Tell the northern lights to keep shining...

Last night's post was made under the haze of exhaustion. I was so tired when I was writing that, I barely remembered it in the morning, only waking to know that I had sat in bed for two hours rambling on the keyboard.

Now that I'm not so exhausted, there's things I should have added.

At the club, the guy in the suit came back to talk to me, about an hour after my friend informed him that I was taken and to go pick up girls elsewhere. This guy came back and near chewed me out for not telling him I had a boyfriend. Then he ranted that my friend told him where to pick up girls in the club, and that that all was bullshit, as there were no such social rules that people needed to adhere to (which confirmed that he lied to me, again, when he told me earlier that he wasn't picking up girls, which I already knew, but I hate being lied to), and that he still wanted to know my name, but since I had a boyfriend, it didn't even matter anymore.

I started laughing at him. Not maliciously, but just so amused at the fact that he just essentially told me that there was no reason to get to know me as a person because I wouldn't be available to sleep with him.

He started ranting again, I think about not knowing my name, and I excused myself to go dance. I wasn't going to miss a good song for his asshattery.

So he shouts after me, loud enough that I can hear it over the music, something like, "You don't even know what kinda game you're playing! You don't know!"

Or maybe it was: "This isn't just a silly game! This is more than you know!"

Something about game. And me not knowing something or behaving like I should in whatever social set-up he was imagining.

Then flip to the older guy the next day.

He walks by me and strikes up a conversation about the book I was reading.

This is completely normal. Strangers will approach me and start talking. Extremely commonplace. It's a weird day if I'm out and this doesn't happen.

So this guy comes up to me. Stylish hat, black mockneck sweater, jeans, shoes that weren't really noticeable, so didn't tip me off to anything I should know. Black framed glasses, like mine.

We're at Westwood Plaza, which means money, means Hollywood money, means showbiz, means interesting characters and odd stories, random adventures. I like this. I like wandering around and striking up conversations with people and hearing about their lives and adventures, seeing what type of jobs they do because there are so many jobs I've never heard of in the industry that you never think about, but once you learn about them you start watching movies and TV in a whole new light.

So we start talking. Eventually, he sits down at my table, straight across from me, not in my space at all. Compliments me a few times, about my appearance, my intelligence, my look, my figure, throughout the conversation.

Odd, but nothing uncomfortable. Nothing sexual. Just comments.

We probably talked for an hour or so. He kept asking me questions about my life, about what I did, what I liked to do, working in queries that could turn into transitions of "hey, why don't we go do ------- sometime?" that I made sure to subtly make impossible. We talked entertainment theory, social theory, lifestyles, LA living, standard fare.

He kept commenting on how intelligent I was.

I don't consider myself especially smart. I know, yes, I'm above average intelligence. But... yeah, it doesn't impact. I assume everyone is functioning at my level until proven otherwise, that I'll learn if I apply myself, that everyone can do the same.

So that was weirding me out.

We finally wrap up, I'm ready to head over to my friend's party, and he walks me part way through the plaza and hugs me.

Like I mentioned.

He didn't ask, he didn't offer the handshake, he just goddamn went for it and extended it past the point of social normality and comfortability. And then he fucking did it again. With the kiss on the cheek, with me dodging his attempt at a kiss on the lips. Then he insisted he give me his phone number and that I should call him.

This pissed me off so badly.

I'm very respectful of people's physical space. If someone doesn't like being touched, I don't touch them. If someone has no interest in me, I don't try to change their mind. If I'm having a platonic conversation, I do not fucking try to shift it to a physical/sexual thing at the end. There are social norms to be observed and basic respect to be shown.

What both of those men did was show that there was no respect for my desires, my boundaries, or my time. Which meant no respect for me. There was no "socially accepted" motivator for disrespect, by which I mean I was not dressed slutty (nor do I ever dress slutty), I was not drunk or under the influence of any substance, I was not rude, I was not incapable of intelligent interaction, they had no knowledge of my sexual history that may make some guys go "oh, she's just a slut, no need to respect her boundaries".

I comported myself well, I treated them, at least the guy from Saturday, politely. The other one did not get polite behavior because a) he was drunk and b) he kept touching me without my consent.

So why are they unable to treat me with a standard level of social respect?

This is why my tolerance has gone down. This is why I am now so quick to shut down men with no game when I get approached. At least men with game have life "training" and know the rules.

