Me <-------------------------------------------> Mr. S.

I still have not heard from Mr. S.

I hate to be the one to break radio silence.

I think he needs to read this.

Porn ( . . . is bad?)

I have long been content with complacency regarding the Porn Debate. I have never considered porn a healthy expression of sexuality (no, it's not a sin; yes, I'm judgemental), but more like the Twinkie of sexuality. Zero nutritional value, but common and relatively harmless. Actually getting upset over it? That was for nuthouses like the Christian Coalition.

At least until I had it thrown in my face.

Now, I'm not the skinniest girl or the prettiest girl, or even the smartest girl. I don't expect men to fall all over themselves for me. Given that I was treated like the troll under the bridge by pretty much everyone until I went away to college, I think I've come a long way in developing any kind of real sexuality, and mapping out what I like, what I don't, what works, and what doesn't.

And one thing that rarely works for me is porn. It took a lot of neurotic suffering (dammit, this WILL turn me on!) before I figured out that 1) porn makes me feel inadequate in both looks and ability and 2) the porn that does work for me is so brutal and degrading that I don't respect myself for liking it. Yes, I like to see other women hurt. I think that says plenty.

All of this is preface to saying Something Happened this morning. I know a man, whom I'll call Headcase, and with whom I have recently started something of a friends-with-benefits type relationship. Except we're not quite friends (the headcase part) and I am still wondering about some of the benefits. Great cock, except he refuses to exploit all its potential. After not having sex last night (see the headcase part) he woke up with morning wood and I wanted to play. So what does Genius do? He gets up out of bed and starts looking at porn on his computer. Okaaayyy.

But I'm a Progressive Girl, right? Porn is Fine With Me, right? I talk to him about what he's looking at -- turns out he wants to show me some clips of girls squirting. Um, okay. (Personally, I think it's kind of gross and I'm glad my body doesn't do it ... but there I go being judgemental again). I noticed that nearly all the clips he was looking through had the odd tic of the girl bringing herself to the brink of orgasm, removing the dildo, and with no stimulation whatsoever continuing to have a full, screaming, body-convulsing orgasm. I commented in an offhanded hey-you-might-want-to-know-this-about-me way that I am not built like that. That my orgasms are facilitated only by continued stimulation, and the train stops dead without it.

And I nearly got my head bitten off for the trouble. Apparently, I am wired "weirdly". Apparently, any woman can "just learn" to squirt and to have these pseudo-spontaneous orgasms.

And while he was excoriating my sexual ability, he left playing a video of what was obviously a sorority girl and a frat boy getting it on in front of his entire frathouse. Nothing new, I'm sure. But the video still made me sad. Even though the girl was obviously mugging for the camera, I don't think she suspected it would go on the internet for the world to see. And I was thinking about this: let's say five years down the road both her boss and the boy's boss see the video. His status will probably be enhanced (sex god, and all); she, on the other hand, might lose her job (the slut!).

Headcase's words and this video, together, really made me think. What is up with this fucked up world that somehow an actress is "better" at being a woman than I am? For all the flak that people in porn take for their job, they are still called "porn actors" for a reason. The sex may be real, but the theatrics are just that. Theatrics. And the sorority girl? I don't even have the words.

And yet maybe getting upset over porn isn't the answer. In a way, it's like the old gun debate. Do guns kill people, or do people kill people? Does porn degrade women or do the people watching porn degrade women? Really, though, does the distinction even matter?!?

On {Marriage}

This Christmas has affected me oddly. Yearning for the family that I used to have is de rigeur, although the loneliness I expected was worse than the loneliness I felt. What I didn't expect, though, is an intense attraction to the notion of being married.

I have known, from an insanely early age like 10 or 11, that I would never get married. It wasn't necessarily low self-esteem . . . I just regarded it as something completely alien. I'll never go to the moon either, you know? As I've aged, that certainty is cemented by compelling financial incentives not to tie myself to another person.

Through this desire, it still feels like an impossibility, but it preys on my brain like a compulsion. It's not based on a relationship, or on love, but on a need to be Chosen. I am green with envy over the people that someone else has picked (right or wrong) as The One. Why not me? Why can't someone love me like that?

Incoherence + Femdom = This Post

Having taken more or less permanently until the end of the year to my bed, I have had an awful lot of time to think about things. My relationships, relationships in general, people and their expectations.

I count myself (mostly) a submissive. I respond to strong, decisive, capable men who know what they want and include me on that list. While I am no shrinking violet, it would take about 1000 years of being desired (because ugliness loneliness compounds at a rate that makes loansharking look like debt forgiveness) before I might feel up to being assertive or Domme-ish about my desires.

Since no such man has stepped forward, I have no choice but to be a strong, decisive, capable woman in my own right. I do many of my own buidling repairs, I move furniture (china cabinets and armoires, people, not carrying a clipboard and saying "put that there"), I run my own business. My work underlings are all men -- there has been no small amount of tension over taking orders from a woman, and one who is younger than them to boot. When I first took this job, I learned quickly that the mediation and inclusion that is most women's method of communicating ("*giggle* well what do *you* think?") would not get results. I have learned to speak confidently and authoritatively in order to get done what I need. I don't expect these men to love me, but I know for a fact they respect me. In the work world, that is all that is required.

