I've got that feeling, that building intensity, when something's bothering me, something is floating right beneath the surface, and if I just let the words flow, it'll come spilling out.

I tried earlier today, which turned into a repetitive bundle of wreckage and left me frustrated, incomplete.

So here I am again. Nearing 11PM. Sitting in bed. Eating strawberries.

Mind flitting from topic to topic, waiting to land on that one mental flower that will open up for me.

Trying to figure out what I'm trying to remember.

The things we do.

Is that right?

Maybe... it's the things that we want to be, so we engage in actions to convince ourselves that we are the things we do. Something like that.

I see flaming wrecks of men, differing levels of functionality, differing levels of intelligence. There are those men that you know, you know instantly when you walk into their living space, that there is something completely damaged about them.

It isn't the mess or the disregard for presentation.

It's the hollow. It's the faceless furniture, the bare walls, the complete lack of personality imprinted on their space. It's that moment when you walk into a person's apartment and you ask them how long ago they moved in and they tell you they moved in four years ago.

But it looks like they moved in within the last two months.

I was at a man's apartment (surprise!) a few months ago. His bedroom was a mattress and box spring, a couple boxes of paper, and a stack of clothes. He had been living there for a few years.

Gears shift and click together.

He was a successful businessman, well dressed, presentable, very intelligent, MIT grad, if I remember right.

Walked in, looked around, and thought to myself, "Oh, god, you're irrevocably broken."

It's easy for me to identify damage, especially my own kind. It's easy for me to work with others, I love digging through them like a box of broken parts, trying to see how things used to fit together. It's not a mechanical draw, detached and oh so distant, but, I think, more like a child when they see their reflection for the first time. Entranced.

It also makes me want to wrap my body around theirs, breathe together, not just for them, but for me. To talk, to learn, to work together. To discover. To show that a sort of healing is possible. For the both of us. For all of us.

It's important to me.

Even more so is that need to be understood. People think so well of me without perceiving, or at least speaking of, the flaws, that I have trouble accepting their compliments. I feel like I've been idealized for things that I don't deserve, things that I don't do. It's isolating.

One of my dearest friends, who I spoke of several postings ago with his girlfriend who wanted to open their relationship so she could bang this other guy, only sees the positives in me. When I go to him for advice, because he's known me so long, because he's the one friend I have that watched my entire fall from grace and the slow rise back up... he can't provide me with an objective opinion. He's supportive to a fault.

I can tell him anything.

When my mind started breaking after the incidents that happened in December, when I could no longer cope with reality and the things I would have to do, I went to him. I called and told him I needed him, I needed to feel safe, I needed his arms around me and his hands working my tight muscles or I would break something with the tension. And he did everything I asked, letting me cry on him, curled in the fetal position on his lap, then massaged me for a couple of hours, letting me relax for the first time in weeks.

But I can't expect reality from him when he offers his opinion. He sees me too positively. To him, I'm flawless, or close enough that those tiny flaws don't matter.

So we're close... but not with that bond that I would so desire.

Which means when I find those I share values with, those I can relate to... it's a hopeful affirmation of not being alone with my specific torque. The major twists to my life that have caused/allowed me to become who I am, how I am.

That's very important for me.

Day after day I interact with people, constantly feeling outside of everything and everyone. A complete lack of belonging, a lack of community, nothing but myself and my family to call my own.

Family, family is wonderful. But it's also limiting.

I keep trying to find, keep hoping that one day I'll stumble upon a group of people like me. That the dream I had a few months ago might be true in some respects. I still remember walking up the dirt road on the hill, overrun with wild plants and midday sunshine. Just a few people were lazing about. Under trees, on porch swings, in the fields. Wild and damaged, bestial, driven and mistrusting, adapting and surviving... but coming together in one place where there is no outside judgement and social force towards normalcy, one place where they can relax in silent peace, accepted.

Home.

This is what I see.

Low morning light creeping under the curtains to crawl across my floor, staining the throw rug blue.

C woke me up, running her hand over my right knee and thigh. Smooth and gentle. I laid there, enjoying the feeling, then shifted away.

My phone keeps flashing red at me, texts and emails coming throughout the night, I check it periodically, waiting for that one. That one that'll give me a little hit of validation. Maybe that one that will change my life.

At 530, C escapes from the bed, crawling over me, puts on her sneakers and goes for her morning jog. I listen to her undo the locks on my front door and, for the next hour I'm alone, listening to the sounds of my own heart trapped beneath the sheets.

She comes back and gets in my shower, stepping on the sheepskin rugs in front of my vanity. The knobs are turned in the shower, the spray full blast, water bouncing off the floor of the tub. It's rare for me to have someone in my shower and not be in there with them.

I dress while she sits on the edge of the bed, texting. I put on my shoes, sitting next to her, and we talk. I lean over, my head on her shoulder. Brief contact.

I forget things.

I forget what I write here.
I forget the things I tell myself to remember.
Nervous ticks, the reasons I behave the way I behave.
Defense mechanisms built up over time, ones that so few people ever realize I engage in.

So I make notes to myself, on here. Hoping that, somewhere down the line, I'll go back through them and remember where I was, who I was. That I won't keep living in this constant state of "not good enough". My own version of it. Not good enough by my own standards.

But each time I look back, I think that it was all nothing. It was all easy. The natural progression of things.

I look back on pain, and I shrug. I got through it, it wasn't that bad. Even if I was in a ball on the floor, sobbing my eyes out. Even if I was in a hospital bed after having a life vaccuumed away, near hyperventilating. Even if I placed myself between my parents for my mother's own physical well-being. Even if I had to give up everything that I was working for, the supposed path to my dreams, so I could be there for her. For them.

I don't feel stronger. I don't feel more self confident, though I know I am, as actions I would not engage in just a year ago, I engage in now.

My friends, they look at me as this sort of wild, roaming, intelligent beast. Sexual and independent, insightful. Constantly exploring, constantly pushing boundaries of normalcy.

I don't see myself as such.

And maybe I won't. Not ever.

There are things that I should do. There are paths I need to follow. I keep trying. I repeat myself so often, with these loftly goals of mine.

I know I am better than this.
I know I can do better than this.

And I feel like a tool for saying that to myself so often, but never stepping up as fully as I should.

GV8 Timeline for your pleasure

I was asked a bit ago to bring together a comprehensive list of the history of GV8 and myself.

I have around 350 posts since I started this blog in January, 2009. 147 of those are tagged with his name.

I hadn't realized.

So here we go.

Our first date, begun on a white leather couch. Hints of things to come.

A date or two down the line, as his history opens up to me, and I come to realize just what I've found.

The first time we had sex. I can't believe how long I was able to put him off. Amusing how I still try to keep withdrawn.

Our trip to the swing club, something I still look back on as an event that drew me even closer to him.

And then I started shifting to long-term thoughts, no longer pushing myself so strongly away.

But he destroyed my comfortability by offering to make me part of his club project way too early on.

We end up back at square one, where I've lost that long-term view.

The gap widens as I continue to withdraw from him.

The first time he left me.

And then he came back for the sex.

Which turned into emotions and we started seeing each other again...

And I start debating the long-term again.

And relaxing in his presence.

We eventually start talking relationship.

But, suddenly, he's pulling away again, almost ending it.

Which left me scrambling to regain my footing with him.

Then he had me dance for him, something intimate, and the walls started falling.

And I started contemplating the long-term as a possibility once more.

But then I leave him without warning.

Bowing and scraping on my part ensue, as I try to convince him to take me back.

Which meant dealing with my trust issues.

And it looks like we're clearing that hurdle, going into full relationship mode...

But then he ends it entirely. By email. On a Wednesday.

...but then he texts me.

And my family starts falling apart, which causes a chain reaction where I'm start doubting my own reality, which causes mad panic and I reach out to him for stability.

But he lets me down on Christmas Eve, when I'm calling him from the ER.

After things settle down to a reasonable level, he comes out and kicks my ass in gear. The only person who did.

A little time passes, and we start gravitating towards each other again.

But we shove off from each other.

Which means, logically, we have to go on a pre-Valentine's Day date. Logically. Right.

Which led to sex the next weekend.

Which will lead no where, so I decide to end our "friendship" so I can move on.

But before I can end it, he starts talking about trying again. Maybe.

But he ends it, possibly temporarily, yet again.


Which is where we are now in this story.

Quickest girl in the frying pan...

It seems as though I'm developing an attachment to someone, or at least the beginnings of a potential attachment to someone.

Someone that isn't GV8.

It's a mixed bag.

My sadness at GV8 leaving me, even if it winds up being temporary, has morphed into a mild lack of respect for him, which I believe I've mentioned recently. When he's reminded of me strongly, through events or actions, he forgets his rules... maybe forget isn't the right word. He discards his rules for the pleasure of my company.

Just tosses them straight out.

And something that I valued in him, the first thing that made me stop and realize that maybe he was one of those few men I truly consider mine (in the sense that this type of man belongs to me, fits with me) was his self-control.

A friend of mine mentioned, when I told her how much I admired his self-control, that it was easy to have self-control when you had no rules for yourself.

I'm finding that more and more true.

I miss him, I truly do. It becomes easier each day, a little bit at a time, to not think of him. But when he does stray into my brain, that gutpunch feeling causes pain and mental doubling up around the source, trying to wad the memories of him in foam, box them up and store them in the furthest corner of my attic.

So I don't think of him.

And I try not to be angry. I try not to think that I opened myself to him fully, was willing to bare pieces of myself that I've held tightly so long, to mesh with him without reserve or doubts... and he said no.

Or, at least, not yet.

How can I return to that? How can I go back to him with open arms? Trust is burnt, respect is damaged, I'm shying away from him again, going back to my wild mustang hindbrain: teeth-bared-eyes-rolling-ain't-never-gonna-to-put-a-bridle-on-me-boy.

