Out with the Old...

The trouble with getting a Brazilian wax is that it leaves me feeling like I have a fresh new haircut and I want to show it off but I can't without getting arrested.

I dumped Corvus. He had been gone for over two months and wasn't calling me, even when he had a phone, and wasn't contacting me any other way when he didn't. We'd talk for a little while on Facebook Chat about once a week and invariably it would be all about him no matter how much I tried for a share of the conversation. I got sick of it. I moved on emotionally. I read The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists and couldn't believe how well the DSM's diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder fit Corvus.

When I made it clear to Corvus that I was sick of it, he started calling and texting me constantly, but it was too late. We broke up in what I thought was a fairly mutual conversation, saying we'd still be good friends when he came back (oh, his constant promise that he's coming back!) and then chatting for awhile longer about nothing. Then he kept calling and texting me to say how much he loved and missed me. I couldn't tell if he didn't understand that we'd broken up or what, so I was very direct with him. Yes, he'd understood. But he still loved and missed me. The next thing I knew, he was heartbroken and crying and calling me at 12:30 at night. I wasn't happy or particularly empathetic. The last time he called was Friday while I was with my work-from-home-together buddies at a cafe so I didn't answer and he didn't leave a message. That was four days ago. I think he may have finally figured out that we're broken up for real.

Meanwhile, I met someone else. We'll call him O'Snarky. Aural Girl's dog befriended O'Snarky's friend at the bar the Wednesday before Halloween and as Aural Girl and the friend got to talking, so did O'Snarky and I. He was cute and Irish and (you guessed it) snarky as hell so I reluctantly gave him my number, even though I hadn't officially ended things with Corvus. I refused to go on an actual date until after the actual break-up, but those two events happened only a day apart. So much for time to think between Boys. O'Snarky and I have been on a few dates since.

It's hard for me not to directly compare O'Snarky to Corvus--the way they treat me, the way they kiss, how they look (::cough:: naked ::cough::), who they are and how I felt or feel. I will miss Corvus mechanically, I will miss feeling head-over-heals and irrational. But I won't miss the anxiety or the way he acted like I was just an object in his universe or the way I could never actually rely on him for much of anything--emotional or otherwise. O'Snarky has a job and takes care of his mother, two good signs of the responsibility I crave. And there's genuine empathy seeping out just below the snark. Right now it seems those qualities and getting laid are all I need.

So ends my longest relationship to date and begins...who knows what.

Holy Fucking Corvus

My dog has declared a bit of snuggle time; he's feeling neglected, having been locked away to give this crazy electricity free reign over my house and my heart.

Corvus. What the fuck? How does a reciprocal crush become oh my god without blinking? For once, I don't actually care how. That's a mini "oh my god" in itself.
But Corvus! Like a mirror--a reflection without being the same. And so much kindness, so sweet. He babbles things fit for poetry, apologizes for perfect words (and I'm supposed to be the writer?). Then,  without thinking, he holds my head up as I drink water in bed, tries to wash the dishes, makes the bed the moment I'm preoccupied...I'm not the porcelain princess, he treats me like I'm made of gold; like an unworshipped goddess; like an adored equal.
He sees beauty and light and hears it, too. He doesn't know he's brilliant or doesn't believe it. He is story after story and he is warm strong quiet and he understands the laughter in the saddest of things.

There's so much more, but to dwell and list seems petty this time. Somehow, it's all more real and fair to just babble and swear and scream the name of the nearest deity.

Holy fuck.

Starry-Eyed

Boy, oh Boy.
He kept using the word "hypnotized," and that's about accurate...we're both still hypnotized. Chemistry and starry-eyes and things I can't yet render in words.
Boy gets a name..."Corvus." Constellation, raven, sacred servant to Apollo.
I picked him up at the airport. I've been cleaning my house and myself. He seemed entirely taken by surprise...I wasn't surprised by Boy and Girl make with the smooching, but the whole thing was surprising...listening to eachother's heartbeats just holding close but somehow doing so without pretense or even awareness at first...it was all so crazy electric yet smooth and perfect. We're so awkward until...we're not. I'm less and less sure he's real or I'm awake because it seems impossible, but there's no question, we were awake and alive. Jesus fucking fuck.

