Sophianotloren

The problem is, I need help to get the help that I need. And I don’t know how to get the help that will get me the help I need. And it’s also often likely that the help I need isn’t available, or isn’t available to me in particular, or isn’t available to me right now, etc. etc. etc.

And since I don’t know where to begin with getting help, or getting help to get help, or getting help to get help to get help… I don’t get a lot of things done that would make it easier for me to do more on my own, to need less help.

I need someone to hang out while I work on tackling the mess in the room I’m staying in. I need to have someone around on consecutive days, or at least not more than a few days apart, until it’s in a reasonably organized state. But, shit… I can’t even get someone to hang out with me for fun more than once or twice a month just for fun stuff, and that’s almost always the same person [Again] who comprises most of my extremely limited social life. Trying to repeatedly call and hassle and schedule and reschedule and coordinate just is way beyond my capacity.

I need a place to live. That’s… something that feels pretty much impossible, honestly. It’s been since at least July 2013 that I’ve been looking. It’s really been that long, because the lease on the place I shared with [MFP] originally expired in September 2013. I ended up staying there until February 2014, and I’ve been homeless since then, trapped up in this place in the hills where [The Rabbit] has a spare room (mostly storage, but there’s a bed here and I’ve really all but moved in.) I thought I had things settled for a while, but unfortunately things fell through and my hopes for getting out of here vanished — along with a few months of time that I might have otherwise been looking while prices have continued to rise everywhere.

There are other things I need, and much smaller things. I can often break down my needs into very small, theoretically manageable pieces… but I always seem to find that those are only manageable with assistance, or that the first step that I can do on my own requires another step to be accomplished by someone else, or requires something that can’t be done at all. There’s always some prerequisite to beginning to address my needs.

So I often just give up and avoid everything, instead… which doesn’t accomplish anything either. And I try to tell myself that I’m right to avoid trying to take care of things that I can’t, that I’m doing self-care, trying to spin little things that don’t honestly feel like accomplishments into “yay I got something done” and it feels like it’s all lies. I don’t believe myself when I say that “I took a relaxing bath, go me” was self-care… not when I know I went in there to shave my body because I was freaking out with the only dysphoria I really deal with and I didn’t shave at all. I don’t believe myself when I say that I got something accomplished today, because even though I got my bus pass for the month and ate a meal, I missed my pills and I didn’t call back the psychiatric intake folks who said they’d call me back last Thursday, and I didn’t stop at the couple of stores I planned to to stock up on some stuff for actual self-care, and I didn’t get several other things done that I needed to. The day feels wasted, and trying to say that I was awesome because I got a couple of things actually accomplished way behind schedule doesn’t feel honest.

I’m just rambling and not saying anything worth anything anymore, and I’m stalling laying down and maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe going to sleep. There’s food rotting in here. There’s so much mess overflowing everywhere it makes me want to scream. I need help. I don’t have help. I feel helpless and hopeless and I just want to get out of here, to be anywhere safe, and I don’t know how.

“He’s from Alabama? No wonder he’s such an idiot. All those stupid inbred redneck hicks come from the South.  Alabama, Georgia, Texas, whatever… his momma and his auntie are probably one and the same.”

“Man, I’d really love to have one of those Chinese girls for a wife… so sweet, and soft, and you know they never talk back to their husbands! I love that exotic air of mystery they have…”

“Wait, you said your teacher was condescending, impatient, and rude? Let me guess… totally a woman, right? Hate to say it, but that’s just how girls are!”

Totally offensive, right? Completely unacceptable things to say. I mean, they’re horrible things to believe, even if you keep your mouth shut about it, but I hope that most of you can recognize that these stereotypes are over-broad, that they deny the agency of any individual person who happens to fit into a category because of something to do with the circumstances of their birth.

There are millions of people born in the southeastern United States, hundreds of thousands (at least) in Alabama. To insist that you know anything about a person from that single fact is arrogant, ignorant, and completely narrow-minded. Sure, there are lots of people who make those assumptions anyway, but that doesn’t mean they’re right!

There are as many ways to be a woman as there are women — none of them more valid than any other. To insist that you know anything about someone based solely on their gender is arrogant, ignorant, and completely narrow-minded. Lots of folks still do, sadly.

And… ugh. Please, don’t get me started on the Colonialist, racist bullshit that sits behind the fetishization of East Asian women. Just… eww. And yes, sadly, there are plenty of folks who are into that. Shit, someone who’s a blood relation is off the deep end of that Orientalism cesspool, mail-order bride and everything. I’ve seen it up close, and it’s disgusting.