How can I expect him to even want me back, with his wild nights ahead of him, the club opening up in two weeks, living the life of a playboy, girls falling on him like they do.

How could he ever look back at me and think that he'd be willing to compromise, he'd be willing to give some of it up, so he could love me?

He's told me so often that he isn't relationship material, but he keeps trying with me anyhow.

I pass his tests. I'm the whole package, he says. The whole package, as far as I can tell from our talks, entails a combination of intelligence, drive, family values, confidence, ability to handle money, constant honesty, and insane sexual ability. I think I'm a bit wishy-washy on the drive and the confidence, but he was mostly okay with it.

Even if he did come back, even if he was able to gentle me, heal the damage between us, do I want a life with a man who won't offer monogamy? Who already donated one STD to my life? Who won't give me children? Who constantly changes his mind and his plans, who is never dedicated to one path if another one arises?

I don't know.

I say that often.

At least I admit it, I suppose.

And then this dark horse shows up, and I end up intrigued.

Makes me wonder if I'm just as bad as all the MRA guys say when it comes to women. Toss someone who smells like alpha at me and I'm spreading my legs. That's the belief, right?

No, I'm not having sex. I haven't touched anyone since The Bassist. My body feels like begging for touch, for an hour in bed with someone with hard, smooth skin and a strong jaw.

I feel disloyal.

Imagine.

I feel disloyal who a man who never offered me physical loyalty. To a man that said he'd call me when he figured things out... with no set date. It could be next year when my phone rings. To a man I may never actually talk to again.

I feel inconstant, easily attracted, easily distracted.

In my defense, I wasn't looking for it.

In my defense, maybe it's a good thing to remind myself that there are the occasional rare males out there that I can actually connect with, so I'm not so desperately hinged on GV8, thinking that he's the beginning and end of my world and letting that dictate my behavior.

It makes me wonder if I'll be able to respect a man again, or how long it will take for that respect to develop. GV8 pushed the bar so high, so far out of reach when it comes to certain behaviors and desired traits, and then... then he fell.

I remember, one of the last times we were together, he was sitting at his desk, looking at me. I don't know what we were talking about, but he commented that he wondered how long it would be before I was disillusioned with him, until I looked back at him like I do so many other guys who didn't live up to my expectations- not of a partner, but of a person, the same expectations that I hold to myself, constantly striving for, even if I don't meet them.

I have high demands of the people around me. The closer they are to me, the closer I allow them to me, the higher the demands rise. Those expectations aren't financial, or social, they aren't about wardrobe or who drops the most names. They center around honesty, integrity, self-awareness, ability to communicate, lack of external judgement, self-control, ethics, honor, perception, compassion, emotional stability and intelligence.

It's a lot, I know.

I strive towards those traits. I respect those traits.

So I look at myself and wonder why this is happening. If I'm being weak by allowing it to happen, if I'm guarding myself from the pain that GV8 will inflict when he lets me know he can't compromise his life style for me, if I'm giving myself a platform of objective reality, if I'm cheating on my lack of intimacy rule I've set for myself, if I'm using him as a crutch to feel not so alone as I deal with all these changes in my life, if I'm a disloyal and inconstant whore, if I'm just as bad as all the MRA guys would say, if it's all about that alpha-related tingle, if GV8 will just add it to his mental list of reasons he should not be with me, if this is really as weak as it sounds.

Lots of ifs.

One instinct.

My brain runs wild and I balk. Rare connection, ability, blessed ability to talk, to discuss ideas, to find someone who will be honest with me with their feedback, no rose-colored glasses, no white knighting. Knowing I'm just as wrecked as them.

What am I going to have to give up with these actions?

Which domino will start the chain of events that will unravel this thread?

How much can be held against me, and how much can I hold against myself?

What am I doing? Creating self-loathing or saving myself?

Probably the former.

So weak. Still so weak.

You tell me practice makes perfect.

If that's so, then by the time I'm thirty, I'll be nearing godhood.

But I simply tell you that one day I'll make some man deliriously happy.

When I settle down. If I settle down.

I can only assume that I will because I can't help but stumble across men who want to make me theirs, if for a night or for a lifetime.

I tell you that, if you were here, I'd crawl inside your skin, break down your barriers, close those snapping teeth that try so hard to keep me at bay, keep your wily, dodging tongue occupied.

Bust those shields down so I can sink into you, find out what you're about.

If you were here, I'd show you that this is how I speak, discard the frustrations of words for the poetry of flesh.

Let's play this out.

We wake up Saturday morning in my bed. You'd kept yourself at a noticeable distance from me the entire night. I open my eyes, smudged with make-up, to yours. I'm black hair, pale skin, blue eyes, pink lips. Soft and warm. Wanting you. I smile, but you don't return it, which only makes my smile grow as I try not to laugh.

Stoic, even in the morning, only half awake.

You grumble at my unconcealed amusement, withdrawing further into yourself.

Unfortunately, that provokes my laughter.

Shooting me a look of disdain, you prop yourself up with one arm and quickly untangle yourself from the blankets that encased you in the night, then go to ease yourself over me without making physical contact, as I am between you and the exit of my black canopy bed.

I wait until you're almost exactly above me, knowing you won't be meeting my eyes, as that would allow conversation. My hand reaches up and snags the bottom of your shirt.

"I'm sorry. Please don't go."

You pause and look down at me, I shift my hips so I'm flat against the bed on my back, fingers still wrapped in your shirt.

"Please, M? I'm sorry. I won't laugh at you anymore. Just stay."

Another few seconds of staring at each other, no more than two feet of space separating us, but then you start to move away, towards your escape, watching me as you slowly shift your weight, feral eyes waiting to see what I may do.

I freeze.

And then you turn your head to judge the distance from the bed to the floor, to make sure you won't step on anything.

With this brief distraction, I rise up against you, left shoulder leading to unbalance you, tip you towards the interior of the bed.

You should have expected this, but my apparent docility must have caught you off-guard. It was too easy, making me wonder if you allowed it.

I follow your roll with my body, keeping the momentum enough to have you on your back.

And you let me.

Right hand on your chest, fingers resting on the top of your collarbone, left hand on your right bicep, our bodies pressed together. You're hard flesh and so warm, but I don't move against you. You knock my left hand off your arm as you go to peel my fingers from your chest, but I drop my face down to meet your palm, nipping at your hand while I slide my left hand up your now unguarded side, over your shoulder, fingers threading into your hair, nails trickling down the back of your neck.

The expression on your face wavers between irritation and something... undefined.

You try to move my hand from your chest again, but I shift onto one elbow and abandon your chest to grab your hand, bringing your fingers bare centimeters from my lips, enough so that you can feel my breath tickling the tips.

I wait to see what you will do, eyes locked on you.

A sneer crosses your face, and I know you're trying to scare me off.

Keep trying.

I feel your muscles tense beneath me, and suddenly I'm being lifted into the air as you extract yourself, shoving me up and off. I wrap my arms around your body, adding my weight purposefully to yours, trying to slow you, but it doesn't faze you. You simply keep moving, so I get my knees under me and shove you down.

"Let me out of the bed, V."

Your voice is low, coming from inches above my head. We both know you could toss me off you with ease, but you don't. You're probably afraid you'll hurt me.

"You're not going to like it if I have to force you to let go," you tell me.

I relax my body around yours, slowly letting go and pulling away, you sitting up, me with my knees on either side of your thighs.

"Fucking finally," you near growl at me.

But instead of scooting backwards, I slide forwards, closer to you, until I'm able to feel your erection through your pants each time I move my hips.

And I do move them, slowly grinding into you, feeling my body heat and open, slight pulses fluttering between my legs with each heartbeat.

I lean forward, lips almost brushing the curve of your ear, "What's so bad about wanting to be buried inside me? I'm offering myself to you... are you going to turn me down?" A quick dart of my tongue against your earlobe, and I press my chest against yours, continuing my cyclical hip movements, stroking myself against you. Lips on your neck, slightly opened so my tongue can slide between them with each kiss, slight suction, hands roaming, nails leaving fine track marks on your back underneath your shirt.

You're so still, only the slightest quiver of muscle betraying any tension.

So I ease off, moving backwards to let you out of the bed, looking behind me to make sure I won't tip myself over the footboard as I try to give you space.

I did not even feel you move until you had a fistful of my hair and were yanking me past you onto the bed, shoving me face first into the mattress. I catch myself with my forearms, but you continue pushing me down with the hold you have on my hair, leaving me fighting to breathe, feeling my own warm breath cycled back to me, hunched over and still on my knees.

Your free hand roams my body, over my ass, down my sides, fondling my chest through my shirt, but you quickly shove that up past my neck, trapping my arms with the fabric, muffling my breathing further.

When your wandering hand returns back to my ass, I cannot stop the roll of my hips, opening of pink folds beneath fabric, that total need. A chuckle escapes you, a brief and barely heard sound.

You slide your hand underneath the top of my pants before yanking them to my bent knees, leaving me quivering under the sudden exposure of wet flesh to cool morning air, making me gasp when you run a quick finger from the beginning of my folds to my entrance, gathering fluid. A whimper escapes my lips when you do not penetrate, my hips are set to a slight roll, hoping to entice you, wanting that invasion.

Pressing my face harder into the mattress, you spread me wide with your fingers, leaving me open, warm and pink, watching the fluid cling, pool, and overflow, drips starting to move down the inside of my thighs. Your middle finger rests at the tip of my entrance, bouncing slightly, adding pressure, but not enough to enter, even as I move to seek it out, you keep me at a distance, watching my hips roll against the air.

A muffled sound causes you to raise my head slightly from the mattress, my lips brushing against it still as I whimper, "Please..."