My Halloween Evil

Every Halloween, much of the female population dresses as sexy, skanky, whory as possible. This year my costume was an inanimate object not normally considered sexy, made sexy. It's part of an inside joke from a few years ago (mainly with NBF) that somehow seemed funnier if most people witnessing the costume weren't in on the gag. Aural Girl and Possible Boy ended up going to non-Chicago portions of Illinois for the weekend and my social awkward/laziness landed me at a single party where I pretty much laughed alone.

But the costume turned out very well and I was walking sex.

I spent much of the past week growling at the extra 15 pounds Emsam exploded around my middle. I actually got stuck in the corset that used to be too big for me, and shirts and dresses all seemed to point directly to the weird lumpy bulge popping out at my waist line. I tried to contain it and hide it and wondered what I was doing bothering with a sexy costume at all now that I'm such a lard-ass.
Fucked. Up.
I still fought with the tights that wanted to roll beneath my roll, still buttoned my sweater lower than I would have a year ago. But once I found tight cotton short-shorts to wear over the tights, I remembered the First Rule of...well, certainly not Fight Club. Aesthetics Club? They'll be staring at my ass, not my middle. And if that's embarrassing or whorish, in autumn it easy to forget how much less we wear to the beach in summer.

But here's the real deep-dark "secret" of it all: I like the attention. I like the sense of power. Not only was my costume an inside joke with myself, so was the reaction the costume produced. I got to be Holly Golightly and Mae West all at once, boys' sly remarks caught in their tied tongues.

When we're dressed up as someone else, we get to be ourselves. And for me, as I think for a lot of women, ourselves are a lot more sexual than we think we're supposed to admit. I think my ideal is a smile with just a shadow of smirk wrinkling my lip. Enough to remind myself I'm in control but no real malice.

I could have brought home one of the boys. Considered it. But once I'm reminded that even with my awkward and crazy and my gimpy migraine life, that I can still command a room, then I get to require basic things of a boy like intelligence, attractiveness, and giving a shit about me. Greedy? Perhaps. Thinking a whole fucking lot of myself just because I wore something slutty? Yes. But I'm hanging out with Ken on Tuesday and no matter how sexual I'm feeling, that's a much better option than random strangers.

Happy Halloween.

When it rains, it rains goldfish

Yesterday, chocolate proved itself a migraine trigger. I took my pills and resigned myself to a night at home doing dishes and laundry and watching movies.
The phone rang  a little after 7; Possible Boy wanted me to go hang out with him at the bar. I told him  I wasn't leaving the house, blah blah blah, and we began an extended texting conversation while he went to the bar and I washed dishes.
One of the dishes that needed washing was Aural Girl's Pyrex. I didn't know if it could go in the dishwasher, so I texted her to ask. When my phone beeped to say I had a new message, I assumed it was AG or PB, but no! it was Jame's Spader's now former roommate. I'd started the night running around in one of my slip/chemise/nightie things because I was cleaning and flatly refusing to wear pants or real clothes of any sort, plus, as you may have gathered from my previous few posts, I've been insatiably horny as hell for the past few days. Then both James Spader's ex-roommate and Possible Boy were sending suggestive flirty texts. I like suggestive texts. I also can get carried away with suggestive texts. Apparently I can also read more into them than ever actually exists, as when Possible Boy came over and I put the kibosh on the flirty stuff and then he left just a few minutes into Billy Elliott, I assumed he left because he thought he was coming over for a reprise of November and instead got my nervous-like-I'm-at-a-job-interview mask and zero comfort or encouragement.
I tried to keep watching the movie but Beetle's brother (ok, new name for Beetle's brother: Manbug. It's like a ladybug is related to a beetle but this one's definitely a man) kept texting me, hounding me to come over and smoke up with him. I still refused to leave my house but told him he was welcome to come to me. So he came.
I did, too, but that wasn't until a few hours later...
I wasn't going to get involved with Manbug, and as far as I'm concerned I'm still not getting "involved" with him; the universe handed me this perfect little opportunity and, unlike the other boys on my dance card, I know I can fool around with him and not crush his soul. In the extremely short-term, anyway.

