She Dives For Shells

It's been a minute or three, hasn't it?

I don't expect that anyone will see this, unless they're like me--occasionally probing into the past, trying to understand how things became what they are. How people became who they are.

My last entry was six years ago. My (ages old) LiveJournal is like this as well. Huge gaps of years with an occasional update. Because time is a curious thing. Because it fascinates me to see who I was.

And things have changed. As they tend to.

It's 2019. I'm 35. Started this blog when I was 24. And all of these memories I have, these adventures, these decisions I made... feel so much more recent than that. I read these, and it feels like I should be in my late twenties/early thirties when I wrote them.

But I wasn't. I was a youthful little thing, striding forward with confidence and angst.

The angst is pretty much gone now.

The confidence? Still there. More than it was, in fact. Which is startling, because I was already extremely confident back then. This? Now? I don't know what to call it.

So much to say, it's hard to even start. Where do I begin unraveling all of this?

I don't live in Los Angeles anymore. I'm in New York City. Never thought I'd leave Southern California, be far from my family, but here we are.

I don't work. Don't need to. I may re-enter the workforce at some point, but I'm hoping to garner enough success with my writing that I can keep up my current day-to-day. But, of course, event-work may pull me back--it's a wonderful lifestyle.

No kids. It's an ongoing internal debate. Most of the time I like my child-free status, but then there are moments that make me think breeding could be a good idea. Not sure how that will ultimately turn out, so I suppose we'll both have to wait and see.

Wrote a book. No, it's not published. It's in the editing stages which, let me tell you, is a very meticulous and grueling process. Once that's wrapped, I'll start looking for an agent--but only when it's perfect.

Went on this amazing, perfect, glorious road-trip. Two months in my car, couchsurfing around the country. Fucking brilliant. 10/10, would do again and again. And again.

For those who might pass by here who were around for the GV8 drama... I haven't heard from him in a couple years. And I'm fucking relieved. He emailed me a few times in the last decade, but I think it has finally (finally) stopped.

What's interesting about that whole thing is... god, a lot.

Okay, maybe just two things.

1. I look back at that whole situation, the yo-yoing and the drama and everything and I frown at myself. I frown and think, "What the hell, Poetry? Why did you let him play you? Why did you let him yank you around?" And seeing this blog, those early entries, reminded me that I met him when I was 24. Twenty-four-and-a-half if we're being generous (to him). He was... 46?

Yes, I was a smart, capable, strong 24 year old. Yes, I knew my shit. Yes, I wrapped older, intelligent, and dominant men around me and all my ladyparts easily. But GV8 had 22 years on me. And not normal years, but 22 extra years of seduction experience. 22 extra years of conquest. I was not a match for that. Maybe I would be now--I don't know--but I wasn't then. It is a testament to my... abilities... that I was able to hold up (and onto him) for as long as I did.

Of course, it would have been better if I hadn't kept his attention or if we had stayed broken up the first time but, again, I was 24.

Forgiveness of your past idiocy and inexperience, I think, is important.

2. I was in Las Vegas (ugh, I know) in 2017. GV8, as far as I know, now lives in Vegas, right on the strip. Anyhow, I was there working a week-and-a-half-long show, staying in the Mandalay Bay and having to do the tram commute to the convention center every day. Halfway through the show, I was waiting for the tram to arrive to take me back to my hotel and I looked up and GV8 was ten feet in front of me.

I panicked. Immediately. Hyperventilating, shaking, went pale, ducked behind a wall, all of it. The friend who was with me saw my panic and talked with me until I calmed down enough to peek back around the corner.

It wasn't GV8.

It was someone who looked very much like him, but it wasn't him. The panic took another thirty minutes to go away.

And, as I sat in my hotel room, I realized it wasn't just panic--it was terror. Mild terror, but terror nonetheless. From his emails over the years, I've realized that--unless he's met someone and moved on (and I really, really, really hope he has and that he never thinks of me)--if he ever sees me again, it's going to start back up. That I insulted his alpha male pride by breaking our engagement, by breaking up with him (the only woman to do so, as far as I know), and have made myself That One.

If I met him today, rather, if 35 year old me met 46 year old him, I know I wouldn't like him. I know I'd find him annoying, pedestrian, banal. That he would be a cliche of a horny swinger. I look back at our time together and, yes, the sex was amazing

--holy shit, the sex was amazing--

But what kept me with him was not his personality, but his sexual ability and his social dominance. That was it.

And, in the last five years of my singledom, before I got married (more on that later), I met other alpha males. Alpha. Males. Saturated in alphaness. And, of course, I fucked them. Because it gets me off. Because, of course, a wide range of sexual experience (their experience) generally makes a better sex partner.