Your hand leaves my opening entirely, leaving wet trails of my own lube as your fingers wander up my back and around to my chest once more, grabbing handfuls of breast and kneading, tugging at my hardened tips until I'm whimpering without words.

I feel the mattress sink as your weight shifts, you're moving around me and my body tightens in expectation. I hear the sound of a zipper, then fabric moving over skin, causing more fluid to run down my thighs.

I gasp when you roughly knock my knees apart with one of your own, losing my balance, but you simply reach down and grab me by my pubic bone, yanking me back up while still keeping my knees distant from one another.

You move between my legs, I can feel your heat and my hips twitch towards you once more, pleading for you.

But it isn't that easy. The head of your penis touches my clit and I try to angle downwards to drive you home. You dodge my attempts easily, playing with me while I moan into the sheets, your fingers tightening in my hair.

And then you give. That one moment where you're poised right there, and I'm near crying with need, vibrating under you, begging with my body for those inches to be plunging into me with gorgeous smoothness. That shift where my skin clings to you, sucks you in, gasping perfection of you buried to the hilt, our flesh meeting.

You slide in, leaning over me, distributing weight between where you're thrusting into me and your hand in my hair, trapping me. As if I'd try to leave while I'm busy pushing back against you for those perfect angles, trying to take you deeper as I nearly hyperventilate myself breathing into the mattress, my moaning caught within it.

Each time you thrust, I'm fighting being driven forward, feeling the jarring of your hipbones against my ass, that bruising sensation, and you speed up, my breasts swinging near painfully.

When you orgasm, you don't pull out. You shoot your load into me, so very hot and full, your body shaking with each pulse, your fist tugging on my hair rhythmically until you drop your grip and slide yourself out, a trickle of semen leaking onto the sheets beneath me and my body attempts to retain you.

I uncurl from my hunched position, sliding my legs straight back to uncramp my thighs, inhaling deeply once I toss my hair out of my face, extending my elbows and rolling my spine to undo the tension, feeling more semen squeezed out as my muscles twinge, coating me in shiny white fluid.

I look over my shoulder at you, you're staring down at me, watching my body unwind from accepting yours, your penis coated in our mixed fluids. I turn around and clean you off with my roaming tongue, my eyes closed as I explore you, my nose inhaling the scent of our mixed arousal, brushing against your skin, taking you between my lips.

Your hand touches my hair, and I look up with you still in my mouth.

"Good morning, V."


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

We'll return to our regularly scheduled program, complete with party observation recap and the woman I may refer to as the High Reigning Queen of SWPL for the duration of the post, tomorrow.

Ten fifteen and I'm a bit burnt out.

Concert on Friday was fun. The drive down was not as good as I would have liked, due to traffic, but it was doable. Switched out the CDs in my car, popped in six I hadn't listened to in years, ones I could peg towards certain periods of time in my life.

I used to have a very standard "go to" set for music when I was about eighteen. Same bands: The Cure, Mindless Self Indulgence, Tori Amos, Incubus, A Perfect Circle. I'd toss in other things, but those were my bands, my constant companions for all the driving I did.

I did a lot of driving.

I still do.

I've been teaching myself to drive left-handed. I suppose that sounds odd, but I'm good with my right, beautiful with my right, but my left... it's awkward. And I know my right arm is going to give out on me some time in the future, just because of the prior injuries and how much I use it with work, massage, writing, driving, handj- (HA!). Sorry, kids, moment of silliness there.

But I know it's going to give. The doctor knows it's going to give, hence the whole "handicapped" student thing. When I roll my wrist, I sound like I have a miniature popcorn machine hidden inside it. Not pleasant.

So I drove down to UCSD, to their Che Cafe which was buried somewhere in that maze of a campus, tiny little parking lot that left me parking a few "blocks" away, walking through the lit up walkways and buildings, looking through windows, wondering what it would have been like to have a normal college experience.

Wondering what it would have been like if I had used my brain to hit the books and gotten scholarships and good grades so I could have gone away to school, could have devoted four years of my life to whatever I wanted to do, no forty to sixty hour work weeks competing with my time, no trying to fit in boyfriends with full-time units and full-time jobs. A dorm. Being able to interface with my professors during the day, join clubs related to my major. Eat at a cafeteria, learn how to interact with people my own age.

Heh, that would have been fascinating.

Interact with people my own age? Right. I suppose I'll put that on my checklist of things to do.

The concert was good, of course. They're always good. The venue was interesting and artsy, did not expect that at all. People-watching was lovely. Prog-rock concerts, from what I've seen, draw mostly young men. Occasionally, those men have cute little girlfriends.

But, really, it's just a lot of dudes, with the occasional chick that is drooling over one of the musicians because "they're in a band *squeal!*".

I'm more comfortable with men than women, so I'm glad of this.

It's also another scene I don't fit into, but find myself at anyway.

The show ended, I said my goodbyes, made plans with friends, and drove down to my ex-lover's girlfriend's place.

There are too many people involved in that sentence. Maybe I could say: "the girl who is fucking the guy I used to fuck six years ago", and turn that into an acronym. A very long acronym.

Anyway.

She lives in this small, three bedroom house that used to be in the middle of an avocado orchard god knows how long ago that the farmers used to store avocados in. But when the orchards went away, the properties remained, so they were converted into houses. It was pretty neat. Huge yard, good old windows, gorgeous kitchen (blue tile made me happy), interesting bits of trim that add age to a place but you don't really recognize those are the things that are tipping you off that you're in an older residence.

I slept on a thick piece of foam in the office, my phone inches from my head as it is wont to be. Window above me with leaves scraping across the glass as the wind blew during the night... very soothing. Woke up to birds, something that hasn't happened in so very long.

The three of us got up and walked down to a local health food store, came back and made rosemary potatoes and scrambled eggs, slicing up strawberries and drinking orange juice, before settling down in the living room and watching the History Channel while we ate and talked, me curled up in an old leather chair, fuzzy brown blanket up to my chin, totally content.

Afterwards, we drove down to his parents' place to see his mother and pick up some things for the party that night.

She was walking around the living room with a coiled up plastic tube dragging behind her, connected to a metal tank of what I am assuming was oxygen. Too many years of smoking, lung cancer that spread to the rest of the body. One eye mostly shut, her German accent still strong. Sweatpants and slippers, she had lost so much weight I never would have recognized her.

We shook hands and talked for a little, four beagles of varying ages surrounding us, snuffling with their wet noses into my hands, so I sat on the floor and let them run over me, affectionate and curious, warm furry bodies.

The party was... interesting.

But I'll get to that tomorrow, hopefully.

Leading up to the party, however, I ended up needing to send a picture of myself to someone in the blogosphere.

The why probably wouldn't make sense to most people, so I'm not going to explain it.

It's been a topic weighing on my mind for the last couple of weeks. Keeping this thing anonymous. I'm not used to it. The reason I started blogging like I do, this open honesty, admittance to vulnerability, was because I had raging, raging issues that I needed to address, and things that needed to be brought to public light so I could realize that I wasn't going to be shunned by those who knew me for being a bit... different.

But the point was that there was that public accountability, that I would have to deal with any repercussions that might arise.

And I did.

This is why I write the way I write. This is why I sit down with no real topic in mind and sometimes these entries wind a certain way and they make sense, and sometimes they just roam all over my brainscape.

Brainscape. Patenting that. So much cooler than mindscape.

I'm not used to having to worry about how much personal information I'm disclosing. I'm not used to cropping my face out of photos.

And I don't know why I'm worrying. I really don't care if this thing is anonymous or not.

There is that side of me that is concerned about communication and perception, though. Even though we may try not to be influenced about a person's looks when it comes to interpreting their writing, we very much do. We look at a person in life or in a photo and make assumptions on them. When we apply writing to those assumptions, we start reading it through yet another filter (which is something I'm planning to rant on at a later date).

By not having a face associated with this blog, I'm "allowing" the reader to form his or her own impression of me, free of physical associations.

Which I think is a bit more pure.

So I sent off this picture, wondering if it was the smart thing to do. Or if it was even the right thing to do, given the particulars.

I found myself studying it, after I sent it. Trying to go for that impartial study that I'll never be able to achieve. It wasn't my favorite picture. My expression, I think, was that which most people find a bit aloof or intimidating. I hear that often when I'm out and about. People tell me I look serious, that they were intimidated, that I'm "so aloof and mysterious". Which, as most of you can probably guess, makes me laugh each time I hear it. Actually heard it yesterday. Again.

Of things I am, a mystery is not one of them.

Aloof, I suppose I can understand.

Studying my face. The face I look at every day in a mirror for all of twenty seconds before I'm out the door to work. The face that I caught in a reflection when I woke up this morning, blue eyes looking up over a black pillow, arms extended in front of me.

When I wake up like that, it reminds me of the few men that called, or continue to call me, "kitten" as an endearment. Continues to be my favorite pet name, always the one that makes me melt, for whatever reason.

I don't know what to make of myself, physically, anymore. I look at pictures, I look at mirrors. My coloring is striking, I know. I hear it often. My body is soft, curvy, and so very pale and pink. I have an oval face, high cheek bones, high brows, full lower lip, thinner upper with a near perfect cupid's bow. My eye lashes are blonde, which never fails to irritate me. Blue eyes, yellow rings.

I could stand to lose about fifteen pounds. My face would become much more defined, something that I think would be lovely. I'm worried about my hipbones that are already prominent, I'm worried that I'll lose more of my ass than I already have. It's still high and round, but it's no longer quite as "ghettolicious" as it was.

I know that sounds like an odd concern. But when the body part that you get complimented on the most, that causes conversations at parties, starts to alter as you shed weight, you become concerned. I like knowing that I can nail ass-men, that it just takes a well-fitting pair of jeans and they're at my feet.