After PB left, I emailed him about our not hooking up. However many of you dear readers just rolled your eyes and shook your heads and asked, "Jesus, Annabell, are you completely socially oblivious?!?" the answer is yes. Turns out not only was it a faux pas in the general being-a-dork sense, but my assumptions that PB's innuendo texting was anything more than playing around was dead wrong. I guess I didn't think it was more than playing until he said he was coming over when I knew he was drunk, but I'm glad I was wrong. He made a point of clearing the air today. I was jonesing for a fuck buddy and trying to be there for him as a friend at the same time and I'm terrible at multitasking, so maybe putting PB at priority #1 made me think he was part of priority #2. Who knows.

I got my hair cut, low-lighted (darkened in such a way that it actually looks like it's highlighted even though the highlights are the pieces that are my natural color), and my eyebrows darkened all for absolutely free and I really like it. We'll see how it turns out tomorrow when I try to do it myself, but for today, I am pleased

People are turtles the whole way down.

Expanding

Feeling really weird today...indecisive,  too. Go to the auction as a proactive move and hope to find something I can turn around for a larger profit or stay home and do the million things I want to get done here?
It's good that  I'm back to doing things and feeling  like I can do things, but I've also welcomed back that unnecessary anxiety that every minute I'm wasting and there's a world of ToDos hovering above. Sort and clean and list and sell go go GO! That's the life I'm trying to step away from. I'm not saying I want to sit around doing nothing all day. I'm trying to see things to do as things that give my life more dimension. Maybe that's the real key--make my daily choices based on some guess as to what will bring the most dimension (which is different from happiness) to my life, knowing full well that each choice is a guess, that I can only measure in relation to myself, and that that's still a worthwhile measure to make.

An undiscussed side effect of migraine: too much time to think.

In other news, I could sure use a fuck-buddy right now. I need something extremely hot and physical and emotionally uncomplicated. I'm going through my head all the Boys who have expressed interest like a closet full of clothes with nothing to wear. It's all a nasty little hornets nest of me making excuses not to go to the ball because I'm afraid my admirers won't want to dance with me and if they do I'll freak out and spend the rest of the night hiding in the powder room. But aside from all that, fuck buddy. Want one. Now.

Floating Head, Frozen Heart

Today I am woozy. All day. At one point I was sitting in bed on the computer and a piece of paper in my peripheral vision moved and floated of its own volition. I turned to look at the paper and it was still kind of floating in a halo. Then everything looked floaty.
Not. Fucking. Cool.
Cool if you're dropping acid or smoking pot or doing some other purposeful thing to alter your perception of reality. Cool if you get to brag about it later to your friends. Significantly less cool when you immediately start to wonder if you somehow messed up your very legal doctor prescribed medications, if there was something you had eaten or hadn't eaten (the latter of the two being my most common culprit, though probably not today). Finally, Cool curls up into a little ball and whimpers in anguish when you start figuring out where you are in your completely fucked up menstrual cycle. Ah yes, sorry Cool, but I think it doesn't matter how many pills I shove down my throat, my body goes crazy every time it remembers it's female.

