You Deserve. For some reason, the lyrics catch me just right.

I was introduced to this song recently, through my clubbing friend.

See, a few weeks ago I was out at a club and this other song came on (don't watch that video, by the way, I'm fairly certain it's crap, but the song is good) and I was blown away by the beat. Much dancing ensued.

My clubbing friend, by my request (which was delivered when I saw him walking by the edge of the dancefloor, watching me dance, stopped, screamed at him, "WHAT IS THIS SONG?!" and he shrugged and I said, "FREAKING FIND OUT!"), got the song information and told me he'd burn me a CD with it on it.

The next time I see him, he gives me this CD which he turned into a mix CD of songs he could see me dancing to.

...I'm not sure if that's sweet or creepy. Currently going with sweet.

He does love to watch me dance.

So... maybe creepy.

It was bizarre, listening to that CD. Songs that had been my favorites months ago, years ago, and new songs. A wide variety of genres, too. Yet he nailed it, for the most part. It was a CD of club songs.

Started making me wonder how many days (weeks?) of my life, hours all added up, that I have spent on the dance floor in various clubs through Southern California.

I'm coming up on eight years of clubbing. When there is a "retro" room at a club, chances are that the majority of songs they are spinning are songs that I danced to in clubs when I was 18 or 19, when it was me and one of my closest friends out going several nights a week, coming back blasted out of our minds with exhaustion more often than not.

After I settled down with Stuntcock, then he settled down with his partner, then I escaped mine... it was just me, running solo.

But that's what I like to do.

Darkeyes and I went clubbing every week while we were dating, with him insisting on me teaching him how to dance, if he could ever be taught. His lack of rhythm and body awareness, and his complete inability to take criticism, no matter how well intentioned, meant that I was stuck with a clubbing partner who could not dance, who usually ended up injuring others with his dancing, myself, with all my years of learning how to dodge and move around others, included.

He was that bad.

How embarassing for me.

Anyhow, I went out to a club last Sunday, a big event. Showing up early and knowing people working the event led me to volunteer to help. So, for a good hour+, I was working the line at the door.

Yes, that's right.

I was an honorary doorwoman. I entertained myself in the wait by making sexist comments and making fun of the patrons. It went over oddly well.

After the initial crowd died down, I escaped the door and went to enjoy my evening.

Where some man tried to pick me up with the following line:

"Do you ever find yourself missing someone else's cat?"

...
...
...

This was followed by the worst physical escalation I've possibly seen in the last several years, which consisted of him leaning towards me (even though we were outside on the patio and I could hear him just fine), putting his crotch on my hip, his chest on my shoulder, and half-shouting into my ear about this cat and how I have to see pictures of this cat on his cell phone, which, against my protests, he showed me.

This was when I hunted down my still nickname-less clubbing friend and told him he had to play the role of boyfriend/lover until this guy got off my back.

Sidenote: I'm normally okay with telling people that I don't have interest in them and to cut it out, but some people are so socially inept that to tell them such things is to provoke an argument as to why they are unworthy of my interest. This was close enough to one of those men that I did not wish to do this.

Oh, and while I was running around dodging this guy, that guy I one-night standed last November was there giving me the eyeball and I was polite and fine until he spent the length of three songs watching me dance, making me wonder if he was going to leave another creepy voicemail on my phone with the message being, "Hi, I was... uh... watching you... uh... dance... and I was... uh... wondering... if you were doing... anything... uh... later tonight."

This, this is what happens when you pick up someone at a club. They might be good looking (apparently he was a vampire extra on the (second) season finale of True Blood , so, yes, he's hot enough), and they might past as socially competent, but this was fail.

Also, when a man keeps the used condoms because he believes in his pagan ways that consuming his own sperm is a way of cycling energy, you just leave. You go, "Thank you for an odd, odd, evening and for bruising my cervix but I am leaving you and your sperm-filled condoms here, good-bye." And then you run.

I mean, it's been coming up on a year now and he's still trying.

So I see him and he's watching me and I'm pretending I don't see him because I take my glasses off when I dance and, eventually, he realizes that I'm not going to be stopping anytime soon so he wanders off and I hang out for another song before stepping off the floor to find my friend out on the patio, who tells me he's not going to be joining me for out usual post-club dinner, and I'm walking with him back into the club asking why not and the one-night guy overhears us so I'm standing there going fuck-fuck-fuck.