So I look at this picture. Dark jeans that sit just below my navel, curving over my hips. Heavy belt that I need to replace, a three-quarter sleeve hoodie that I've had for about seven years now, the top I wore on my date with GV8 the day before Valentine's Day, when things started shifting again. My hair down, dark, so few people knowing (or accepting) that I'm actually blonde.

And my glasses. Those black, stainless steel frames with the silver pinstriping down the sides. That item that clenches the semi-constant exclamations that I look like a librarian.

I look conservative, in my opinion.

It makes me wonder how people see me. Not just "aloof" or "intimidating". Not "librarianesque". Not the comments on how I walk, the hip-swaying sashaying.

But as a whole. What people think I am like as a person, based on my presentation.

I sent the picture off and I got lost in my own mind, trying to disconnect from myself, trying to figure out what I would think of this person if I had not met her, simply seen her across the room. If she was dating one of my friends, but we had not spoken. Would I be comfortable talking to her? Would I think she was a bitch or a tool? Some people walk in a room and you near instantly want to be their friend.

I'm not one of those people.

...I haven't really been able to put the words to what I mean. Again.

Typical late night posting. I'm tired from last night's party, tired from spending a couple hours in my parents' backyard manually sanding a small table until my arms ached, green paint dust everywhere.

Maybe I'll be more coherent in the morning.

However, I might just wake up a trout.


...that last line would make more sense if you read Richard Brautigan.

Even then, it still wouldn't make a lot of sense.

I love feeding my friend's cat. He's this 50/50 bar of a cat, stripey orange on top, white on the belly. Big yellow eyes. Mouthy. Heavy-set, muscled. He's the kinda cat that you have to wrestle with while you pet him in order for him to feel like you're being affectionate.

Climb up the stairs into my friend's bachelor pad. He's off climbing... something in Oregon for a few days, his roommate off in Italy or some such. Musical instruments, climbing and surfing gear, odd gadgets strewn around.

I eyed their couches when I walked in. Perfect couch-surfing material. Abandoned values stir, shaking the handful of keys I have to different apartments on my keyring. Metal access to someone else's life. I pictured myself laid out across one, the unfamiliar street lights through unfamiliar windows.

I miss it, in a way. I miss the absence of bills, keeping my belongings sparse enough to fit in a small duffel bag. I miss viewing the world through a new set of eyes every evening, falling asleep in someone else's life, watching their habits, their twitches, getting used to the smells and sounds of each building and how people sleep.

I'm going down to San Diego tonight. I caught the Beware of Safety show last night in Echo Park at Pehrspace, a crowded little venue, and I plan on catching them again this evening. They put on an amazing show.

I'll spend the rest of the weekend down in San Diego with one of my ex-lovers and his girlfriend. Going away party for them on Saturday night. Don't know what we'll get up to during the day. I always learn something new from him. Different cultures I've never heard of, new foods, new music, new ways of living. He's an eclectic guy, always full of this open-minded enthusiasm and friendliness that I'd love to match, if only I wasn't so socially reserved. He's always an adventure.

His mom has got about two or three months left on her. Cancer. Plain-speaking German woman, heavy, heavy accent. I think she's wonderful, but I haven't seen her in years. I'm glad I'll get to see her one last time.

I'll be back on Sunday night. Enjoy your weekend.

Rick ended up forgetting about our dinner date due to sickness and mishaps at home with his kids.

Roll to 745PM, me sitting in the waiting area, legs stretched across the aisle to rest my heels on the bench opposite, book in hands.

I got there early. There was a store nearby that I wanted to check out... that I did not know would close at the ungodly hour of 7PM. Arrived at 658PM, thirty minutes to kill before he was supposed to be there.

I haven't been stood up in a long time. Actually, I can think of one other occasion, and what was simply, like this one, a reschedule.

When I called him, and he relayed to me that the babysitter fell through, he was sick, had completely forgot... when I called, he didn't pick up the phone with an apology or an "oh my god" it was more of a "hey, what's going on" and then I had to remind him.

Yeah, that bad.

The emotion that followed that was like a spear through my side.

It's... it's a lot. He said we'd be best friends, good friends, for the rest of our lives, once we had enough time to separate our emotions, move on. Cue a couple years down the line, we're both over it, and yet... best friends? No. Good friends? No. Close friends that occasionally happen to talk? Yeahhhhh. Nearer to that.

We share too much history not to be close.

But there's close because of shared history and there's close because you connect, or you're without barriers.

It makes me feel like a discarded doll. He has his life, his wife, his kids, his houseful of random animals, and I am, rightly so, a relatively unimportant feature. He makes time for his guy friends, but not so much for me.

This is why, when GV8 told me at our December break-up, that he'd always be my friend, always be in my life, I told him, "Sure. I'll believe it if you're still around a few years from now."

It's motive, motive derived from value.

Too many times, too often. Cast off for others that are also cast off themselves. Another life comes by, and they've disappeared because I no longer offer value to them. Or not enough to compare to the potential of what they may have.

And should I be that important? When in the face of their future? No, probably not.

But I do not want to be told of a future that we're going to have when it's based off of emotions that will fade. I know they're not lying to me, they have full intent of being close friends... but then when the love fades, followed by the guilt of not living up to what they promised when still brimming with connection, they go on. I go on. That's the way it is.

Because time is sparse. We can only devote enough of it to each person that comes by, and we do so by measuring value. We make time for people we get more value from, and that value is defined differently from person to person. When you have a relationship where the main value lies in building a future together, and the emotions that link the two of you, once there is no longer a future together, and once that emotion is put onto another... where do you derive value?

I value Rick because he's the one person whose opinions and input I trust. I might disagree with him on certain topics, but he will make sure I understand what I'm disagreeing with. So I make time to call him.

The ending we had was, while incredibly painful, was not nearly as damaging to me, I think, as the subsequent promises of close friendship that were abandoned when he met his wife.

And even though I can go through the logic of why that happens, as above, logic I truly believe, I cannot stop myself from feeling abandoned, hurt, and betrayed.

He knows this.

And he felt awful that he had forgotten our dinner plans.

But that does not change the way things are, nor should it.

I don't like this feeling of abandonment. I don't like feeling like I've been shoved into the corner of the closet in his mind, to be taken out when impulse strikes, which it rarely does. It tosses everything we shared out on the street, like a freight truck with its doors flapping open, boxes tumbling out.

It makes me feel less. Makes me feel little.

And I keep telling myself that I should not derive my value from others, but who among us does not? Who is entirely self-contained and happy? I know so few, and I keep preaching to myself to stop picturing my own worth by who loves me, who wants me, and that is not a safe thing to do.

But oh so typical.

GV8 texted me this morning.

See, the theory was, or so he said, that we were going back into radio silence, until he figured out what he was doing with his life.

Instead, I get a text around 930AM, with a picture he took of me with his phone at a charity event we went to in mid-February.

I sent him back a picture of me sitting my tongue out at him, he made a sexual joke, and I told him I was confused. That we were supposed to be in radio silence mode.

He excused it, saying he was just looking at pictures in his phone and found that one.

No reason for him to send it to me. There was no need.

I told him that I thought it was cute that he missed me. He sent me another picture.

I responded once or twice more... and then I stopped.

I'm not going to do this again. I'm not going to let him get inside my head if he's not allowing me fully into his life. If he wants radio silence, he's going to get radio silence. I'm not going to let his desire for me, how much he misses me, alter the rules he set forth.

This. Is. Not. How. Things. Are. Going. To. Go.

I have too much to do with my life right now, and I'm finally getting on the right path. I can't have him messing that up because he misses me and rationalizes contacting me in whatever way he sees fit. It doesn't work that way. He doesn't get to have parts of me.

When we were talking last night, I found myself flirting with him. I haven't flirted with him in a long time, since we started sleeping together. I... was surprised. I hadn't realized I had stopped, but then I saw the patterns, the teasing, the slight voice change. Getting him to want me, someone I had already had. Never have done that before.

... ... ...

I spent entirely too much time goofing off at work today. Chatting, reading blogs. That totally derails my workflow. I'm usually quite on it, as much as I can be, given the barriers I have to work with.

It's weird for me. This is the first job I've had that I've ever played the simpering beta bitch. It's just so much easier, being silly and helpless, while still getting my work done. The office manager tends towards mass amounts of micro-management, and it's all I can do to not lose it when dealing with her at times. It's pretty ridiculous.

Dinner with friends, earlier, talking with a fellow anony-blogger on the phone while I did the commute to the restaurant. I'm cat-sitting for a week, starting Thursday. Awesome cat, totally solid, knock him on his ass with a good pet and he's purring a storm. Still have the desk in pieces in front of my fireplace, but two of the four mini-papers are done. Other two tomorrow night, after dinner with one of my exes.

Yeah, seeing Rick for the first time in about four years or so.

We talk on the phone, but I've only seen him once that I can remember since we broke up just after my 22nd birthday. I still have a hard time wrapping my brain around the fact that he got married last year, has four step-children and a houseful of animals. Like, near zoo-style.

He's one of the most amazing men I've ever met, and I count myself lucky that I dated and lived with him for a little over two years. He is my sounding board now, someone I call when I need my head set on straight or need to figure out a way to understand another person's point of view. I was hoping that we'd be closer friends now, but it's hard for him, what with a large family and lots of responsibilities.

I still hear the smile in his voice when he tells me he never expected how his life turned out. Never expected to be taking his step-son to little league, dressing up his youngest step-daughter, having family meals, etc.

I'm glad he was able to heal from his childhood. Glad he found someone who could patch those holes in him that he never realized he had.

Long distance run around...

Well, let's see if I'm ballsy enough to do this.

I had to call GV8 today.

