For those of you new to the blog, sometimes I go into great amounts of detail about my sex life. This is one of those times.

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The date on Saturday, as I said, was good. Slow building of physical contact. Brushing our shoulders together as we walked, the placement of his hand on my lower back for a brief moment to guide me, leaning slightly back into his body as we watched and whispered about the bit of fluff porn being shot in his studio.

After dinner, we went back to his loft in downtown.

Walked up the stairs to the second floor, his bedroom and library running half of the width of the building. Unlit candles lining the steps, obviously used many times before.

I dropped my bag on the couch in the library, dug out my skirt, nylons, and tights. Sat down and began to remove my shoes and socks, then stood and unfolded my little black skirt.

He had sat down in the armchair directly across from the couch.

"Mind averting your eyes for a minute?" I asked.

"I do," he said, watching me.

I raised an eyebrow at him in amusement, then shrugged. Undid my pants and let them fall to my feet. Stepped out of them, then sat back on the couch, placed toes in nylons and unrolled them up my legs, tights followed suit. Brushed my blouse back down over my hips, knowing it was revealing just the lower curve of my ass. Wasn't quite long enough to cover.

Stepped into my skirt and wriggled into it. Zipping it up the side, smoothing it down.

This was the moment. Instinct uncurls from the base of my spine and winds up my back: if I do not step forward now, I'll leave without physically connecting with him. And I do want that connect.

He later said I slinked forward, walking that ten foot distance between the two pieces of furniture, before placing my hand on his chest and settling onto his lap, my skirt riding up my thighs as I placed them on the outside of his while his hands slid from my waist to my ass, gripping.

Ran my hands from his chest to the back of his neck, whispering to him "Sorry, I just couldn't resist". Watching his smile grow just before we kissed.

Establish contact with tongue half a second before lip contact. That's the rule I follow without thought. Anything else seems childish and unnatural.

Lips closing on tongue, suckling, teeth biting lightly down and tugging on that lower lip. Tongue sliding on the outside of one lip, then the other, traveling down to neck with open-mouthed pull and wet tickling of earlobes while grinding hips in a light, erratic bucking rhythm. Rub the length of his torso with your face followed by your chest, back to lips, then slide down to his feet, nuzzle stomach and crotch, scrape the teeth down his jean-encased cock, warm breath through the fabric.

Yes, I know you. I know this poetry.

Relocate to the couch, more room to lean back.

But my teasing nature, my constant smart-mouth, lands me in trouble.

On purpose, of course.

He yanks me up, so fast. Turns me and traps my hands behind me in one move, strides across the open space shoving me in front of him and I'm face down, ass up over the side of his bed. Pulls my stockings and underwear down, tosses them behind him, pulls me up, discards my shirt onto the couch (skirt was discarded long before).

Back to the bed, naked. He's still fully clothed.

His hands leave my ass red, me yipping into the comforter with each blow. He bends down, still holding my hands behind me, licks me from hole to hole, so warm and wet, me moaning and trying to keep my feet from sliding on the slick hardwood floor.

He gets on the bed, pulls me all the way on, flips me onto my back and drags me against him, hitting my breasts until I'm whimpering, burying his fingers in me, curling deep until I free myself from his hold and unsuccessfully pull against his wrist to stop the overwhelming sensation.

He stops. Only to pull my thighs farther apart and start spanking me directly on my cunt. Such a weakness for me... I hate it and love it. Body starts jerking against his hand as I shout, then I'm squirting because the sensation is too much and my body loves it too much. I hear him groan his happiness as each smack causes more liquid to eject, spraying and splashing onto the bed, my thighs, his hand.

When he stops, I'm left panting and happy. He lets me curl up onto my side, and I lay there, face buried in his chest. I hear someone come down the stairs from the third floor, walk through the library area to the next set of stairs: the resident studio photographer. I would receive a text the next day letting me know that he thought I had a lovely ass.

We shift positions, I start dozing with my head on his chest. He's warm and comfortable. I've needed this affection and the physical relief of palms bruising my skin. Trail my fingers over his jean-caged erection, lay a kiss or two on his chest. Some time later, I bid him good night and drive home, with him telling me we'll get breakfast in the morning.

How odd. I don't spend the night, we don't sleep together, and he drives to me to take us out to breakfast on the beach the next day.

It was lovely, sitting in the sun, the beach to my left, ocean breeze running through my hair. Talking. Talking with that ease of familiar comfortability though we've never met.

I will admit some anxiety. It's always like this for me, when I meet someone I'm interested in. What makes it annoying is that I know with him having a vasectomy, there's no future I want there. But he makes me nervous anyhow.

He has access to my other, public blog. A year or so of entries spanning the end of Darkeye's and my relationship, into my winter of seeking sexual validation from men, spring of that continuing... and then the beginning of things with GV8, when it tapered off and life started to go... odd.