Last night was more general evidence of my biologic sex.
I've been in general targetless boy-craving mode all week. For the first time since, well, "band camp," I have this collection of boys who want me. I'm trying to convince myself to want some of them back without them feeling like consolation prizes.
One came home with me last night.
He ate cornflakes
We talked, and the whole conversation was just a huge reminder of why I'm so averse to really dating him. His answer for everything is "Well, just do it." Everything is black and white, and most of it is black. He truly is what hipsters aspire to be. It's not necessarily a bad thing and there's a lot more to him than just that, but I am a writer. Equivocation is a lifestyle for me. He thinks I should just stop. He thinks that's an answer. Well, it's an answer, but once again, there are an infinite number of answers and who's to say what's right? Does it make me happy? I don't know. Is it supposed to? It's where I am right now and may not be forever but it is how I make sense of the world. I'm not satisfied with "yes" and "no."
"Yes" and "no" may never enter the playing field with this boy since the closest thing he did to making a move was pull me into an awkward hug. I wasn't helping or encouraging. I'd eaten a huge late dinner and my stomach was not happy and then he was declaring the world a shallow awful place. Maybe next time I'll put post-it notes up to remind myself to use boys for general life experience. I'm already being not nice by being vague and waffly, if I start actively using boys then they at least get something out of it.

Contemplating Consolation Prizes

Attraction. Such a strange beast. To whom and when? How much is about the person? How he acts and looks and smells? How much is about me? What I've eaten, medication cocktail, lunar cycles and personally allotted social norms?
There is a Boy from the bar who likes to hit on me in a way I don't find objectionable, particularly when I'm drunk. Aural Girl, also drunk, played cheerleader last night and thinks at least dating this guy is a good idea. Maybe. I don't see it going anywhere, but at least he's not an asshole, and I wonder if I can be attracted enough to sex itself to keep myself happy. If I can, is it worth it?

Hating Myself over Boy

There's a girl. Possible Girl for Possible Boy.
I want to be perfect. I want to be the perfect friend and perfect person who can objectively see how good it is for Possible Boy to have a romantic interest that isn't me or Aural Girl, allowing him to start separating his friendship support system from his amorous subplots. It's something I need to do, too. Logical Annabell knows this.
But Logical Annabell also has support systems stationed in random pockets around the country. And Annabell's imperfect human emotional side craves a hypothetical boy who can look at all my inside goop and understand and hold me, who has the same inside goop and wants to be heard and held back, and then kissed until all the lonely pain stops tasting so bitter because now you're tasting it on love's lips.
With Possible Boy, I ran things backwards. I was trying so hard to look shiny and perfect, I didn't let him near all the important things. Between phone sex and my disastrous long-term friends-with-benefits non-relationship, all things sex default to a setting of fun with quarantined emotions. Hell, even before I myself got near sex, these are the two versions of it that existed in my world:
1) sex for unemotional fun, power and procreation
2) sex as the extension and completion of the perfect kiss

Now the stuff that makes me feel like an asshole re: Possible Boy.
I'm trying really hard lately to do things differently and do things for myself and not treat myself like crap. To that end, it's either fish or cut bait, either see about reentering myself in the more-than-friends pool or put some space between us so I can move on.
But Possible Boy doesn't have another support system. He needs a friend, and while I'm not so fabulous that I'm the only person in the entire world capable of providing adequate and proper friendship, I do understand in a way that seems manageable by a limited percentage of the populace. Everybody has different pieces of things they do and don't see. Maybe I like feeling important, or maybe after growing up with my parents hyper-controlling every aspect of my life, it's just more familiar for me to be entirely codependent. But Possible Boy is good at the codependency thing, too. He might say every mushy thing I've said about him, only about Aural Girl. It's this wonderful chain of low self-esteem. We are human and we treat ourselves like garbage so that no one else can treat us worse.

I may have to ask him not to read this post. Will someone please tell me what to do and then blame me when it goes wrong? That's what I seem to find most familiar and comforting.

Guys and Dolls and Cupcakes

Model-gorgeous friend I've known since elementary school needs a name in here. For lack of anything better, I'm going with "Ken."
Today is Ken's birthday. Even though it's a Tuesday, he had a party. I brought Aural Girl and we drove down to Humbolt Park.
Aural Girl wants to know why the hell I haven't slept with Ken. Ken made it very, very clear he wants in my pants. He's made it very clear for awhile now. Ken's a really good person in so many ways. He knew me during the worst part of my life and was one of the few kids that didn't treat me like shit. How do I feel about him now? I don't know. Nervous? He's always been a horny boy with a filthy mind, but we used to tell jokes and turn everything we said into dirty jokes on the back of the bus. Flirting was safe when I thought I was an ugly runt that nobody wanted; now it has power. There's just so much history, so many years of nothing-more-than-friendship.