See, I got my test results back from el doctor, regarding my pelvic pain, as well as my pap smear. Pelvic pain was due to a cyst on my right ovary, which is normal enough and will likely go away without treatment. What I would need to do to get rid of it, should it not go away, is birth control.

I don't really want to go on birth control. I've been trying for the last six years to get off a prescription drug, allowing that addiction to affect my personal life more than I care to, and I don't want to start another, even temporary, drug.

Trying to get my system clean.

How nice would that be?

No alcohol, no illegal drugs, no smoking, no coffee. That's all done.
No caffeine, no prescription drugs, no over the counter drugs, that's next.

Anyway, so that was good. I don't have some horrible, life-threating issue with my feminine (are any parts of me feminine??) bits.

However, I finally popped up with an STD. You'd think that would have happened by now, what with my track record, but, aside from the occasional, generic cold sore, I've been clean.

Since he's been my only genital-to-genital contact since mid-November, and one of two men that has gone down on me in that period of time, and since we did engage in the unprotected sex mid-February, and my last test was January... it was him.

I can't be angry. He tests four times a year, each season change.

And you can't test a man for HPV. No symptoms, no partners catching it, you have no idea. Supposedly, one out of two men have it. Is that actually true? I have no idea.

The doctors say it's very early on, my body might just reject it entirely, since it is a virus, I am healthy, and I've been vaccinated.

Am I worried?

Not really. A large portion of my female friends, even those with a very low partner count, have HPV. So that makes me feel better. And I'm not slutting it up anymore, by my own choice, so there's no idea for those awkward answers to "are you clean?" questions. Not that I'd need it to get to that point before disclosure. But that's me.

And I know I have it. Incredibly early on. Which means I can monitor it, check it often, make sure that any potential cancerous cells are caught early on.

As for GV8, he's a bit shocked. He's always 100% condom use (not that that stops HPV), tests so often, has never had a girl come back to him with a compliant of infection. I suppose it might just cramp his lifestyle a bit.

Anyway, I called. Let him know what had happened, that it was 99.9% him. We talked for a little, caught up. Asked him, when I went to go, if he wanted to go back to maintaining radio silence, or if he wanted to talk more about this all once I got off of work.

He wanted to talk.

Not that we talked about any of that, once I got home from having dinner with a friend. We talked about his club, about his business, about friends, about family, catching up. I introduced him to The Bassist's side projects, which he enjoyed greatly.

Did we talk about us? No, only to say that we were going back into radio silence. That he'd talk with me again, eventually.

He did not say he missed me.
He did not say he had thought about me during our break.
He did not say he loved me.

When I joked about him getting too fat to slip a wedding ring on his finger, he said he would check and, yeah, we could still fit one on there.

I'm 26 and financially stable, with a decent job.
I'm 26 and I'm a college graduate, and going back for more.
I'm 26 and I live on my own, no roommates.
I'm 26 and at the same weight I was at 18.
I'm 26 and each year I get healthier.

I have to keep focusing on myself and my goals.

As we talked, while I missed him, while if he would have told me he would be at my front door in thirty minutes, pack a bag, we're going to Vegas for an Elvis wedding, I realized it wasn't a good idea to be talking to him. I realized that I needed more time, and I wouldn't have the willpower to say "not yet" if he told me he wanted me back.

I do need more time.

Yes, yes, I want to be with him. Husband, wife.

Me as a wife? I'm trying to imagine that.

But I want to get things done. I want to live before I let him absorb me.

And maybe, maybe by that time, if that time every comes, he won't be able to absorb me. I won't be giving up my life to be with him any longer. I'll be able to love him, be with him, and live on my own terms.

And maybe it's a non-issue.

He once asked me why I don't live like I drive.

That, I think, was one of the first things he noticed about me: how I drove.

Well, that's not true. Face, body, movement, flirting.

Then he followed me to the place I was apartment sitting that first night, down the freeway. He got out of the car and told me he loved how I drove so confidently.

I do love to drive. It's how I zen, how I express joy and excitement, behind the wheel is where I go to do my best thinking.

The way I learned my right from left when I was a child was by realizing that the driver's side was my left, the passenger's side my right. Whenever my childbrain would stumble over which direction was which, I'd imagine myself in the car and I would know.

My father named me after an engine company. Not because he was a motorhead, but because he liked the name. When he drove us around, I would sit and ask him questions about how to drive, which pedals were which, what to do in certain situations. My childhood was an education in handling a car.

I did not get my driver's license until I was eighteen, though.

By that time, the idea of driving, the changes that would entail from me learning to drive, were much too intimidating. It was only when I started fighting to turn my life around from mooching, self-destructive gutterskank into something resembling an adult that I finally faced my fear of getting behind the wheel.

And it was awkward. I kept to the far right, afraid of the on-coming traffic, cringing at each pass.

I'm sure my father, the one teaching me, was shocked. I was his daughter. How could I not just slide in behind the wheel and have instinct kick in?

Then I hit the freeway.

Pieces slid together in my brain and I understood the flow. It was perfect, it was beautiful. My driving instructor let me tear loose on the freeway, then ended the lesson early and bought me lunch, as there was no need to continue.

Things just made sense.

And that bled onto the hated surface streets.

So, last night, I finally braved returning to the club that I met GV8 at, in order to move past the associations, move past the fear that I would walk in and see him with another girl. I drove through the heavy beach fog on PCH, then cut inland until the air was clear again, parked several blocks away as the place was overflowing.

I went to the club, I watched a girl in a g-string and nothing else crawl around on the floor, picking up roses with her teeth while being caned. I stepped past the man cuffed to the leather horse, being whipped, the girl on the medical table, legs spread and thighs red from impact, and sat with friends.

I did not do my circuit, looking for someone to entertain me for the night. I did not try to seek to ease my discomfort at being at the club in another's desire. When I was hit on, I let it be known that I was off the market. When a man I was introduced to continued to glance my way, even when being very obviously flirted with by a cute black girl, I made sure to shut him out, sitting on the arm of a couch, legs crossed at the thigh, wrists crossed in my lap.

I did not flirt, I did not tease, I did not engage.

I left my friends only a few times, to get out of hot rooms and to get water.

Not to find someone to distract me.
Not to find or incite desire.

Dress was casual, make-up was light, the necklace GV8 bought me on our pre-Valentine's Day date resting just below my collarbone.

I left a little after 1AM.

Hopped on the same freeway in the same direction that we took when he followed me down that first night.

Thought of him shutting his car door and walking to me across the street from the apartment. Of him complimenting me on my driving. I was flattered at the time, but the more I learned of him, the more I came to realize exactly how much of a compliment that was.

I drove home from my parents' this evening, glancing down at the speedometer, realizing that I've put about five thousand miles on this car, and I'm finally starting to get used to its blind spots, which are so very different than my last car, which means I'm back in my casual driving territory of 90MPH. I don't even notice when I get there, it feels so natural.

He asked why I can't live like I drive.

There are certain fears that torment me, anxiety that floods my system, buckets of self-doubt that shut me down so hard.

But not behind the wheel. Behind the wheel, I'm at peace.

I don't know why it's so hard for me to bring it from four wheels to my own two feet.

... ... ...

I'm doing something every night this week. No break, no rest, booked solid. I've got pieces of a desk I'm trying to build strewn on the floor in front of my fireplace, hamburger patties I made for dinner for my parents earlier this evening in my fridge, laundry that needs to be put away, and I continue onwards.

I keep trying to remind myself that I need to stop thinking of him, that I need to stop letting this emotion crowd into my brain, so I can focus on me. That when everything is right with me, it'll bleed out into the rest of my life.

I do believe that.

Been talking with someone lately, another person all torqued up from childhood and life trauma. Reminds me of how much we cling to the identity of who we are, that we are unable to let go and be healthy. To heal.

Whatever healing is. Whatever healthy is.

Who decides that? The self. But if the self is unhealthy, then who decides what is healthy? How do you know when you aren't healthy? How do you know when you are?

I just called C.

Phone rang three or four times, she picks up:

"This better be important, V."

"What, why? I thought you were packing."

"I'm getting fucked."


There's a reason why we're friends. This reminds me of it.

We look out upon the sea...

I hate having this roiling set of emotions in me, and the inability to express it, to communicate, to settle my brain down long enough to identify all the pieces.

I am supposed to be writing a paper right now. My midterm. A delightful romp discussing the sublime as presented by Burke, and Wollstonecraft's arguments in Maria against Burke's politics using said definition.

Okay, not really a delightful romp.

Instead, I wake up feeling just like the previous evening. Low. Realize that I'm likely PMSing. Decide to put my head down and power through it anyway.

Drive down to the coffee shop where I plan on writing my paper. As I'm pulling into the parking space, my phone rings. It's my mom. Sobbing. Telling me about how my dad's appointment with the psychologist went yesterday. How the psychologist pulled her away from him after the appointment to let her know that he was suicidal.

Subsequent falling apart.

Calling me because I'm the only person she can talk to about this stuff.
Calling me because she feels completely isolated from everyone because the family is so small.
Calling me because my sister is completely unsympathetic towards all that is going on and usually just makes my mom feel worse.

Twenty minutes of sitting in my car in the parking lot, listening to my mom alternately crying and then apologizing to me for ruining my day.

How powerless we feel. All three of us. Mother, father, daughter.

The other daughter, off, doing her own thing, rejecting the reality of what is going on so she can preserve herself.

Hard not to hold it against her.
Hard not to let the anger build.

I miss GV8 so much. I just want to call him, for him to comfort me, to make me feel like it will be okay, to lend me his strength so I can be what my mom needs, what my dad needs.

But that's exactly what he doesn't want. He doesn't want to be my crutch, he doesn't want me to be "needy". He wants me to be strong on my own terms. Strong like I should be.

Which means I have to put my helmet on and write this paper.