And I got used to it. I got used to being around them. Yes, I already had some in my life when I was younger, but these guys... these guys. Drowning in testosterone.

And I learned. More than I already knew of navigating those waters, I learned.

And I danced through them. For five years, between my last ex and my husband, I danced in and out of the same group of beds.

The last one? Twenty-two hour sex marathons. Broke the bed frame--twice. Screaming sex. Driving around San Francisco in a Lotus, of all things. More sex. Gorgeous sex.

I have a string of men behind me, men still reaching out to me, telling me that I was The One That Got Away. Telling me their regrets. Or hinting that they had some--but not outright saying it, because that'd be "weak."

It feels good. And not just for my ego. It feels good because... god. You know? I was doing something right. I was being me. Being ethical and honest, sticking to my morals, sticking to my beliefs about sex and relationships. And getting my rocks off in so many ways.

And they wanted it. Me being me was... desirable. I mean, of course, it always was. But it was desirable to this particular set of guys. (And others but, really, that's all dust in the wind.)

I belonged. Found a home for people like me, in the beds of other people like me.

In that vein...

I did my first MMMF for my thirtieth birthday. (Three men, three decades--get it?) Ended up with this trio of just... yes. SWAT cop (let me count those abs), San Diego real estate mogul (also, let me count those abs), and the third guy whose occupation I never learned (and it doesn't really matter), but his mind? His mind was like mine. After, when the cop when back on shift and the real estate guy drove back to San Diego, the third guy and I got lunch. Talked. He told me about his life, about what led him to putting together these little soirees.

I could have talked to him for days.

He told me that I kept giggling during the foursome--something that I hadn't noticed. That he had never met a woman that loved sex as much as I did. That everytime I laughed, he could tell it was because I was just so delighted with having these three gorgeous guys rolling through me.

I ended up seeing them again. And again. In different permutations. I don't think that was normal for them, continuing to see what should have been a standard one-night-stand.

And that guy, the one who set it all up, told me that I reminded him of the woman he should have married. The woman he loved, who loved sex as much as he did. But he worried that, because she loved sex so much, she wouldn't be a good mom. So he left her and married someone who was more... normal. Standard. And he hated it. That he had been wrong. That he had been young, ignorant, and conservative, equating a woman's sex life/preference with their ethics, their intelligence, their personality. That he regretted it every day.

I liked him a lot, his honesty and his insight.

Anyway.

Yes, I got married. Am still married. I am just as shocked as you are.

No, not just because I couldn't picture myself getting married, but because I didn't think that I'd ever meet someone I wanted to marry.

We met in January 2016. OKCupid.

Backstory on OKCupid real quick:

After Bryn (last boyfriend) and I split (2011), I continued to mess with optimizing the OKCupid algorithm. First, it was just for great lays. Then, I think around year three of singledom, I started looking for great lays and long-term material. Not necessarily marriage, but something long-term.

I figured out how to do it.

And I left my profile out there, basically untouched, for months. Got minimal messages--but that was the point. I wanted quality, not quantity. But I wasn't quite getting that match I wanted. Close, but not right.

What brought it all together was the final bit of tweaking, something I should have done earlier on, but didn't: I changed my zipcode.

Los Angeles County is huge. It's hard to get around, not just because of distance, but because of traffic. Those freeways are jammed tight and they cut the county into chunks and, really, if you can manage to not need to leave your chunk, life is pretty great.

Because of that, the chunks zone themselves. Certain types of people move to certain areas for certain reasons and then each little chunk becomes a nest for that type of person. Hollywood is for aspiring actors. West Hollywood, gay men. Santa Monica/Beverly Hills/Palisades, successful actors, entertainment higher-ups, etc. Los Feliz, screenwriters. Silverlake, hipsters. Long Beach, punk, rockabilly, and blue collar. It's not 100% saturation, but it's close enough to matter.

I set my zipcode to where I knew it should eventually work: Pasadena. Pasadena is home to Cal Tech and JPL (NASA). Pasadena is home to engineers, to scientists, all those men I get along with so well. And they have jobs. Not usually high-paying fancy things, but things that they are good at, that they have driven themselves towards out of passion. Things that require intelligence and motivation.

That's what I wanted.

And that's what I got.

Eventually, anyway.

Funnily enough, I didn't see it coming. I was on the tail-end of a romantic disappointment--one of those alpha males I mentioned had flaked on me (for completely ridiculous reasons) for our New Year's Eve plans.

Now, I don't even like NYE. But we had plans. And then we didn't. Because he was being a jackass. (He has already conveyed his idiocy and regret, so that's... nothing really useful, but nice anyway.)

So I went out dancing.