Regardless of Ken, this goes back to the ol' internal debate over sex and love and everything in between. Do I want notches on my bedpost, more experience, more stories to tell, more life to have lived? Or do I accept the part of me that doesn't feel right? Am I repressed or am I repressing my repression?

I'm thinking about this way too much. Relax, brain. Relax, everything. Can I close up the hole in my heart through deep breathing, diet, and exercise? Tonight I was ever so social, but it still craves something specific and not necessarily healthy.

The Spider and the Bee

Once there was a spider. She knew herself to be a spider. She watched the way other spiders devoured their prey. She watched the way other spiders could be swept away and crushed, but she also saw the beauty in every web, every creature, and everything within and beyond the webs as well.

Once there was a bee. He knew himself to be a bee. He watched the way other bees swarmed and stung. He watched the way other bees slaved for an apathetic queen then died alone fighting the strange and unknown, but he also saw the beauty and sweetness of every honeycomb, every creature, and everything within and beyond the hives as well.

The spider and the bee became friends. Both were apprehensive at first, for while they saw much beauty in one another, all spiders know that bees can sting, and all bees know of the spiders' deathly tangle. What's more, this spider and this bee each feared her and his own true nature far more than that of the other's.

"Hello, Spider," the bee would say.
"Hello, Bee," would reply the spider.
"Beautiful day," would say the bee.
"Beautiful world," would say the spider.
"Huge world," would say the bee.
"Terrifying world," would say the spider.
"Lonely world," would say the bee.
"Indeed," would say the spider.

One day, after many months of their usual exchange, the spider changed her answer.

"Hello, Spider," said the bee, as usual.
"Hello, Bee," said the spider, as usual.
"Beautiful day," said the bee.
"Beautiful world," said the spider.
"Huge world," said the bee.
"Terrifying world," said the spider.
"Lonely world," said the bee. But the spider said,
"It doesn't have to be. I could keep you company."
"Oh." The bee thought for a moment. "Can I sit with you on your web?"

The spider thought for a moment, too. She cared for the bee and wanted nothing more than for him to come into her web, but she wanted to get to know the bee better within her web. She did not to devour him and leave his empty shell of a carcass like so many other spiders did, and like even she had done in the past.

"Yes, come sit with me," she said.

The bee flew into the spider's web and landed gently beside her. His buzzing made the whole web vibrate with a hypnotic calm. She wrapped a long spindly leg around him to see he was truly there. He sighed and buzzed louder, so she put another leg around him. Now she could feel his wings against the bottoms of her feet. They were such gentle but solid things, not at all like the rainbow wings of dew that would stretch across sections of her web in the morning or after a rain. She curled two more legs to envelop him.

All this closeness, and she so much like a flower unfolding leg by leg, the bee began to pollinate. The spider began to spin.
"I hope I am not adding to the terror of the world," said the bee.
"Only to its beauty," said the spider.

************************

Shit. Now what?

Sex, Drugs, and Trying to Get Off the Island

I think my psychiatrist is convinced NBF and I were doin' it. There was this very strange bit of conversation today about me being "sexually active" (matters because migraine doc is making me go to the gyno for hormone meds it instead of just writing me a prescription, largely as incentive to make me go to the gyno...blech).

Dr. Shrink: Are you sexually active?
me: Yes. Well, I don't know how active, but yes.
Dr: What do you mean by that?
me: I do sometimes have sex but it's not exactly a frequent or regular thing
Dr: When was the last time you ad intercourse?
me: Duh...um...what day is it? A month ago? No, more than that...a month and a half? Something like that.
Dr: [sounding like he'd gotten me in a trap] Was this your friend that moved away?
me: Oh god no. We were never like that.