It worries me.

It shouldn't. But it does.

I was so very different. I was so young, so searching and desperate. I'm still searching, but that desperation is mostly gone. I'm still a little wavery on the confidence front, but I'm light years better than I was. Worried that he'll judge me on who I used to be. Worried that that information will turn him off.

But it shouldn't matter. It's not who I am now. And he's not someone I can "have".

It's the rejection. It's always the rejection at the heart of things, the insecurity that fuels it. It's times like these that leave me grasping at getting thought patterns under control. Times that I know I need to get a handle on it or I'm going to slide and lose what progress I have made.

Breathe.

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.

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?

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.

Completely incomplete...

He tells me I'm seeking validation.

I look at him from the corner of my eye as he drives, "Why do you say that?"

Everyone is, he says. Look for validation from that special partner, telling them they're worthwhile. Looking for validation from a paycheck. From a job title. Something that simply tells them that they're worth more than they think they are.

That they feel they are.

Hand-holding over the center console.

He's right.

It's not as though a statement like that could ever be wrong as we scurry about, trying to show everyone else who we think we are, who we want to be, who we want to be seen as, desperately hoping that someone believes it and supports it by their own actions.

As much as I try to pull away from it, I know I am searching for that validation.

I know that if he did leave me, as things stand, the pain and generated feelings of anger and embarassment would be over how I feel that I am not enough.

As if anyone could be "enough".

I was not self-confident enough.

That would be the sticking point. I know he finds me attractive, beautiful even. I know he delights in my sexual abilities and my intelligence. My ability to keep up with him and our common focus on survival, on logic, on efficiency, on ability.

We are what we can do.

But those moments of doubt that creep in, sometimes as the over-politeness I hide behind. The quiet, introverted moments where I realize that I do not fit into a social situation, and the best thing to do is step back and let time wash it away from me.

The anxiety, the annoyance with my body, the chemical addiction I try to pass off as something that isn't such a big issue, but it is, oh it is. My frustration at my perceived weaknesses, my lack of faith in ever landing myself one of those corporate jobs that would prove to me I could fit in.

That ever sought need to be able to pass as normal.

Because if you aren't able to pass, something is wrong. I need to know I can slip between the lines of what I am and what everyone else is, and that constant concern that I will not be able to, that I'll always be just slightly outside everything, just making the mass slightly uncomfortable with none of them able to quite pinpoint why but they know, oh they know, something's a little off-kilter.

I know I will never be "normal".

I just want that ability, that choice, to blend when I wish. To show that I am functional and can be in that world should I choose. That my lack of... whatever it is that is so very missing in me, does not handicap me like it does others.

I know it should not bother me. What good is it, to blend in with the mass? Why should I care?

Maybe I'll get over it, one day. Stop trying.

I don't want to change myself as much as learn how to do it. How to be on the inside.

And if I can't be on the inside, yes, I do want that validation. I do want to see, to know, that my oddity, my disconnect, has done something for me. That I'm not going to be a strange little girl living out an average life somewhere in the nowhere-mass of suburbia or wherever I land.

That it meant something.

That these years, all of these years, each of which that contains no memory of me belonging, no matter how hard I tried.

Junior High, I remember that. I looked at magazines and tried to figure out what was "normal", and then my mother took me to the mall so I could pick out "normal" clothes and be "normal" and all of these other kids that I had never met would never know that I had not been "normal" at my last school.

I remember the cute button-up blouses, the thin gold-chain I had borrowed from my mother, the shoulder length golden-blonde hair I used to have, cute jean-shorts, and some shoes from Payless that looked like what was in at the time.

So excited that I could pass, that I could fit in and have normal friends, have a group of close female friends, pass notes in class, go to slumber parties and go on group dates, go to the school dances with my new-found friends. Trips to the mall, to Disneyland, the movies...

It didn't work.

I don't remember why.

I tried. I really did.

After maybe a week of that, I gave up. Went back to my normal clothes. Made a few friends.

And that was that.

I do look back at pictures of myself in junior high and high school. Gold-blonde hair with light streaks from the sun, tanned skin... and I wonder why.

I wonder what happened that causes people to not recognize me now. People that were my classmates in multiple classes every semester for the three years I attended high school see me now and it doesn't compute to them. What I was is so far removed from what I am, it boggles them.

I look at those pictures, look at my eyes, the simpering smile in so many of those pictures. I look weak. I had no idea what was in store for me.

What I would do to myself.

I should have more self-confidence than I do. Just through time, just through events, I should know that I can survive, that I will survive, and that I will do it well. Wounds, both on body and heart, heal.

And, to quote a favorite of mine... "Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the pain. Move on."