Because, after ever club I see him at, he always approaches me to go home with him and I always turn him down because I have other plans.

This leads me spending the end of my evening (when I'm not dancing) clinging to my friend like his penis is the best thing in the world and no other will satisfy me.

While on the floor, the guy who tried to pick me up with the cat comment (and the conversation had continued from there), joins me on the dancefloor and says, "I'm going to blame (insert clubbing friend's name here) for this."

Just this obscure, flailing shot in the dark, declaring interest, nodding that he had been "defeated" by a better male, etc etc lameness.

So I looked at him with my best confused-blonde expression and said, "Huh? What do you mean?"

He smiled at me like I was a dope, this condescended grin, and said, "Ah, nothing," like he was the Most Mysterious Man In The World.

This was, mind you, after he saw me with my friend, which was before he decided to take offense at my inavailability and strut by me, then plant himself two inches away from me with his back to me, staring into space for a good three minutes before strutting away.

Men, men are morons.

While all of that stupid male crap was going on, I was running interference for my clubbing buddy, whose ex-girlfriend of four years decided to show up to the club with her new boyfriend (mmm, two day rebounds), which sent my friend into all sorts of emotional melancholy so I was running around checking on him constantly, harassing him, flirting with him, making fun of people with him so he'd keep distracted.

Along with the rest of the usual club madness. Drunks, staggering, dodging lit cigarettes, dodging morons on the dance floor, and then some girl taking to me strongly and wanting to dance with me and be all "oooh, lesbian sexy" with me which was... something I don't engage in. But then the DJ joined us on the dancefloor and she cut that out.

Interesting night.

Overly long, pointless journal post.

But at least I'm not saving used condoms for dessert.

Just realized...

I wanted to go over to C's place and write tonight. Not write about my growing (and probably hormonal-related) anger, but just write.

And then I realized that I feel that I can't write when I'm angry. I think it makes my words fall apart, that it kills my structure and makes everything look incredibly unpolished.

I can't write when I'm mad.

I don't know how to do it so I like it.

How odd.

It cripples me because I'm so not used to experiencing long periods of anger, and I don't know how to work with it aside from rant and rave. I don't know how to make it beautiful, at least to my eyes.

Huh.

Anger is still running high, something unusual for me. I blame my body for this, with its female hormone fluctuations, and its need of at least eight hours of sleep a night which annoys me because I don't want to be sleeping that much, and I certainly wouldn't if I had any say in the matter.

I found myself pining for SFPlayboy and his roughness, his unwillingness to take any of my crap, his complete ease at restraining me, at throwing me around, his cocky attitude and so very masculine presence.

I wanted that today. I wanted a rough rape scene to calm me down, something to get this anger out of my head, out of my body. If I had time, I would run. I would put on my sneakers and exhaust myself, exhaust my body.

But I don't. Something I have very little of is time. School has been in session for three weeks now, and my friends continue to call, text, and email. I feel like I'm on a leash.

A very short one.

And I want to go play.

Friday, GV8 and I are supposed to go out. Or rather, stay in, exhaust ourselves, go get some food and rest for a short while, and then exhaust ourselves again.

But I don't want to. I don't want to see him. I don't want to see anyone. I'm on edge and it's taking too much effort to keep myself in control, which is making me more, so much more, angry because I'm resenting the people around me, people I don't even know, because I'm having to play nice.

I don't want to see him and have to do the same, and hope that my irritation does not bleed through, that my control is good enough, which I doubt it will be. It will taint it.

Also creeps in is this growing realization that he isn't something I want long-term. Well, as a relationship. Lover, yes. Relationship... I think after being burned by him, my trust in him, the security I found in his presence, is damaged. And that's not something that easily comes back for me. I'm not sure if it ever has, in the past.

But... I could always be wrong. My memory isn't quite the best.

Work has been difficult the last few days, trying to keep it under control. My boss is incredibly prone to moodswings, but since he's the owner's son, I just get to take it. This week has been a downswing. You can imagine how much this has added to my mood.

My coworkers know me as this bright, silly, happy, upbeat kinda girl. It's a show I've been putting on for the last two years because it's easier. Because I don't have my usual position of power, which aggravates me, so I feel powerless and I cannot let my actual personality out because it would be too dominant and throw the social balance the office has, not to mention not suit my position at all.