Then I started rambling about occasional circumstances presenting themselves and sometimes lead to intercourse blah blah blah, but I think he took my weird bumbling as me trying to cover that NBF and I were actually lovers instead of me just being a bumbly person not sure how to explain things to my attractive and young enough you'd think he'd be less suspicious of a 27-year-old having occasional casual sex psychiatrist.

I have new friends in my neighborhood. They're Neighbor Guy's fault. Most of them are gay males. I'm also now connected to a surprising number of ex-navy men. They all hang out at the bar that's around the corner from my condo. Very convenient. I'm currently on the zero booze migraine diet, but mixes of juices make me feel fancy. I'm writing like I do this all the time when I've actually been once. Well, I went with NBF and I think I even dragged my sister before, since it's right here, but I never actually talked to people I didn't already know before.

I'm watching obscene amounts of LOST. You can see all five seasons online, and now that I'm physically incapable of concentrating on anything that requires more than a minute of my input, movies/tv shows and walking the dog are about the only ways I get any stimulation. I'm really excited I could write as much as I've written tonight. I'm spacing out pretty badly between sentences and clauses and having a hard time getting this last paragraph down, so I think I'm spent, but it felt good to get this much out. I started a paper journal again hoping it would be easier to keep up now that I'm a space cadet, but I write so much slower by hand that I get less out and once I start spacing out I'm a goner. Ok, I'm a goner now. Stoned writing again, except without the pot. We cut my Neurontin in half starting today so maybe I'll be better soon. As of now, who needs marijuana when your daily breakfast comes in pill form and your own saliva requires a side effects warning label?

Ugh. Brain fried. Fried fried fried.

Compressing

Trying to decompress a bit after many days in a row of crazy.

Starting last Tuesday:

• RCN stood me up and I got stuck home all day while developer's contractor guys switched my incongruous sink for happy-matches-the-rest-of-the-condo sink.
• crashed at NBF's house

Wednesday:

• happy 27th birthday to me!
  
• crawled back home by 7:45 AM so contractor people could come put granite on sink
• good RCN person came after I did much yelling at every RCN person possible
• therapy
• psychiatrist
• picked up NBF and dragged him around for rest of day because it's my birthday, dammit
  
• rented cargo van
• drove to Wheaton to pick up 1920s art deco table and chairs I found on Craigslist
• tried to drink a shmancy beer to celebrate but fell asleep after a few sips and was out for the night by 11 PM

Thursday:

• drove (still in cargo van) to O'Hare to pick up NBF's dad
• waited in cell phone lot while NBF's dad got his luggage
• discovered NBF's dad was actually at Midway.
• drove downtown to meet NBF's dad half-way from Midway to us
• NBF, his dad and I carried 1920s art deco table and chairs from van into condo
• picked up futon and big squishy armchair with ottoman and brought them to condo from NBF's house
• stared stupidly while NBF and his dad carried furniture up stairs
• lunch!
• drove myself in cargo van to Container Store to pick up Elfa closet components for awesome office closet that, once installed, will be the greatest thing in my life
• carried 90% of heavy closet crap up to condo all by myself when NBF and his father appeared (NBF left his cell phone and keys in the van when we parted ways for the afternoon...oops) and they helped with the last bit before I had to run off to return cargo van before Enterprise closed.
• Filled van gas tank and returned van. Flirted with fabulous boy at Enterprise place. Wondered why boy was working at Enterprise.
• Picked own car back up. Filled it with gas, washed its exterior, had 70-year-old car wash operator tell me I'm a beautiful woman and my husband should spoil me and they'll spoil me at the car wash whenever I come back, spent an hour cleaning out car's interior down to my leather wipes so it would be presentable for driving NBF's parents either that night or the next morning
• Shower. Nap.
• Back to O'Hare. Birdie's flight came in after 11.
  