As for tonight, we'll see. I had plans, I might keep them to get my mind off of life. To cope. I might drive out to my parents', even though they will not be home until late, as my mother called some old friends and made dinner plans with them to get Dad out of the house, get him social. As social as he can get right now.

Crawl up the stairs to my old bedroom, curl up in a sleeping bag on a piece of memory foam, wake up and pretend that I'm fourteen again, that everything is normal, as normal as it every got.

That we're all happy again, happy and whole.

When I get tired, my walls start cracking. Those things we all erect to shove emotions to the back while we go about our day. It's survival.

Some people, their walls are like chain-link fences. Everything oozes out in some form or other. Projection, hatred, displacement. Anxiety, breakdowns, depression. Psychosomatic illnesses as the body manifests what the mind will not.

I took one of my best friends out to dinner tonight. He's turning forty-one tomorrow, a ripe old man, I tease him. I was early. I'm usually early, if not precisely on time. I have a sort of natural hold on how things flow, time-wise.

Today was not the case. What I expected for Friday rush hour in Los Angeles was... nothing. Freeways were clear. I arrived a good hour and some change early. Which meant wandering the Little Tokyo loop. Things are a little spaced out, so there's room to roam.

I was startled and disturbed straight out of the gate, as I went to leave the "mall" they have over on 4th and Alameda, and an old Japanese woman walked straight into a glass wall next to the glass door. I didn't see her impact, but I heard the sickening thunk, turned in time to see her stagger over, nearly fall. It wasn't a gentle, slow impact, it was something that she wasn't expecting. She wasn't a tottering old lady, she had to have been moving at a decent speed to cause that sort of reaction, that noise.

Reminded me of the birds on my high school campus, flying into the reflective second story windows, breaking their necks, in the middle of class, then lying dead, rotting in the sun on the awning below, until a janitor noticed and removed their bodies.

She looked so startled, so old.

It left me in my thoughts as they have been of late. That wondering of the future, of how we age, of death and how our idea the world changes as people leave it. How that woman was once a young girl, playing around her mother's feet in the kitchen. Loves, losses, deaths, traveling to another country, grandchildren... So few years left, so many changes to the world around her as time shoves her out.

I picked a street that looked familiar and walked up it, going to the main plaza.

I had one of those moments, they come less frequently now, fortunately, where I felt so low. Not emotionally low, but very insecure. It was the exhaustion. Feeling fat, feeling greasy, feeling a mess, unable to meet the eyes of the people around me. Anxious about going into stores. Sitting there, going "fuck, really? You're the same weight you were when you were 18, you've got better hair, less oily skin, and you're spazzing right now that you think you're fat and people don't want you to go shopping in their stores? During a recession??"

Tried to bring myself out of it. Tried to catch myself in reflections, remind myself that I hadn't suddenly morphed into some seahag-hosebeast-thing in the last hour. It worked, mildly. Not enough. And I didn't have the energy enough to fight it. I pretty much hit the point where I knew as soon as I got some food and some sleep, I'd be fine, and if I felt crummy for the next thirty minutes to an hour, that'd be okay.

As for the few queries that came my way about the navy guy...

We went out last night.

He picked me up from my apartment, wearing... mmm... wearing a black blazer, nice black scarf, gray v-neck sweater, jeans that fit him so nicely... and friggin' blue hi-tops. Him and his ghetto shoes. Everything else looked so good and I looked at his feet and I told him that he came so close to perfection, but the shoes needed to go.

Shoes are how I continue to socially distribute men. You see a guy, good posture, good movement, which carries over into his actual looks. So an okay guy with good posture and movement becomes an attractive guy. A good looking guy with bad posture and movement, becomes a very unattractive guy.

So you get one that just might pass that test. Or maybe he's sitting down, not moving, can't check his posture too well. But he dresses like you would like, so you think that, yeah, this guy could be on my social level, we could have a conversation, he could be desirable.

Look at the shoes. I cannot count how many times I've seen a good looking guy, dressed well, then checked the shoes and gone, "Oh. That's a nerd that someone else dressed." Or you get a guy in a nice button-up, nice jeans, but you find he's wearing cowboy boots. Some guys do this to compensate for height, and that's fine. But you just might have picked yourself up a country music-listenin' rodeo king. Or again, standard button-up, nice jeans, white sneakers. White. Sneakers. If he's not a nurse and not at the gym, he should not be wearing white sneakers. That's dance-club-r&b-ghettolicious. Much like the tan CAT boots. If you're not driving a John Deere or working a construction site, tan CAT boots are not what you should be wearing.

Shoes seem to be the last thing a guy thinks about when he's choosing his wardrobe. Most guys are "Shoes? Uh, they go on your feet..." and that's as far as it gets. JCPenney, Sears, Payless, they're done. Which is fine. But they're an easy indicator of when someone is having help picking out their clothes, or if someone's in work gear but hasn't bothered to pick up a pair of loafers.

...and this public service announcement...

Anyhow, that was a massive derailment.

So he picks me up, we go over to IKEA, and I help him pick out stuff for his room at my parents' place that he's remodeling. Hit a few other stores, grabbed dinner at an incredibly low-end restaurant that almost felt like we were eating at a restaurant that was about to turn into a Silent Hill landscape, but we were hungry and didn't care.

Afterwards, we came back to my place, he helped me hang this large print I've been meaning to put up for a bit and... I sent him on his way.

I also cancelled my only actual date for the week.

What does this all mean?

Probably many things. We're coming up on the end of March and I've had one sex partner this year, of course, being GV8.

I miss him. I try to tell myself that I don't, that I don't know what my answer would be if he came back, that he's not that special, that he's not so good for me (even though, yes, some of the things he does are not good for me). I keep trying to pretend that my life will continue and I'll grow better and stronger and stop missing him all the time. That time will just gradually blow him away from me, like an image of sand.

I keep trying to focus on how nice it is that I have all this "free" time, how I get to focus on me, get things done, that I'll eventually run across someone else who suits me as well. That it won't bother me, knowing that GV8 never came back, that his rock star lifestyle was more important to him than the rare beauty of what we had.

Wonder how long I'm going to keep looking over my shoulder, watching him recede into the distance of memory.

I just made the most amazing hamburger patties. I was not expecting such goodness out of the money and effort required, and I'm pretty happy with myself and my continued experiments with cooking.

The navy man who rents a room from my parents is coming over tomorrow. We call each other brother and sister, but there's heavy sexual tension between us. He's a good looking guy, has my favorite male coloring (black hair, blue eyes), lots of tattoos. He's also just a decent, caring guy.

He was going to spend the night tomorrow, so I could get my cuddle on, but after the realization that I need to push myself away from my usual comfort-seeking behaviors so I can find other ways of finding comfort that rely solely on myself, I politely texted him and let him know that I didn't want him to spend the night.

Which is sad for me, as I really do like his company, would have loved to have him over and stayed up talking about life and seduction until the both of us passed out.

But I have to draw the line until I get it under control. Have to figure out where things stand, and if I make an exception for one person, I'm going to find ways to rationalize others. Because I do that.

It's funny. I finally get my own place, no parents, no boyfriend, no roommates, which means it's my rules, my time, and I can have wild sex in every room of this place (though it's not that big, so it's not saying much), and... I'm not taking advantage of it. Well, not taking advantage of it on a sexual level.

Poor planning, I suppose.

My parents still aren't doing well. Won't be doing well for awhile. I'm starting to make a point of taking a minimum of eight hours out of one of my weekend days to drive out there and stay with them. I can bring paperwork, projects, laundry, a book, and get things done while still hanging out.

Last weekend, my father was so depressed he was hardly talking. Hours without saying a word, just sitting on the couch, waiting for time to pass. My mom was scurrying around the house, trying to do the usual chores while still going into the family room to sit beside her husband, pat him, kiss him, rub his feet, while he stared blankly at the television. His face has gotten so old in the last month, not wrinkled, but just... disconnectedly drained like an Alzheimer's patient.

I wonder if this is going to be something that will stay with us forever. We've survived so many other things, but nothing as bad as last December.

A scar on our family.

We're waiting for the medication to kick in, so he can be himself again, so he can be functional. The doctors say to wait, that it'll happen, it's just a matter of adjusting, checking in, and adjusting again.

It's hard to get over my fear of him, fear built of all the years growing up, being topped off so nicely with the terror of the potential instilled in me, the potential that finally became actual.

I still love him. I still adore him.

So I went over there after my hair appointment, washed his car with the navy guy, did a few loads of laundry, came in to find my mother not quite freaking out, but definitely another weight on her back. My father loves to cook, loves to create in the kitchen, mix things together in unrepeatable ways because he doesn't pay attention.

The plan was that he was going to cook dinner. Get his kitchen groove on.

But by the time the cooking hour rolled around, he was still lost in his own mind, sunken into the couch, expressionless. He did not want to cook. It wasn't that he didn't want to cook, really, as much as he was so gone into the depression that even standing up took on a weight that he was unable to lift.

Mom didn't know what to do. Grocery shopping has been minimal of late, since my father has been out of work since December. There's not a lot in the kitchen, only things that my father would think to combine into some random meal.

So I went to the store.

Rather, I was doing my laundry and wearing a pair of men's pajama bottoms with the Nintendo logo emblazoned across them, no bra, a Henry Rollins t-shirt from his current tour, my hair up in a messy bun, soap and water from washing the car down my left side, and my mom mentions she doesn't know what to do about dinner, we have salmon but nothing really to cook it with.

So I throw on the only pair of shoes I had with me: the original Docs again, grab the navy guy, and head over to the local Trader Joe's.

I got a few looks.

I also got my groceries.

Came back and helped my mom clean up the kitchen while I cooked, dragging my father off the couch by being charming and cute. This works right now, because I'm only over once a week, so I can play at being the rarity, play up that I'm only there for a short period so he better spend time with me and talk to me to get him out of his stupor.