Personal relationships, however, are something altogether different. Yes, there are men out there who claim to want a strong-minded woman, but the reality is these men go home with bimbos. Most men don't want a woman who is demonstrably more capable than they are. It is threatening. And frankly, I don't blame them. Being myself a woman, I don't want a man who is more feminine than I am. (Sorry, crossdressers; that's just the way I am.) Were I a man, I wouldn't want a woman more masculine than me. And yet, turning off the "mannish", opinionated, capable qualities work leadership requires is not so easy as flipping a switch.

When I was in high school, my female friends would drive me absolutely batty with the pickup ploy of parking next to the target boy, leaving their car headlights on at lunch so they had a dead battery by the end of the day, and then employing the "*giggle* *bat eyelashes* I'm so helpless!" routine in order to get target boy to jumpstart the car. Invariably said boy barely knew a dipstick from a shift stick and the operation would take an hour or more, all the while girl is plying him with encouragement ("oh I'm so glad someone knows about these complicated things") and posing against the car. *gag* *hack* *walk home* ... But then, maybe that's why I'm your Spinster and they're married (happily or otherwise).

Even so, and quite without intention, my online coterie has developed in the last few months a sizable segment of submissive-minded men. I don't quite understand this, and I don't know what to do with it. I have no problem with the Honey-do flavor of submission in relationships ("Honey, do the dishes" or "Honey, take out the garbage") but I don't want to Domme a relationship. I don't want the responsibility, even if I have the inclinations that (occasionally) may sate someone else's desires. "You want me to whip you? Really? Ok!"

Filler

I keep waiting for something post-worthy to happen, and nothing's going. I am still stuck in a Nexus of Evil, which sent me to fetally to bed for the better part of a week. LawBoy has disappeared due to final exams; Mr. S has for the most part been avoiding me because of the breakdown on his doorstep that preceeded my boudoir retreat.

(On second thought, that may in itself be post-worthy. Once in a while someone calls me "cold-hearted" because I don't seem to cry about the things other women cry about. I learned a long time ago that that *other* women's crying brings out the protective side of men -- *my* crying makes them go away. I thought that Mr. S was an exception to the rule because I have shed tears in front of him ... little did I realize when I turned to him in my agony that it was having emotion that was so repulsive. Since that day I have heard virtually nothing from him.)

I have had a great deal of time to think about my loneliness, its causes, and its solutions. Some people are social butterflies, and so the advice "get out there and meet people" works for them. I'm just not interested in "meeting people" and there is a very finite number of friendships I care to maintain just for the sake of maintaining friendships. Trying to be something I'm very obviously not is literally trying to wear shoes that don't fit -- sometimes you can put them on for a little while, but in the end it can't be maintained. So the lesson here is to do a better job of accepting myself as I am.

Within that, I also need to do a better job of defining who I am. I loathe dating for its interview-like aspects, but I think I can do a better job of explaining myself to others without getting bogged down in capital-M Marketing. Right now I am a badly written novel in need of some editing . . . not to cut pieces out or rewrite scenes, mind you, but to sharpen the focus and increase the craft. The elements that make me "Me" could be a whole lot more interesting if they were a little less of some of column A and some of column B.

Batting Zero

Where do I go wrong?

Self-absorption is an inevitable side-effect of a diaristic blog like this one, but I think it is not a trait that infects my daily life. From my close friends, I am forever getting gruff about putting others' well-being before my own.

And then there are times like last night, when I wonder if I'm experiencing the same world as everybody else.

First, Mr. Crash & Burn came out of the woodwork to rub a little more salt in my wound, and he said part of his disinterest was that I seemed self-absorbed, that my interests were all related to my own life. Huh? Of course, this is from a man who gave a 20 minute monologue (albeit entertaining) about the Grossness of Mushrooms.

Then I had a conversation with LawBoy that really upended my view of things. Now, I am a pathologically shy person in certain ways. I never reach out to touch another person - if there is any contact they have initiated it, and that holds true for each time I see them. The same thing with flirting. Despite this, it just so happens that nearly every time I've gotten together with LawBoy, we've had sex. Therefore I was quite baffled when LawBoy announced that we should only be IM friends from now on because he felt "expected to put out" when we got together. Huh?!?!

Were I a better person, I might take from this that shyness is a waste of time. Were I feeling Zen, I might accept that rejection is just how things are. But I am neither of these things, so I simmer in my shame and humiliation in not being someone these men want.

Crash and Burn

So I went out on a date Friday night. Yay for The Spinster, right? Not so much. I thought this was a Nice Guy, and from our chats online he seemed to have an intelligent head on his shoulders. He matched my self-employment and unconventional life -- I hoped there'd be a better chance of connection than with some of the cookie-cutter people out there.

The weather having turned absolutely frigid this week here, I opted to skip girliness and dress for warmth. Perhaps that was a mistake, but I am not a big fan of frostbite. We went to dinner at a restaurant halfway between our cities, and convenient to neither of us. I found his conversation charming, although a bit heavy on the interview style. On the way to our cars after dinner, he gave me one of the more lukewarm hugs I've ever had. You know the "dead fish" style of handshake? This was the hug version.

Still, it was something of a surprise when he IM'd me today saying it was nice to have dinner, but he wasn't interested in pursing anything due to a lack of chemistry. Hmph.