• IHOP for pancakes.
• Sleep like dead people

Friday:

• Coffee with NBF's dad and Birdie at coffee shop across the street until NBF called to say he was at my doorstep, so he joined us having finished his last paper minutes before
  
• Shower and get pretty for graduation. Original pretty sun dress had to be scrapped for layered wear thanks to Chicago refusing warm weather on May 17.
• While NBF and Birdie went straight to the graduation, NBF's dad and I drove back to O'Hare to pick up NBF's mom (NBF's parents, being divorced, hadn't seen eachother in five years. Weeee!).
• Turned around to go get tickets from NBF.
• Turned back around towards O'Hare.
• Rain
• Met up with NBF's mom at the O'Hare Enterprise, which is not near the main stretch of other rental car companies and required my driving back up a one-way stretch on the Avis car return and doing several U-turns before following the Enterprise shuttle into a parking lot behind a hotel
• NBF's mom wanted NBF's dad to drive, which was the whole reason we had to go to the airport even though she was getting a rental car. Then the two of them were going to follow me since I knew where I was going. I also printed up directions for myself and them just in case. They followed closely until the very end when we had to start making turns, at which point they decided to pass me. In the end they followed the directions, which turned out to be slightly wrong, I had them stop in a parking lot, went and found them, and eventually led them into the correct parking lot. We were 15 minutes late and shouldn't have been allowed to sit in the seats Birdie texted me that she saved us, but the woman watching the door we went in was nice and we just spent 15 fewer minutes sitting through boring crap.

So NBF graduated law school and moved back East. No more NBF. Pretty devastated. Plus side: finally being forced to make new friends, leave my cave, etc. Negative side: no more NBF around to satisfy my social urges when I'm not up to doing anything beyond waddling my ass eight blocks down the way and curling up around somebody else's dog.

Birdie is super-swell. Some of our mutual college friends got married and made babies and live in the Midwest, with a pair in Champaign, IL and another in Bloomington, IN. Despite my reluctance towards long car trips (my life-long motion sickness has been worse and more migrainey in the last few years...bullshit asshit faceshit since it wasn't so long ago I did northern Ohio to Key West and back in a weekend) Birdie talked me into meeting the babies and their parents in Indianapolis and then following the Bloomington set home for the night.
So. Much. Fun.
We met up at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis which was awesome. We spent the entire time in two of the exhibits because our friends' one- and barely-two-year-olds couldn't get enough of the dinosaurs and then played themselves silly in the Playscape.
Our Bloomington-based friends' baby boy fell in love with me the moment he saw me. He wanted to show me everything and hold my hand and have me pick him up a lot. Apparently he never does this, not even with his mom's sister, and I'm not that well versed in the art of very small children, so I felt like the most special person in the universe. Both of the kids are completely awesome and gorgeous and all four parents are just so good. They don't let the kids set things on fire or anything, but they're totally cool about letting them explore and not freaking out if they fall or eat their noodles off the floor. I took a bazillion pictures (on my Flickr and Facebook if you know me in reality) and am uploading them right now. There's also a number of pictures on other people's cameras of me dressed as a turtle, palaeontologist, and bee thanks to the child-sized costumes into which I fit, provided by the museum.

My condo is now just me and my dog and the mess from my house guests that I feel strangely compelled to clean. When my apartments were messy they felt right. When my condo is messy it feels wrong. My apartments were nests. My condo is pretty. It is warm and soft because it is pretty, not because it gets filled with crap.