If I still lived there, it wouldn't work.

We all sat down when the food was done, my parents, my sister, the navy guy, and had something resembling a normal family dinner, even though my father's conversation was limited.

This really is the most important part of my life.

It drags me back, holds me from doing things I want to do for fear that I would somehow hurt my family.

But they are everything to me. Sometimes, when things are good, I forget that I should be clinging to each afternoon or evening spent with them like it's gold. That I shouldn't be sitting off somewhere with my nose in a book, or watching TV with my sister.

It's hard to picture them dying. We all die, but it's so disconnected from right now. They're in their fifties and it feels like we've got another forty years together. I feel that when my mom dies, I'll simply cease to exist because I can't imagine being in a world where I cannot talk to her.

The people that make us. Not physically, but emotionally.

I simply don't know. I don't know how to express the things I feel, the things I think. Words fall short so often, I fall into repetitive, slightly altered, phrases. Just looking for that connect, looking to be more than the inferences my words bring to the individual.

I remember hearing something, in a movie, where the truly tragic thing of life was that we did not hear each other, did not see each other, as who and what we truly were, only could hear/see the interpretations created by ourself of those others.

Or maybe that was a dream I had.

Words as barriers. At least when I touch someone, I can imagine I'm somehow getting my emotions across.

I spent yesterday morning at a clinic on the borders of Compton, in order to get some blood tests done. I've been there before, to do my STD panels, as I love the nurse who draws the blood. She's this stereotypical black woman in her late forties, early fifties. Very blunt, nothing withheld, but very friendly. She doesn't take shit, and she's incredibly efficient at moving through patients.

Walked in ten minutes before my appointment. White girl on the premises. Possibly the only one. I'm sitting in the waiting room occasionally using my Blackberry, legs crossed, book balanced on one knee. Hair pulled back, hadn't washed it in two days, as I had just had it dyed on Sunday, like to let it sit for a few days. My usual, work casual uniform: plain black shirt (that is now very obviously too big for me, hangs off my chest, hides my waist), blue jeans, a pair of original Docs, laces wound around my ankles instead of laced the final three holes. Still hints of mascara from clubbing on Saturday.

Young girls around me with too many kids. Women wearing crazy high heels, giant shiny earrings, neon-bright tops that are much too tight. Jeans that taper to show the curves of wide hips and bubble asses that I have to hide to fit in with my demographic.

Looking around, thinking of attraction, thinking of how much of the women around us we just dismiss, label sexless without even considering them as passionate people, as how they were when they were young and exploring, crushing on boys, whispering to their girlfriends. Too old, too large, too thin, skin shows too much age, too much experience. They show up with their husbands and boyfriends and make you wonder what type of relationship they have, what drew them to each other, what they do with each moment, each year, if things were as they planned, if they even had time to stop and plan as they battled what life gave them.

I left an hour later, arm with a brand new exit hole. Watching the blood leave me, thick darkness winding through a plastic tube. And the remenants in that tube that the nurse tossed into a biohazard bin. What would happen to the blood that did not make it to the vials? Parts of me scattered to whatever overpriced disposal service they use, with hundreds of others taken that same day.

Back to work, then to dinner with a friend I had not seen in nearly two years. I could not deal with his infidelity with one of my friends, my distaste for his rudeness and lack of control distancing us.

But I tried to resolve it, my frustration, my disgust.

There was that distance still, as he told me about his life now. So much has changed for him. He used to be the AMOG, used to be the center of everything. All the girls wanted him, all the boys listened to him, mimed him. His (now ex-) girlfriend is, was, incredibly charismatic as well. Something about her is so very charming, so very endearing. Just talking to her makes you want to be her friend. The two of them would host parties once a month, they were the place to be, something that everyone would make sure to attend, running until 5 or 6 in the morning.

Now he lives out in San Bernardino. He told me about his life, about the girl he settled with, about his day to day activities. The stagnation. The last year and a half, two years, has been a build to settled life. Social activities and parties that would pack his schedule gave way to nights inside with his girlfriend, developed hobbies like Warhammer and World of Warcraft, something he used to make fun of. He never goes out clubbing. No parties.

Is this the standard life?

Graduate college, find a job, find a partner, find a house, stagnate.

You're just done? A backwards butterfly going from beautiful and wild to trapped in a coccoon you've made?

Is this what I want? Is this what is lined up for my friends?

Will I look back on this journal, five years from now, ten years from now, and wonder what happened to that wild girl?

I can hear Kings of Leon playing from... somewhere? Displeasing. Can't tell if it's the bar or the apartment next door or one of the apartments in this building. It's almost midnight and, yeah, I'm done with the whole "music" thing.

C is getting booted from her place. This is why I didn't want to rent from people leasing out their own property. It could be really nice, but you could find yourself on the ass-end of a foreclosure (like her last place) or you could end up having your landlord get in an argument with his wife and boot you out because he needs a place to stay (the current place). He's violating their lease agreement and I doubt she's going to do anything about it.

Give me a solid corporation to rent from, thank you. The larger, the better.

Monday night and the kids are out partying.

Never was the bar type. Didn't make me feel comfortable. What am I supposed to do? Stand there and shout over a jukebox while my friends drink, while I get hit on by drunk guys that, yes, are hot, but they're drunk. I hear drunk sex is great, but when only one of you is drinking, I can't imagine it's good for the sober one.

Actually, now that I think of it, the last time I had sex with a non-sober individual, the sex was pretty damn bad. Wasn't the worst, but it was definitely not quite worth the drive.

It's Monday, almost Tuesday. Two weeks since GV8 did his mid-week ending. No word from him.

I'm planning, in my head, what I'm going to be doing now.

Relationship/life-wise.

I almost want to push myself, see how long I can go with minimal physical contact. I want to pick a date and gun for it. No sex, no sleep-overs, no oral, no hand-jobs. I might strike off kissing and hand-holding.

I suppose it's a reaction.

Having a life again, suddenly. No weekends packed with GV8, my week nights trying to cycle through my friends so they don't start complaining to me about my absence, while still trying to take care of the day-to-day that has to be handled, neglecting all but the necessary.

I don't want that taken away from me again.

And then GV8's accusation that I'm going to backslide, that I'm going to fall into my old ways of seeking comfort with skin to skin contact, even if it's nonsexual contact. He feels I'm too weak, going to others for comfort, not able to do it "on my own". I'm too physically based.

He said to me, actually, on our last date, that while outside sex was okay because it meant nothing, he was not comfortable with me cuddling with other men. Except I cuddle with my most of my friends, and most of my friends are men. I kinda blinked at him, as he's very well aware that I'm incredibly physically affectionate with anyone I'm comfortable with.

He doesn't like it when I sleep with others, even though he says he does not mind, then blames it on other things. "Signs". "Tendencies". He gets upset and brings it up whenever we have serious discussions, or whenever he has a bone to pick.

It frustrates me. He's wonderful, he's so much of what I desire in a partner, yet he can be so not aware of himself. And, with near everyone else I know, I get in their heads, I hear their secrets, hear their stories, fears, tragedies, and discuss them, but I've never attempted to do that with GV8. I think it was a combo of fear and idol-worship. Fear he'd see right through my little dance and see that I was digging at his roots, idol-worship because everything he does is, of course, right and well-motivated. Issue-free.

He's so smart, so dynamic, that it's hard to imagine him being anything but self-aware and self-controlled.

It makes me wonder, if he ever comes my way again, if I'd take him back. If I'd be okay with the lifestyle he offers. Our connect is so strong, but what about the rest? If I change and realize I don't need him, that he isn't the golden god, will I still treat him with enough respect so as not to irritate him, or will the dynamic between us have changed so strongly that it no longer works?

Either way, have to keep growing, have to keep exploring.

If it works, it works. If not, then I'm someone else, he's someone else, and it was a good experience.

This week has been unexpectedly exhausting. I find myself, like usual, in my car, occasionally surfacing from the haze to try to remember what day it is, when I last ate, what the hell I ate, what I did the day prior.

And it's a mental work out.

I have to link to something.

Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday... Tuesday was the meeting with the grad head. Which meant Tuesday was the night at my parents' house, playing cards with my mother, talking about my sister, about the navy man that has taken up residence in the guest room, about how my father's big deal just fell through, about his medication, the doctor's appointments, the box of stories that my mother found in the closet, the poem to his father he wrote when he was in his early twenties, telling him how much he hated him. Petting my cat, feeling his love and adoration, his yellow eyes, his casual, hip-swaying saunter that my mother continues to threaten filming with me walking beside him, so she can prove how much we walk alike. Eating leftover carnitas, guacamole blended in to give moisture.

Ace, two, three, pending the four of spades, my mother and I play the game her mother taught her, the game the three of us used to play together around my grandmother's kitchen table before she could no longer take care of herself, before the agoraphobia and anxiety kicked in so hard she could not live alone, before the dementia set in and visiting her meant visiting the mental ward above the senior citizen's home.

Punching the in code so the doors would unlock for long enough for us to slip in, hoping an aggressive resident wasn't on the other side.

Watching the dye in her hair fade out from brown to white, watching her reject my mother, blaming her for what happened, denying food when she'd try to feed her, as her hands were too shaky to feed herself.

The tongue darting out again and again, wearing a spot down on the corner of her mouth.

I come from a line of frightened women.

Anxiety through men, fear from our fathers.

My father, his unpredictable rages, darting in front of his anger to protect my mother, my sister, from his lack of control. Too young, too young.

My grandfather, brilliant scientist and alcoholic, terrorizing my grandmother in front of my mother, my mother watching the fear her merchant marine father instilled in the woman who gave birth to her.

