Collect your records...

A bit of a lag time, I suppose.  Though less than what it normally is.

Poked around in the PUA community a couple times in the last few weeks.  Have to say, it looks like most of it is fading away.  Some of the guys are still around, sure, but post quality and/or quantity is going down.  Funny how that happens.  Can't imagine wrapping my life around one thing and then sticking to it.

But then, having spent some time with two of Strauss' coaches, I can understand a bit more.

November is wrapping up.  Near the beginning, I declared a man-cation.  I had had enough.  GV8 had "stumbled" across my catch up entry and was being... him.  An ex from almost ten years ago --the last one, but third one in a row to cheat on me-- and I bumped into each other.  Rekindled.  Then I got irritated.

Sometimes, people don't change.  Not the cheating part, but other things.

My casual partner, the Boy, had shifted gears into "oh hai emotions" even though he swore he wouldn't.  So suddenly had to evacuate an imbalanced relationship so he could re-orient himself and so I wouldn't go insane from the sudden clingyness.  I can't deal with cling.

A man I've had an interest in for years, a fellow grad student, shut me down.  Not that it was any big thing or whatnot, but it was still... oof.  I'm not used to that.  But I understand that we have a special friendship, especially for him being so introverted.  If it's between sex and having what we have, I'd rather keep the latter.

Then Ian, whose name I can use because, well, I can.  The girl he chose over me back in January of this year, thinking that she'd be more emotionally... whatever, ditched him.  Because she wasn't more emotionally... whatever.  I'm the softy.  So few people get that.  And some family members/friends died within a close proximity to each other and I'm probably the closest thing he has to what he calls "the twisted mirror version" of himself... so he reached out.

He was actually the only one I welcomed.  Not that we did anything but talk and entangle fingers.  That'll change this week.  I miss sex with him.

Then there was the businessman in Japan.  American.  Relocated by his company.

That trip was my first out of the country since I was three.  I found myself finding the occasional white male ridiculously attractive.  Men that I would put at a 3 or a 4 back home, men I would just *blip* over, were suddenly 7s and 8s.  It was hysterical, watching myself react.

And then, of course, the day we leave there's two American boys checking into our hotel that were just one step down from Abercrombie models.  Goddamn, if I had had one more night with how one of those boys was looking at me, I'd have been purring in the middle of an Abercrombie sandwich.

Anyhow, back to the businessman.  In Los Angeles, he'd probably be a 5.  But I saw him when I was wandering back from Tokyo Tower at 10:30ish at night on a particularly lonely evening and just started talking to him.

It's funny, how much I need communication.  Need to write, need to relay, to talk.  I'm such a girl.

So, I get his business card and we go out a couple of nights later.  Had a pretty good time, good conversations (hell, I'm always a great conversation starter, however we get into it-- porn, my thesis, geeklife, convention work), and he walks me back to my hotel.

Now, I'm so discombobulated by the whole social/cultural isolation thing that I can't tell for the life of me if he wants to come up or he's just being nice and I'm actually worried that this guy that I'll never talk to again will think I'm the most horrible slut if I invite him up.  Also in play was the fact that I was sharing a room with a coworker (who was aware that I was out on a date that night and that she might come back to the room with a sock on the doorknob) who was out at karaoke and could return at any moment (which then I'd feel guilty for locking her out of the room... and she's also head of HR.  Just sayin'.).

So I rock back and forth on my feet for a bit and then decide that I should just send him on his way even though I really want to get laid and I'm all stressing about the slut-perception bit (which you all know I never do) and then go up to the hotel room and then... pause.  Decide I'm being an idiot and under the sway of feeling so isolated and that I just need to go grab him and drag him to my room.  That if he's going to walk me all the way to my hotel, he damn well wants to come up and I'm an idiot.

But then I can't find him.  And I didn't have a Japanese cell, so I couldn't call him.

Defeated, I checked on my coworkers at karaoke and went to bed.

So, that happened.

And the thing with the boy-- I did something I never, ever have done.  Stopped during sex and just started crying.

Jet-lag + PMS + guilt = terrible, terrible things.

I've got this whole thing where I feel responsible for my partners when they're within ten years of my age and have significantly less experience than I do.  Toss the Boy in there with his grand total of (now) three sex partners and being eight months younger than me and... yeah.