Going from being what was, essentially, the most influential regional manager in one company, where I ended up having to train my own, national-level, manager, as well as his underlings, running the busiest location we had, to working with and engineering teams of doctors, nurses, and pharmacists all over the country, to this... it's painful.

I'm not used to this. I'm not used to being in such a low spot on the totem pole, to having no power, no credit, being the whipping boy for a near bipolar boss, one that will never get reprimanded for his behavior and lack of management skills because he's part of the family.

When he shouted across the office today to let me know I had done something wrong, something so inconsequential, something that didn't even need to be mentioned because it did not matter in any way, shape, or form, it was because he needed to scold. It had no point other than emotional satisfaction for him.

So, what did I do?

Put on my best beta-bitch sappy smile, cracked a silly, self-depreciating joke, and went about my business like I wasn't imagining what would happen to him if his daddy wasn't the big boss.

That happened repeatedly today.

Smile, duck your head, go about your business.

Nothing to do about it, save find another job.

Speaking of, I should probably be looking into that right now.

Oobi Doobi Magic Crap

Anti-socialness spurred by exhaustion, with the depression shaken and stirred in.

I've hit this frustrated spot.

I'm trying to write. I'm trying to convey these moments that I enjoy, these ideas, these feelings, and it feels like it's just not working. That people aren't getting it.

And I know it's up to the interpretation of the reader, and I shouldn't get so frustrated by it, that my words are being mis-read, misunderstood, mistaken, but it makes me not want to write because I know whatever I'm going to put out there, 99% of people are not going to get it.

And of that 99%, 11% are going to write to me to tell me how much they get it and how wonderful it is and how close we are in spirit and how we should meet and how we should date and they don't feel so alone anymore and I'm sitting there, staring at the screen going "Oh holy fuck, get off me."

Not exactly friendly.

But, it's so frustrating. I thought words were supposed to be my "thing". That's what everyone has said for so long. Well, what good is it if I can't convey basic feelings? What good is it if I speak or write and no one understands it?

And I know I'm writing for me, this journal is for me, and if people enjoy it, I think that's great because I like to feel not quite so alone and unread, and some of the people that read my stuff, here and elsewhere, are really freaking cool.

But I feel betrayed by myself and by them when I hear these interpretations of my behavior or my thoughts that are so very, very wrong. Is that how you see me?

I used to be so fascinated by how people saw me. Not because I wanted to have people tell me how great I was (or how not-great), but because I think different views are fascinating and part of knowing yourself is knowing how you present yourself. And I'm all about self-knowledge.

For instance, I had no idea until last year that the reason why so many people keep their distance from me at clubs is because they find me intimidating and aloof, which I still don't see, but I've heard it enough, especially after I make friends with someone there, that I'm starting to accept it.

It didn't make me change my behavior, mind you. But I became aware of it.

(insert "the more you know" rainbow here)

This whole thing is making me not want to write, not want to talk, not want to email, because I just can't handle being misunderstood right now and I have no idea why it is bothering me so much, aside from the idea that if I can't communicate something with words, then I'm a failure and I should even bother writing. I should just keep my stories and experiences bottled up in me because if I ever bother to write them all down, I'll end up having to interact with people like that fratboy from the other night, at Denny's, when I was trying to write.

I don't want to deal with that. Closedminded people drive me up the wall, and people who don't realize that they're viewing everything through their own filter of their experiences, that lack of awareness on their part... I can't deal with it right now. I'm too tired, I'm too stressed.

And I caught myself doing the filter viewing last week. I was reading this amazing blog, thinking to myself, "Wow, we're so similiar, I could really understand this guy." And then I realized, no, no we're not. I'm reading his stuff through my own eyes and seeing what I want to see and drawing my own conclusions and I need to cut that out right now because it's beyond creepy and annoying.

So, yes. I've withdrawn into my cave and I will come out and post and go to work and flirt with that tattooed rockabilly hottie in my classes, but I've really got to ratchet things down until I get off of my bitchy anti-social podium because I almost, almost, almost went into full-on bitch mode with this guy in my class tonight because I just wanted a verbal sparring partner and I needed that mental smack around to release the aggression that is building inside me, and he had no idea what was going on and I had to cool off very fast.

I slip when I'm tired.