My great grandfather, a severe hypochondriac who would shut the house down, black-out curtains, silent children traveling the hallways whenever he would convince himself he was about to die. Death was always coming. A childhood behind heavy curtains.

My mother's family has been in Los Angeles for four generations. Very few can make that claim. M great-great grandmother had a house in the middle of Hollywood, torn down to make room for a gas station. I look at the pictures of this beautiful Victorian house, the white picket fence, the arching trellis, the vines entangled, leaning beauty.

I wonder if she lived in fear. I wonder what it is that she gave to us, what her husband brought to us.

I used to dig through my mother's genealogy reports, used to go through them with a fascination, watching the names change, flipping through the yellowed paper, folded up on itself, woven into a hard cover with twine. Hundreds of years of families, of people, of things passed down into us. Stories that were passed down from my grandfather to my mother and her brother, stories that he learned from his father or mother.

It is not the stories that shape us, but those who tell them.

There is a picture hanging in the downstairs hall, on the way to the master bedroom, of my grandfather in his merchant marine uniform, a cigarette between cocky, smiling lips.

In the master bedroom, there are two pictures sharing one frame. On the left, a middle-aged couple, regal, the man, my great-grandfather, in another military uniform, medals decorating it. On the right, my grandfather as a young boy, six or seven, in a child's sailor costume.

The sons join the military. They focus on science, on technology, on serving the government. My uncle was a colonel when he retired, on his way to becoming a general when his wife asked him to stop his promotions. My grandfather was one of the designers for the NIKE missle bases that protect California's coastline.

But my mother did not have sons.

She had two daughters, two daughters so foreign to one another that there is more that would link one of us with a perfect stranger than to each other.

I find myself wondering if it ends here.

Do I take this, so many generations of people, and terminate the line? My one true cousin has already reproduced, his wife giving birth late last year. Do I need to add to it? Is there any reason, other than to give my parents the joy of being grandparents, something they want so badly? My sister hates children, she's never going to willingly reproduce.

So it's me.

My family, on both sides, has never been one towards replenishing itself, at least not in these last few generations. So many of the last generation was either gay, disinterested, or prone to suicide that there are only six of us, ranging from 17 to 35. My sister and my eldest cousin, they'll not have kids. My two younger cousins probably will. My first cousin already has, but may stop at one.

It makes me look at the Christmas parties, the Thanksgiving dinners, as more and more of my relatives die, watching them age from party to party, wondering if by the time I am my mother's age, the gatherings will have shrunk from what they used to be when I was a child, around thirty to forty people, to ten.

And then less.

Is this the way it is supposed to go, funneling into nothing?

I'm not really sure how I wish to tackle this post. I've got many things to say, and most of them are not related to each other in the slightest.

I'm sick of talking about GV8 right now. I'm tired of the high emotions, of attempting to retain my grasp on my possible life-goals, embarassed that I'm participating in an on-again-off-again relationship, sad that he's gone (again), and in this weird state where I want to cling to the ideal of him, of us, but I'm not sure if that's because I have hopes for him, for us, or if I don't want to deal with the possibility that I actually allowed a pheromone-driven situation influence me so strongly, that what was/is between us is nothing more than biology, that my instincts that he was The One were wrong.

All that, and more, for one low, low price.

I spent a chunk of this afternoon at my doctor's, my legs spread, heels in stirrups. I know, I know, the imagery is something you've always desired. Apparently, my right ovary has formed a small cyst and it's fucking with my female state of being in a painful way. Which meant hanging out at a place that does ultrasounds so I could confirm I don't have some massive tumor crushing my uterus or somesuch.

Which I might. Hopefully not, though. Aside from not keeping myself in healthy athletic shape, though that will be changing soon, I do take care of myself.

Those two things aside, I've got this thing that's bugging me.

One of my best friends is a forty year old man. We've been friends for about a decade now, never any sexual activity, though he's openly desired me for the length of our friendship. He's a fan of open relationships, swinging and the like, and has a solid reputation as a sexually promiscuous soul. People will get warned off him upon occasion.

But he's wonderful.

He has been dating a girl, 28, for around five years now, living together for four of those years. I really enjoy her company, more than most women (though that's not saying a lot, because most women I just don't care to deal with on more than a basic social level), and we occasionally spend time together without him.

She's... young, in her own way. She was raised, as far as I can tell, in a religiou home, but no more religious than the standard Orange County Christian. She uses alcohol to overcome sexual inhibitions, like most girls seem to do when they aren't quiet comfortable in being the naturally sexual creatures that they are. She doesn't quite understand, I belive, the responsibility and respect necessary to be in a healthy relationship.

With all that, I like her. She's a kind and decent person, very caring, very supportive of her friends, very driven to succeed in her chosen field on her powers alone, without stepping on others. She's an animal lover, a writer, always genuinely friendly to everyone, no matter how much she may dislike them.

And she knows her boyfriend has been in love with me for years.
She knows he wants me, she knows he spends time alone with me.

But she trusts the both of us.

Which is as she should. I have knowingly touched a man in a relationship, oh, I think twice now. The first of those times, I was twenty-one, and he led me to believe it was a casual thing. I found out later it was not, and was pretty annoyed. The second of those times was last year, I kissed someone with a girlfriend, wrote about it here because it bothered me so much.

Anyway, she and my friend have entered into the sort of standard, passionless relationship, it seems. Too long together without relationship maintenance needed to keep each other on their toes, keep it going. My friend has submitted to her needs for monogamy (I wish GV8 would do that for me, bleh), and she's content.

Now, why I bring this up and provide this short backstory is because they had an upset late last year.

You see, they went to a Christmas party and she met someone.

I honestly don't know how she went this long without meeting this man. I mean, I was 17 when I met him, on a camping trip, and he was lovely hotness. One of the few blondes I've ever gone for. But he wouldn't touch me because I was underage, and then he married fairly quickly after (though, of late, he's been sniffing around and I've been whacking his nose with a rolled up newspaper because I'm so very past wanting him).

She met him at this party and she lusted. She lusted enough that she went to my friend and asked him to have an open relationship, just so she could bone the hell out of this guy.

Her needs for monogamy in her relationship were tossed aside by her lusts for this man she had just met.

Even better, this man has repeatedly accused my friend of sleeping with his separated wife, helping along their impending divorce.

So my friend's girlfriend becomes distant from him, starts pushing away, starts talking online and on the phone with this new man, goes out for coffee with him behind my friend's back.

This, this is where a point comes in I've been trying to make for a few months now.

She's 28, two years older than me. She's had four boyfriends, her sexual experience/partner count is extremely limited. She met someone new, someone who had a grudge against her boyfriend, and he spun her head, probably on purpose. Intentional seduction for revenge.

If my friend had not stepped in, not sat her down and taken control of the situation, she would have cheated on him. Maybe she did before that conversation happened.

This is what limited experience does. This is social and sexual handicapping. The MRA/PUA movement loves to preach so very much that a girl with a low partner count is less likely to cheat and is, therefore, of more value than a more experienced woman.

Because, of course, more experienced women have no self control, as illustrated by their high numbers.

That is a load. A load of what? Pick something you don't like, and it's a load of that.

What I do agree with is that women with high partner counts, like myself, tend to have some underlying issues. Those issues vary so much from person to person, some of them are manageable and can be healed with time and the right support, some of them are incredibly deep-seated and will likely never quite go away, always having some sort of impact on the mental health of the individual.

I say "individual" because it isn't just a "female" issue. I'd wager that the majority of the PUA/MRA set has very similar underlying issues that prompt their own behaviors towards seduction, manipulation, misogyny, sexual validation, and so on.

People have issues, whether or not they are sleeping around.

What matters is if your damages mesh with that of your partner's.

When I started ranting to my friend about the lack of experience women are expected to have, and the negative outcomes that social handicap has on relationships, he told me that he did not believe she had any idea she had been seduced, that she was not aware of her behaviors. If she had a quarter of the experience I have with men, she would have realized what was going on, and it would not have progressed as far as it did.

This is what happens, if I'm going to draw a quick metaphor:

If you only give a person the most basic of driving lessons, when they are out on the road going about their lives, they will not have the essential knowledge or skills needed to avoid accidents. They'll probably get through their day to day for months without issue, simply by luck, but when another car comes barreling their way, even if they see it, they're not going to be competent enough to avoid getting hit.

I would rather be dinged, nicked, keyed, rear-ended, maybe taken for a joyride in my youth while I'm learning to drive with skill, than be plowed into when I have a boyfriend, husband, or even family in my car when I'm older.

My friend could have lost his relationship because of her naivety. He's not a PUA, he doesn't specialize in maintenance, he's just an average guy, like most men on this planet (hence "average").

If women are continually shielded from their sexuality, infidelity is to be expected. Temptation, passion, these girls don't have experience in it, don't know what is causing these feelings, only that those feelings are there and they don't have the experience to control them. Marry your high school sweetheart, marry your second or third sex partner, and you've got a life that is open for temptation because you've never gotten a chance to establish yourself, to learn what sex is.

Personally, I haven't cheated on a boyfriend since I was sixteen.

And it is not because I haven't had offers, haven't been tempted, haven't had the opportunity. I have. I just choose not to take it because I know that passionate, but meaningless, sex is nothing compared to a good relationship. Because I have that experience. Because when a guy tries to trick/trap me into a situation, I've already cockblocked them, because I know the signs, I know their moves, and I know that there's nothing there worth it.

I've been tested and I've been true.

I may have a high partner count, but I've come out clean, come out better for it. I do not urge others to follow my example, but I do wish that it would be recognized that a lack of experience and the suppression of female sexuality does have infidelity repercussions, as much as evo-psych theorists love to claim otherwise.

You don't need to turn to scientific theory to justify why you desire a mate with a low partner count. Your search for validation of your wishes is unnecessary, save for argument's sake. So what are you trying to prove?