So what about this, then? “Oh, you just had your birthday? I bet you’re super sensitive to criticism, aren’t you? Always trying to help people out? You seriously need to get out and do something with your life, stop sitting around all the time!”

Especially if you just barely met someone, then I guarantee you that you don’t know enough about them to make those kinds of claims. But for some reason, it’s much more socially acceptable to deny individual agency and make arrogant assumptions about someone based on over-broad stereotypes… when you base it on one category about the circumstances of a person’s birth: that person is obviously a Pisces, and so you can generally get away with insisting that you know everything about them!

I call bullshit on that. I call bullshit just as much as on the rest of those sickening, harmful stereotypes, and I call bullshit on anyone who claims that they can take shortcuts instead of getting to know you. I call bullshit on projecting a stereotyped image that gets in the way of actually interacting with an individual.

I call bullshit on the laughable idea that the place and time of my birth have any bearing on my future. I call bullshit on the disempowerment of giving up control over what I do and how I do it, giving that up to some bullshit stereotype that some other humans decided to write up into tables and graphs and circles and charts and symbols. I call bullshit on anyone writing my future besides me.

And, no doubt, there will be folks who jump in to tell me that this is exactly what they’d expect from a [some guess at when I was born and what my “sign” is based on the aforementioned bullshit] — which of course leaves the wiggle-room of “oh, well, I guess I was wrong, but that one shares some traits with this other sign, so I was still right about the ignorant, arrogant, agency-denying assumptions I made! Ha!” And really? One thing I’ve found fairly consistently is that for folks who choose to give up their own agency to the star charts, it’s difficult for them to handle others who haven’t joined in with drinking the Kool-Aid.

Even worse is the folks who use their birth date as an excuse and a rationalization for their own failings — “Well, yeah, I should’ve admitted I was wrong about that, but you know how stubborn we Taurus folks are!” or “Yes, I know I was late… again… I just can’t seem to get things together, I’m definitely an airy, air-headed Gemini!” How about admitting personal fault instead of shrugging it off as inescapable? I suppose that would be too close to admitting that you’re responsible for yourself, instead of having the handy excuse of something “out there” having determined everything about you from the day you were born, wouldn’t it?

And as far as that goes, I can guarantee I know your sign.

To the happy Christian, faith in Jesus Christ is an essential component of a healthy life.

To the happy atheist, avoiding “faith” and relying on observable data, reasoning, and logic are essential to being healthy.

To the happy veterinarian, knowing all about how to interpret the nonverbal communication of cats and dogs is essential to making a healthy income.

To the happy person who’s allergic to pet fur, simply staying away from cats and dogs is essential to staying healthy, and otherwise those animals don’t affect their income at all.

To the happy vegan, abstaining from eating or drinking all animal products is essential to a healthy diet.

To the happy omnivore, meat or milk or honey can be essential to eating healthy.

After interacting with someone who responded to one of my craigslist “housing wanted” ads a few days ago, I realized that I should probably include a mention of my eating meat, because the “no smoking” in my ad has been taken once again (as it has by more than one person) to suggest that I’m the type who avoids alcohol and every other substance, who thinks that sex is bad, who only eats vegetables and other plant-based stuff and considers all of that to be encompassed by the word “healthy.” (See also: fat shaming, gym-rats, “spirituality not religion,” white people super into “Eastern” culture/religion/medicine… not uncommon to find the all of those in one package.)

So I added a bit in there where I had already mentioned that I love to cook, and said “I enjoy food and the opportunity to cook (including meat, an essential component of a healthy diet.)” And for me, it is an essential component!

Next day I get a reply to that ad. Not someone offering housing, nope! Someone whose email shows their name as “yogamassage” (seriously, that’s what it showed… the fit for the stereotype is just too hilarious) writes:

It’s all good that you like meat and want it in your diet and are being upfront about it, but why say something so factually wrong as this?

(including meat, an essential component of a healthy diet.)

So now I’m wondering… should I tell all Christians who say that faith in Jesus Christ is essential that they are “so factually wrong?” How about telling atheists that they’re “so factually wrong” for living without faith? Is the vet or the person with allergies the one who’s “so factually wrong?” And does this “yogamassage” person understand that what is true for them does not and never will be truth for many other people? Apparently not!

I’ll end this by quoting (as I often have before) lyrics from Peter, Paul, and Mary’s “Rolling Home” —

There’s nothing big I want to prove
No mountain that I need to move
Or even claim what’s right or true for you…
My sights, my songs, are slightly charred
And you might think they’ve missed their mark
But things are only what they are
And you’re nothing new —
But for me? I think they’ll do.
For me, I think they’ll do.