Tomorrow, class.
Thursday, C+friends.
Friday, GV8.
Saturday, hair-dye, arms waxed, pedicure(?), dad's birthday dinner, friend's birthday party, write a paper, read a book for class, read a play for the other class, write a paper for that class on the play.
Sunday, wedding, more reading, more writing for school, maybe tv-marathon with my friend.

Maybe I'll fit sleep in there somewhere so I don't turn into a raging unstable hosebeast.

Probably not.

At least I'm not going into the office at 7AM tomorrow like I did today. I'd like to avoid ever doing that again if at all possible.

/whine

Depression has its teeth in the back of my neck, carrying me like a kitten.

I'll rouse myself eventually, but for now I think I'll just hang here.

Doesn't hurt me...

I've been without words the last few days, forcing myself to write.

It's not over yet.

Skipping over headstones in heels, flared skirt, red button-up, black hair braided to one side, keeping it off the back of my neck, the heat, the sweat on my back, carrying the coffin, a being a female pall-bearer is somehow appropriate for my life. A whimper escapes my uncles lips from where he sits in his wheelchair, looking at pictures propped up on the casket, their wedding day when he still had use of his body, when he was still a complete man. Red carnations, the family flower, my father left behind by both his parents and now his sister, cut off from his past, from his family, his base.

In the car, me his companion, he tells me of his days at the brink, riding the edge in bars and clubs in Hollywood, the jail time, the arrests, the fights, the drugs, the alcohol, and how desire for my mother made him turn his life into something different.

I tell him that's not allowed. It's too Hollywood. Didn't he know that he had to become dissatisfied with the idyllic existence she provided and take off after a few months to a year, back to his wild, alpha male ways?

I speak at the funeral, for once my own words.

I am the only speaker who does not cry.

It makes me feel like a fake. Everyone else breaks down, and here I am, detached and watching, speaking only because my father asked me to. My sister speaks after me and becomes so very emotional we cannot understand her words through her tears until my mother comes up and holds her hand.

I came close to crying when my mother broke down. I felt the tears building and knew that if I did choose to allow one or two of them to escape, people would assume I was crying for the loss of my aunt, not realizing that I feel not her loss, but the anguish of others, that I would be crying for the pain that my family feels that somehow escapes me on a direct level, but through them comes back to me.

I do not wish them to hurt.

I stay with my father when he is left alone. I gather and refine the edges to ease the organization for my mother.

Sweat rolls down my back.

Small talk, introductions, I fix the unsnapped suspenders on my great uncle.

My back and shoulders are covered in bite-marks from GV8, from the previous night and earlier that morning. Whenever anyone pats my shoulder or back, I hide my wince. I end up looking like a leopard whenever he is done with me.

I watch. I look for ways to help and monitor movement. I sit in the pew with my family (mother-father-sister-sister's boyfriend-me), ankles crossed, and when we pray, I stare forward.

Red carnations, white roses.

My grandfather's obsession with flowers, vegetables, fruits, anything green and growing, stemming from a childhood spent in South Dakota, where very few things grow.

Red carnations, the gifts to my grandmother, of their perfect, devoted love.

We place them on the casket, we toss rose petals and my mother remarks how the wind always picks up whenever this happens, which is true, but I take no meaning from it.

Scattering, a quick flick of the wrist, I stand on my grandmother's grave.

It has been almost two years since she passed, and I think of the days, the hospital visits, the nights spent in the ICU, reading books and talking in whispers, placing the moistened pick sponges on her lips because she could not take in fluids. And now her body is rotting in the earth.

It makes me hope that her idea of heaven is real, that her god exists for her.

Tonight will be spent cleaning and organizing. I need to exercise some control.

I'll think of lips against my neck, the slight touch of someone's breath upon my skin, and warm hands. I will think of the holes we dig and how that simple action can be such an isolator, and of the man that does not exist, the companionship I will seek with my typical naive hope, and the fear that maybe, one day, I'll realize that I am, indeed, alone, and settle for a false relationship with someone that does not suit, but at least enables me to pretend.

This is a good home...

Funeral is tomorrow. 11AM.

Death is something I have not been exposed to much. Yes, all of my grandparents are dead.

Grandfather, mother's side, lung cancer and liver failure due to a life of excess.
Grandfather, father's side, multiple strokes and diabetes.
Grandmother, mother's side, mental deterioration until the body broke down.
Grandmother, father's side, Emphysema.