It feels as though whenever I'm polite and friendly to someone hitting on me, even when I do tell them I'm not interested, bad things happen. Not horrible things, but uncomfortable things. It's almost as if they believe that as long as I'm talking to them, they have a chance. I let the older guy from yesterday know that I wasn't available, but I was friendly and he took advantage of that, possibly disrespecting me because I hadn't shut him down like a "high value" girl would. I've had guys hit on me whose conversation I've enjoyed, let them know I wasn't interested, but we should hang (very much stated platonically), or they should go to whatever thing is going on that I may be going to, or that I need to introduce them to a friend, and yet they still pursue, they still make things awkward, and eventually tend to angrily toss away my friendship because they can't deal with the rejection and cannot wrap their minds around the fact that men and women can be platonic friends.

And I do believe that men and women should be platonic friends because it socializes us to the opposite sex, which makes us comfortable with handling them and helps us in the future when dating/seducing(/"making others uncomfortable" she said bitterly), as well as it allows social networking in the dating scene. So many people meet their partners through their friends, and without those common platonic friendships, such match ups would not occur so often.

Now that that rant has ended, even though I still feel icky from the older guy...

I mentioned last night that my friend likened the things I get out of sex to that which alcoholics get out of alcohol.

It made me think.

Last year, I was finally able to start having sex purely for the sake of sex. No motivators other than enjoyment. It was a break through for me. I was making so much progress and it was so good to finally move past that awful point.

Then, then everything happened. With GV8 and the family. With my life.

Total chaos and instability. Completely wounded and vulnerable.

I backslid.

I backslid into the comfort I get from men, from sex, from desire, from knowing I'm so very good at what I do, exalting in my talents.

Which is something that GV8 mentioned to me, but I did not understand at the time.

When smokers get stressed, they up their intake. If they quit, and stress happens, they start again.

Alcoholics drink all the time, but, from what little I know of it, stress stimulates more drinking, or falling off the wagon. It's what they turn to for the comfort they know they will find.

And that's what I did. Under a period of intense stress and emotional vulnerability, I started turning back to what I knew would make me feel better: sexual contact.

I could rationalize it, say that it's not physically unhealthy like smoking or drinking, that it feels good, that it's a source of cardiovascular exercise, that everyone does it and loves it.

But, to be perfectly honest, and as I'm sure most of you have realized, how I've been acting lately, how I've been wanting to act lately and stopping myself from doing... it's a dependency. It's all psychologically driven manifestations of my hurt and instability.

I would normally be berating myself about this, about being so weak.

But my friend, the one who mentioned this to me in the first place, said to me, in that conversation, "You're a very special girl. You're just hurt."

And he's right. I am doing so well. I am... special, as hard as that is for me to say. Not in a beautiful and unique snowflake way that everyone loves to mock, but I am... definitely a bit different.

And it's not that I'm still so wrecked from my teenage years, though that certainly does impact who I am now and what I learned to do for comfort, it's that I've been in a lot of emotional pain lately from several different sources, with my only stability and shielding coming from myself and the rare times I truly let myself lean on my friends.

This is a new situation. This isn't fall-out from an old one, from unaddressed issues.

That doesn't make it suck any less for me, though the realization does allow me to stop mentally punching myself. I feel like I'm going through withdrawals. Friday night, with my friend, it was almost as if I was talking to a bartender, pleading, "Just a little, just a sip. Just a sip will get me through the night."

Which is better than a whole glass.

And I did manage to make it through the night without doing more than "sipping".

And, even knowing that he was in my neck of the woods today, I did not reassert an earlier (pre-kiss) offer for him to come over, knowing that if he was in my apartment with me, it would be too much temptation for me to handle as tired as I am.

I don't know if I would say I am an addict. That seems so very trite, saying I'm addicted to sex. I certainly don't have a problem with sleeping with anyone who attempts, or getting myself into risky situations, nor do I ever wake up in the morning, look over at my partner, and groan that I did it yet again.

But there is a problem. I have a problem.

I'm not really sure what to do about it, other than wait out the need, hope that I learn other ways of coping with high amounts of stress, break patterns, and become healthier for it.

Suggestions, including that of reading material, are welcomed. I may even go as far as to say needed, as I have no idea what I'm doing.

Amusing postscript: After posting this, I went to go make dinner. So I opened Pandora and went into the kitchen while it loaded. A few seconds later, the beginning notes of a song started filling my apartment, and I nearly fell over. What was it? Massive Attack's Dissolved Girl. How blood appropriate, the lyrics and the fact that used to be a theme song of mine whenever I ran wild on the sex front.