Ended up with three different ex-partners texting me all evening, telling me that they wished they were with me (one of them was with his girlfriend and I told him to go back to her, jaysus). But this guy, the one who bailed on me, was not one of them. And I was pissed.

So I stopped talking with him.

In that gap, between NYE and him apologizing to me, Greg messaged me on OKCupid. He had blurry pictures, so I couldn't make out his face, but I liked our back-and-forth enough to get coffee at some nebulous point in the future. I wasn't really thinking of him, was too busy being pissed at the other guy.

A few days later, I had to be in Pasadena--where Greg lived. And I knew I wouldn't be getting out in time to skip traffic. So I messaged him to see if he wanted to get dinner... so I could wait out the traffic.

Showed up to this date irritated as hell (from the thing I was at prior). Jeans. Convention t-shirt (Los Angeles Auto Show, if I remember right). Hair in a ponytail. No make-up. Couldn't remember his name. Didn't know what he looked like.

Then there he was.

Within two dates, I knew he was it. I knew, he knew. That was it.

And he's wonderful. He's so goddamned smart--possibly (probably) smarter than me. An engineer. Clean, so ridiculously clean that he manages to make me look messy--which never happens. He's driven in everything. He's athletic and healthy. He watches his diet, he watches my diet--to make sure that I'm getting the right nutrition. He's funny as hell. He's educated. He dresses well. He's honest with me. He has a shit ton of emotional baggage but he acknowledges it, talks with me about it, and we work on it.

Which is like... whoa.

When we fight, after we'll sit down and basically do a post-mortem. What happened? Why? How often does this happen in this particular way? What can we do to make it not happen? What can we do to make it better? We make plans, we take notes.

This is why I wanted an engineer.

He grew up in New York City. He's a Type A, going to stride you right off the pavement if you don't get out of my way sorta guy. He reads non-fiction almost exclusively. He devours the New York Times, The Atlantic, The Economist, and the New Yorker. (We get the latter three in print.)

He's gotten me into running and yoga. He's been trying to get me into the blackest of black metal (SUNN, anyone?) and it's not working. He listens to rap, goes to punk shows, metal festivals, and jazz clubs. He's a minimalist.

We have two cats. They're idiots.

We live in New York city. Fourth floor walk up, facing the back courtyard. Floor to ceiling windows. Two stories, with a spiral staircase.

He got me drinking--not a lot, but sometimes socially. I've got a thing for mezcal like you would not believe, but I don't get drunk. That's not for me.

He's an amazing writer, but I can hardly get him to write. He edits my stuff, though, so that's something.

If I ever want to go back out prowling, he's fine with an open relationship. He says wants me to be me--he knows my history, my desires, even if he doesn't have similar of his own. (Well, not the history, at least.) I'm not ready for that yet. I want more time to solidify our relationship, get to an excellent point of communication and understanding of each other, before I do.

He was with someone for fifteen years before he met me. He had been single for a year and a half when we had met. His divorce went through that summer. I haven't met her, but I want to.

He collects vinyl. His collection, while not large, is eclectic. It makes me laugh.

We go to art museums. He actually has something to say, input and knowledge on the art. It's refreshing.

We spent our honeymoon split between Disney World and Barbados. He loves the beach--I'm more of a city girl.

The first year we met, we backpacked around Europe for two months. It was... intense. We fought a lot. We had only known each other for six months. It was still a great time.

He plays the bass. He's a loner. He has good friends, close friends, but he's not surrounded by hundreds of people like I am.

He believes in my writing. He works and cares for the two of us while I edit my book. He says that if I ever stop, I have to get a job. And I love that. I love that he's okay with his partner just sitting on their ass. I love that he pushes me.

And, god, does he push me. I have grown so much in the last three years. So goddamned much. Being around him, hearing his observations about me, about life, has changed my approach to many things. I feel like a different person sometimes.

But a better person, usually, and a stronger one. My boundaries are better, that's for sure.

Yes, I feel like there are parts of me that he'll never understand. Because he was in such a long relationship (and he's essentially my age), all of his prime conquest years were spent with one person. He doesn't understand the hunt, he doesn't understand the game.

He's not the gaming type. He's too direct. Say what you want, respect boundaries, and if you don't get it, move on. Doesn't matter.

Me, I like to play.

Other than that bit, it's perfect. Well, as perfect as anything I could ask for. He's dominant. He takes feedback in bed. He grows. He changes.

And he let me plan the most ridiculous wedding at my favorite place in the world. (Ridiculous in location, not ridiculous expense--everything (everything--airfare, hotel, dress, rings, venue, reception) cost just over $13K. Which was more than I wanted to spend, but we opened the bar and things happened.)

Anyway, I'm happy. Finally. I mean, I was happy before, on my own. But now I'm finally happy with someone. Who knew?