Piece of story I conveniently left out: Friday night. Birdie and I were going to go to the party of a completely different friend of mine, but he lives 45 minutes away by car and we were exhausted and ended up at NBF's friends' condo a block from my condo. NBF's friend is a very attractive boy but he has all kinds of crazy and baggage and story I know about so while jumping him has always been a bit tempting it's also a bit out of the question. Well, said friend has a brother. His brother was in town for graduation. His brother (henceforth known as Beetle) is also very attractive. We played Rock Band, partook of some substances, and made out to the first half of Team America before slinking off to a more private setting for fun and mutual body appreciation. I'm amazed at the difference between boys who know what they're doing and boys who don't. Boys who understand that girls also want to have fun and are not just there to please boys. I'm amazed how gratifying a compliment is when I know it's genuine. How powerful and awesome I can feel. And how much fun it can be on such a non-emotional level. That's another amazing difference: emotional versus unemotional Boy ravaging. The kiss seems less urgent, the touch itself has a different burn. It tingles and pulls from a different place. I still haven't had emotional sex, and as a result, part of me still feels like a virgin. The act may be the same, but even a kiss that means something and one that doesn't are such completely different beasts it's hard to think of them as the same thing. I wonder if and when the person on the other end can tell. One kiss is acted and thought out and just a prelude and a push below. The other I want to hold and devour. Does the kiss recipient know? I've heard such things about the difference in sex. I'd like to see for myself, but I suppose that requires significant emotional attachment to a Boy. Am I really ready for such things?

Today was my decompression day. Tomorrow I have to get back to reality. Terrifying.

Sucky Me Off

Why would you ever, after lasting maybe 90 seconds, assume that your partner is hunky-dory? I don't understand it. Nor do I understand the amazement when I don't let the offender off the hook. I suppose this is why and how such offenders exist and continue to exist long after the sexual revolution and Cosmo and the internet. But dammit, you do not get anything else nor are you going anywhere until you at least make an attempt at getting me off. I'm not demanding two hours of advanced Kama Sutra here.

Boy I slept with totally sucks and now I want him to go away. Really he was annoying the hell out of me before I even slept with him and I knew I was using him from pretty early on in things. But he got exponentially more annoying the more time I spent with him. And while at first I feared I was pulling a "don't want to be part of any club that would have me for a member," it became abundantly clear that I just don't find him interesting and I was using him but he was boring and not very good for the using and now I want him to go away. And I'd feel worse about being the Bicked Bitch of the Best, but he's not even a particularly good person and is a total universal taker and if anything needs a good smacking upside the head. So now I have to figure out how to get rid of him because he clearly doesn't see things the same way and I'm done. No more. Not even worth using anymore. He smells. Literally. Not just smoker stinky but also unwashed stinky. Stinky stinky.

On the plus side, now my confidence is up and I can pursue better, cuter, less smelly boys. Hopefully without having to hack this one to death with a machete first.

No, this post isn't about you

Ever wonder what it would be like to have sex with people with whom you wouldn't necessarily actually have sex? What aspects of your current relationship (whatever it may be) would manifest themselves, and how?

I think about a certain past Boy. Our friendship was complicated to say the least. We could have a wonderful time together, driving around and going to diners and just hanging out and talking about life and the creative process and frustration and happiness and being silly and goofy and dumb as shit. But I had hopes and expectations and things I wanted him to be that he wasn't, and he could turn into a molten asshole on the head of a hairpin. When we hooked up, we always knew we shouldn't. There was something tumultuous and rebellious and sinister about it and we knew it, but the idea that we couldn't fight our passions and our bodies just made everything more desperate and burning and forceful. It was like all the hurt and anger of our relationship came crashing out and rippled and exploded until we were sated. But then he, having expressed what he needed to express, was satisfied, while I wanted more. I loved the tempest and had more to "say." I wasn't done.

Like the sad self-hating creature I was, I kept right on going in this cycle for years. Years. I don't know exactly what changed in me or the friendship to make the "tempest" stop, but hooking up is now just a familiar and pleasurable way attending to a physical need. It's also significantly less frequent, since said Boy has lived in another state for several years.

But it's not always the same part of a relationship that comes through. My sample size is way too small and my imagination is way too busy. I take one friend and wonder if it's the playfulness that would show up, or if we'd get weird and cerebral like we sometimes do, or if it would be just completely comfortable and whatever and ok, because that's also a part of things. Or another friend who might seem totally awkward and wrong, but also might be completely harmonious because we know eachother so well and in such strange intimate ways...

Yes, I need to get laid.