I was... 5 years old, fourteen years old, twenty years old, twenty four years old.

Spaced out deaths.

Family friends have died, yes. Some of them that I have known my entire life.

And I am unfazed.

I am the nominated eulogy reader. I am the one who does not cry at funerals, even when everyone around me is breaking down. My mother lets people know that if they cannot complete what they have written about the deceased, I will be perfectly able to get through it.

I stand at the podium, at the altar, wherever we are conducting the service, and read aloud the words of others.

I wonder if I don't realize the immensity of it.

Or if I'm blocking it out, like I have trained myself to do with so many other emotions. It's a lifetime of training, that pushing away.

The pain hits you, you nod at it, and shove it into a closet until you have time to examine it and lick your wounds.

My aunt... I am more concerned about those around us, those she left behind, than her death. Her funeral, the arrangements, the constant phone calls, watching my mother navigate the house, phone pressed to her ear, address book nearby, calling, calling, calling. Notifications, details, logistics.

I feel nothing for the loss.

I ache for my father, I ache that I cannot stop this pain, that I cannot take this blow for him. My skull pounds in the frustration of knowing one is impotent.

The best I can directly do is touch, hug, and make phone calls.

The best I can indirectly do is shadow my mother, make sure she is taken care of, make sure that she is not upset, make sure that she is not stressed and overwhelmed.

By knowing that I do this, my father is able to retreat in his grief and focus on himself, not worrying about his wife.

It seems like such a small thing to do, but it is all I can.

When he called me, the next day, I was at work. From his tone, I stepped out of the office. When he asked me to sit down, I did so on the edge of the nearby wall. I thought something horrible had happened, something that would make me collapse. Worry about my mother choking me.

And then he said that his sister had killed herself.

Such relief.

How sad, how true.

I was relieved.

He talked to me, told me about his guilt in not calling me right away, told me his guilt in wishing he didn't feel like he had to tell me, that he was going to ruin my weekend with this knowledge.

He talked. I listened.

He talked about how upset he was, in the brief words that he uses, barest acknowledgements of suffering, but for him that is merely a sign of how incredibly broken he was inside.

He told me how my mother and sister had freaked out. How upset they were. That they're unable to control their emotions, he says, like we are. That we put our heads down and go.

That's one of the only times he's truly admitted how alike we are in more than our work ethic or driving skills. That inside, we are too much alike.

I don't know how to comfort without touch.

I don't know what to say or what to do.

Death is... foreign. I've never mourned due to death, so to try to relate to someone who is experiencing that loss, to know the social patterns I must engage in... it's a blank wall.

I crawl around it, looking for clues, but I do not know what to do with someone mired in grief.

I kept quiet and listened, then planned my workload so I could leave the office early and be there for my mother.

That's all I can do.

Sometimes I'm weak.

Weaker than I should be, anyway.

My clubbing friend, someone who I really need to think up a pseudonym for... yeah.

Texts me nearly every day.
Wants to spend more time together.
For our birthdays, right next to each other in October, he wants to go on a daytrip, or maybe a weekend vacation, just the two of us.

This man, I do like him. I like spending time with him, like talking with him. I think he's good people, and he holds a good, balanced conversation, which is something I appreciate. My willingness to listen usually causes most conversations to be onesided, so it's rare to find someone who is willing to listen back.

He's a fixture in the scene. Being with him, rather, being seen with him, with our obvious comfort-level, does good things for me, socially. Things that I do not usually do for myself, as I would rather be on the dance floor than socializing, would rather be cooling off in a corner by myself outside than huddling together, talking, smoking cigarettes.

And he can guest-list me. Not a necessary thing, but something I enjoy, being able to walk into a club... park my own car, wave my way past the bouncers, and slide past the doorman. It's nice. It saves hassle. It looks good.

I keep to myself, for the most part. A select few, I socialize with.

And if you're not on the dancefloor, you're worthless.

And even if you are, it's a high likelihood that I don't even like the way you move.

I'm an elitist, I know. It's been commented on time and time again.

But I like to think it's earned.

Back to him, though, my club-friend, back to him and my weakness.

I got off work yesterday, started that near 50-mile commute to campus. Called my mother, called C, called C's lover.