So when we started having sex and I'm just tuning into his body language pre-sex and during and realizing that, wow, he is so romantically and psychologically invested in me and I should have stopped this long ago (by long ago, I mean two months earlier) but I was so stressed from work and he was the only vacation I ever allowed myself to take... I felt wretched.  I've got this poor kid who thinks he can handle friendship with sex without the emotional investment and he makes this prediction after two barely-there relationships with two sex partners and I accepted that because, yeah, I wanted to teach him.  I wanted to help make him into what I saw as the potential in him.  And I could relax when I was with him.

...also, the muscles and general physical mrowrness was quite convincing.

And then I see him starting to get attached and I just kept running with it, talking with him about it a little, but never putting my foot down.  Hoping it would sort itself out.  Which it didn't.  Just kept getting worse until I stop him mid-coitus because I can't deal with pretending to be happy that we're having sex and I shouldn't be doing that in the first place to him because he'd feel shitty about it.

When that happened-- total man-cation.  Sliced off the ex and GV8, put the Boy into a "off" mode, and got back into career-mind.  Which was great because, man, I had fallen behind.

Yesterday, I removed the man-cation from the Boy.  Went over to his place, had a marathon of Miyazaki films while I worked and we slightly cuddled.  In the morning, I talked with him.  Told him that we were never going to be in a real relationship, that we just didn't work.  That I wanted to be his friend.  And that if he ever attempted to Nice Guy me, he'd be out on his ass.

He seemed okay.  Said he figured that's what was going to happen when I came back from my man-cation and had already accepted it, for the most part.  But he hoped we'd still have sex because I'm all about my rape scenes and he's all about his rape scenes and you can't find many girls willing to admit that, much less participate in it.  I told him I had to see how we'd handle as friends, make sure that I felt it was emotionally safe for him if we did so.

Which is weird because I'm removing the decision from him, saying he can't make that choice.  Even though he's an adult.  But I have so much more experience.  It's an odd place to be, telling someone you'll let them know how they are emotionally.  How arrogant.  Kinda dickish.

I know a lot of guys like to pretend that sex means nothing to them, that they can bang a girl forever and just give a shit about doing anything else.  And that's true for some guys.  But I've found that even with the ones that are pretty hardcore about the casual thing, they still soften.  Which is good, to a point.  Humanizing.

So.  Back to square one.

I've been writing about it elsewhere a little, but I think I've finally hit that point in my psychology where I'm stable and happy enough with myself to not really care if I'm in a relationship or not.  Sure, rejection fucking stings, sexual or otherwise.  But I've been venturing out more lately, initiating.

And I can't find That Guy.  I can't even visualize That Guy.  The right guy.  I can't picture how he'd fit into my life, what he'd be like, what he enjoys, how my family would react, what life would suddenly be shifted into.  I can't even daydream the perfect scenario.  It's like throwing slices of Kraft singles at a ceiling-- you think they'll stick, but they never do, even if you lick them.

I know.  I've done it.  It was disappointing.  Gummi bears will stick, so why won't Kraft singles?

Anyhow.  It's weird.  Tripping me out a bit.  A lot, really.  I've always aimed for this level of health where I don't need a partner, but I want one.  Where they won't complete me, but complement me.  Where it's okay if we go slow, if I don't hear from them for a few days.

I'm there, and it feels so off from my usual state of being.

Wonder if it's because of my lack of free time.  Or this job offering me value.  Both of which would be concerning, as they're external forces, not internal.  Of course, when/if the job ends, knowing that I had the job, the experience, the networking that came with it... that'd stick.  Right?  I don't know, really.

I'll figure it out one day, I suppose.

Other than all the madness above, the semester is just a couple weeks out from completion.  I've already finished my final paper and Bryn's doing edits.  I started Crossfit last week-- tough business.  I'm such a whuss.  Trying to motivate myself to start running again-- I stopped when working the Halloween event because my body was so goddamned battered all the time and, really, I just didn't have the time.  Work is... well, work.  Crazy and fulfilling and maddening.  Bryn's theoretically taking me to Disneyland in a couple weeks to stay at the Grand Californian-- bucket list item.  I met an amazing dancer at one of my clubs.  More on that later, and paper alphaness.  Fascinating.

Anyhow, I'm starting to block-paragraph babble.  Probably time for Z.