Purge time

I'd like to make this a quick purge, but it's likely that I will ramble on.

Because that's what I do.

I do not even know where to start this exactly.

I could start with the frustration, the frustration of knowing that no matter what you do, who you are in life, the friendships and relationships you maintain, the paths that you have had to slice your way through, that you are nothing more than your sex.

At least to some.

I could spend every week at a soup kitchen, ladling out bowls of stew, heaping spoons of peas, corn, and legs of turkey, and I still am nothing more than who I allow between my legs.

How do I know this?

Because I have spent every week at a soup kitchen serving and chatting it up with the homeless.

I could be a college graduate going back to school for her Master's degree, pursuing her dreams of working in the writing world, commuting two hours one way to get to campus, exhausting herself over papers and the dissection of different literary works, but I am nothing more than a woman with a high partner count, sleeping her way to security.

Doing nothing for her future.

Obviously low self-esteem.

No dreams, no plans.

And you can tell this by the number of cocks I have pleased.

I could be the shining star of nearly every company I have worked for.

Which is also true.

I could be that girl who spent her last Wednesday evening helping a friend execute an emergency move until 4AM, engineering the furniture and logistics, keeping a high stress situation calm, diffusing blow-ups between movers, and then going into work at 7AM on three hours of sleep.

The bruises on my body attest the furniture we lugged about, the angled stairs and the quiet shouts to my moving partners, the teasing laughter and the distractions from tears.

But if I spent that next night in the arms of a man that is not my husband or on the path to being my husband, I have been rendered worthless.

The hours and the overtime, the volunteer work, the constant battling of my own fears and anxiety.

Going through withdrawals, lying in a bed, sick and sweaty, vertigo tilting the world around me, body shaking as it tries to adjust to the gradual and so gentle lowering of chemicals, scraping at pills with a pair of toe-nail clippers, hoping, hoping, hoping that I don't accidentally take off too much, that I don't overdo it and end up stuck at the office, unable to drive because my vision is double, my head is pulsing, and my stomach is turning at an RPM reserved for race cars and Alvin and the Chipmunks' Christmas songs.

No, we don't talk about that.

We talk about sex.

We talk about how the sexual activities of a person set the bar for judgement, and that one person can be ruined beyond any of redemption other than a vow of chastity as they repent and regret, crawling their way up that hill to social salvation.

We talk about how one social group, one ethnic group, one race, one religion, believes that its values are universal and unchanging that, throughout time, their morals have carried through. That all must be weighed and measured against the yardstick of their values, and may their God save the ones who are found wanting.

We talk about damage. We talk about the things people do to each other. How certain types of people deserve to be treated a certain way, as though it is a law handed down from a deity, a rule to be enforced by some divine power that if a woman steps outside another's social standards, she deserves some sort of punishing treatment.

Social laws held on high.

Egocentrism, ethnocentrism, running rampant.

The damage women experience at the hands of deserving men.

If you mouth off, you deserve to be slapped.
If you sleep with another man, you deserve to be beaten.

Just don't use a rod wider than your thumb.

It'll be fine.

If you take off your veil, you deserve to die.

If you strip in clubs, you deserve no respect, you deserve to be treated like a whore that has no value, no redepemption, no personal worth, someone to be used and dumped because nothing within you, nothing around you, will make you deserving of having a good partner, and the most you deserve is to have a drunk bastard of a husband who beats you every few nights and rapes you when he feels the need.

Because if you had been a good girl, you would deserve a good husband.

A wealthy husband. A kind husband. A husband that takes care of you and your offspring.

But once you step into that darker world, you are lost.

Like a car, each man makes you depreciate in value.

Save yourselves before you're sent to the scrap yard.

Little dings, little nicks, someone keys your passenger side, spills coffee on your center console, a headlight goes out, the leather of the driver's seat tears, and you're ditched on some corner, license plates and identifying marks removed, glove box emptied out and you wait for someone to notice that you've been sitting on this corner for weeks until you're booted and towed.

Because that's what you deserve.

It was a lesser known commandment.

Or so I've heard.

Christian mythology (after all, this is America), Moses came down with his stone tablets and he read aloud, "Thou shalt give to your whores what they deserveth."

Which makes Moses want to slap a bitch.

Maybe it said, "Thou shalt slap a mouthy-th bitch-th."

I don't know. I'm an atheist. I couldn't tell Moses from Adam, Adam from Lazarus, and certainly couldn't tell Lazarus from the hot neighbor over at C's new place.

De-railed. Twice.

She shoots, she scores.

They swing in and wonder why I am so detached.

They swing by, Errol Flynn-style, and shout across the chasm that behavior X equals behavior Y and results in punishment D.

I'm not entirely convinced that D does not stand for "douchebaggery" because that's often what surfaces in response.

They shout and they swing and the proclaim that they know, they've come by and judged quite a lot and they are here to inform me of their judgement because it will have a great impact on my life (somehow) they're quite sure. And if I would only just listen to them, I could reform (somehow) and see the error of my ways, that my entire life philosophy would be turned into theirs and (somehow) I'd realize that their morals, their values, (somehow) are universal.

And it makes me wonder how little they know of me that they would ever think I would (somehow) find value in a style of thought that involves such egocentric ideas.

One way of being.
One way of life.
One moral route.
One set of values.

Because that's realistic.

I do what I do because I can.

I do what I do because I'm good at it.

Because it's enjoyable. Because I'm just a bit tweaked in this odd direction and this is what pleases me. Because there are so many people in this world and so many ways of being that I want to see and know as many of them as I can, and touch is a way to know.

Touch is a way of learning.

Touch is how I breathe. How I speak when words fail me.
Pleasure is a gift, pleasure is an art and a science.

I will continue to please, to seek pleasure, and to grow.

And those who do not understand... they just have another way of being.