My mother was down, dealing with the funeral arrangements, worrying about my father.
C's basically getting evicted in three months, through absolutely no fault of her own, rather mismanagement by the property owner, and is undergoing significant health problems that I will not talk about here.
C's lover is allowing himself to get stuck in a crappy situation and he's withdrawing further and further from the world, from me, which is unusual because we're close.

It got to me.

It all got to me.

And the freeway was not free enough to let me zen. Stop-and-go traffic frustrates me, and the heat we've been experiencing means I have to run the A/C to prevent myself from sweating in a metal box on wheels.

Windows up, crawling along, smoke in the air.

I wanted to be blasting down the freeway at 90 miles an hour, windows down, music filling the space around me.

So I called him.

I knew I should not.

I know what this does. I know what it would do.

But I didn't stop myself.

When a man like him is interested, when a man like him sees a woman upset, he wants to protect. Disclosure, revealing of vunerability, just makes him more attached and I knew it. I knew it so quickly once I started talking to him.

But I did not want to be stuck in traffic, stuck in a mood.

So I called. I called and told him how upset I was, about everything that was going on.

Brainless and selfish.

He just ends up wanting me more.

And this is after I have told him repeatedly, directly, that I'm not interested. That I will not be interested. That I'm not attracted to him.

The latter actually isn't 100% true. He is an experienced dom, and I value both experience and sexual domination. But I'll never let him know that.

He's enrapt with me because we have so many similiarities. He's fascinated because I'm not like the other girls at the clubs. He's intimidated and desirous because he knows that I'm possibly the only person he's ever met that is more perverted and kinky than he is, or at least the only one open about it. My vunerability, my honesty, brings out his masculinity. We have incredibly similiar backgrounds, similiar histories. We've both accepted that we're people who are more likely to be alone for the rest of our lives than find another that suits us. Except now he's angling for me.

I don't want to lose his friendship.

I don't want this to turn awkward.

I don't want this to blow up in my face.

I don't want him to nice-guy me because he's better than that and I know he is.

I wish I wasn't so concerned about his feelings. I wish I did not feel guilty when he told me that if he couldn't guest-list me for a special event, he'd pay for my cover.

I don't like it when people buy me things.

It makes me uncomfortable. Especially when it's a male who has interest in me that I don't return.

Even with GV8, I find him buying me things makes me uncomfortable. We went shopping on Melrose, possibly our first or second date, and I saw this amazing coat that I had to try on but had no intention of buying. It was... spectacular. I walked by the window and jawdropped because it was so perfect.

He saw this and bought it for me. $400. This was after buying me a pair of $120 boots. I was thrilled, but at the same time... disconcerted.

He tells me that I need to get used to him buying me things. That when he feels like buying something for someone he does, and not to argue. It took repeated dinners and other dates for me to stop reaching for my wallet whenever it came time to pay, and it did seem to slightly annoy him that I would do this.

I don't find sleeping with someone at all equating to them owing me something. The whole sugardaddy set-up, I can't do. It feels wrong to have a man pay for anything for me simply because I'm sleeping with him, especially because I'd be sleeping with him whether or not he spent money on me.

I've done nothing to earn it. Sex isn't work. Sex isn't uncomfortable.

When I sleep with someone, I expect honesty and communication. I expect to be treated as a good friend or a lover, depending on our social situation. I expect social precedence in most cases, over their average friends, though never over their work or close friends or family. I expect social physical contact and some sort of acknowledgement of our closeness.

But not items. Not money.

I need to figure out how I want to handle this thing with my clubbing friend. Directly telling him my lack of interest hasn't worked. I'm going to see him Sunday at the club, so I'll probably have to corner him and let him know my concerns.

Better to nip it now than to put it off due to a cowardly need to avoid minor discomfort.

... ... ...
Update:

Thinking on the money "thing", I wonder if some women do get into such arrangement because it makes being "easy" and engaging in sexually-"adventurous" behaviors... excusable. That those base desires that we all experience, and women are taught are masculine and undesirable in women, can be swept under the rug because one is being paid to do act in that manner.

I'm quite sure this correct isn't even a majority of those of us who get into these relationships, but I wonder for how many it might be.

I mean, it's one way of working around the sexual standards reining in women.

Money makes a would-be slut into a successful whore.

And she's even thinking towards her future.

Or I could be totally wrong.