It’s interesting — I have to keep reminding myself that not everyone can see the traces of someone’s editing process in their writing like I can. And there’s some interesting things I notice…

For example, I got a reply to one of my Craigslist “housing wanted” ads yesterday. Someone who had actually read the ad — a rarity — and followed the instructions for contacting me. She mentioned that she had two rooms opening up (a bad sign for me, because it means moving in with one near-stranger and one complete stranger) and linked me to the ad she had up for the other, more expensive room. The room she was writing to me about was already at my maximum, and I’d be expected to additionally share the cost of utilities, which put it way out of my reach.

But the things that stood out to me were that even though she talked about herself first, it showed that she’d initially given her list of requirements first — in the “Me:” section were things like “I’m also a non-smoker, non-drinker, and vegan” for example, and other stuff that referenced the section down below about “You: must be (blah blah blah.)”

And in that section, she had things like “not a heavy drinker” and something about how “you recognize that housekeeping is a part of life” and how you’ll make sure the house “stays very tidy” and holy shit, the way she wrote it translated so clearly as “I’m an anal-retentive neat freak and likely a control freak as well” and then she ended that section by saying “bonus points” if you’re vegetarian or vegan.

She also mentioned in there that you “won’t have frequent overnight guests.” Okay, look — I really, really don’t understand the sex-hate and the slut-shaming around here. Whether in the (once-upon-a-time) Hippie Central of Berkeley or the supposed “Queer Capital” of San Francisco (though that’s becoming more Oakland these days) or anywhere in the “Gay Area” — the first thing I see is “no overnight guests.” Occasionally I’ll see something like this chick wrote, and it’s “no frequent overnight guests.” And it makes no fucking sense to me! Look, I get not wanting someone to “not quite move in” their significant other. I’ve lived with the Girl-Child and her Boy-Toy who “didn’t live there” — he just stayed over every single night, hung out there every single day, and made the water and gas bills triple in just the first month with all of the hour-long shower-sex sessions they were having. That sucks, and I wouldn’t expect anyone to be okay dealing with that. But having someone over two or three times a week? Someone who leaves in the morning, has minimal interaction with and minimal impact on anyone else living there? News flash: some people fuck. Some people aren’t ashamed of that. Some people don’t do monogamy. Some people don’t have a “steady partner” who has their own home and doesn’t care that “my place or yours” always has the same answer.

But remember, kids — sex is bad, mmkay? Even if it’s part of looking after and maintaining your health! Trying to explain that to people is often not worth the effort. Also — okay, you choose to eliminate a bunch of potential food sources from your dietary intake, as a matter of your overall health and well-being. I choose to give my body the foods that it needs for my overall health and well-being. But in the Bay Area there are more folks who selectively restrict their diets (and many more who have the financial luxury of being able to do so) than there are people like me — poor and not picky. But even if I were rich I wouldn’t try to harm myself that way. Finding housing with other omnivores is another headache on top of everything else.

So is finding housing without animals running around… I’m allergic to pets, and I don’t much like most of them anyway. I may play with your cat, as long as I can get away afterwards, and I’ll avoid your dog (yes, I’m sure she’s the sweetest little puppy in the whole wide world, and I don’t think she’s going to bite me. I’m not scared of her, just not fond of her. Really. Yes, I know that she licks my hands and face because she likes me. Should I lick your hands and face, too? Oh, yeah, that is kinda gross. Welcome to my world.)  The times that I do find animal-free housing, it’s the folks who make everything to do with animals a political rallying point. And I can’t deal with cigarette smoke, either — finding smoke-free places often means also finding people who think that alcohol is a horrible, disgusting thing, that anyone who drinks is a moral failure and a worthless, unmotivated loser who just needs to find a purpose so they won’t need to lean on those drugs anymore. And look, I don’t care if you use pot, smoked or vaped or edible or whatever. I might have even encountered it myself at some point, and I don’t think I could claim it’s a bad thing at all — seems like (hypothetically, of course) it would be rather pleasant. But I can’t live with it, not in the same space I’m supposed to call home. Sure, come home high as fuck sometimes, I couldn’t give any less of a shit. Come home drunk, whatever — I certainly will sometimes! But most folks seem to expect that if you’re cool with one drug, you’re cool with them all, and in any amount, and at all times. Moderation or being selective isn’t possible, somehow… if you’re cool with booze, you’re obviously cool with weed and tobacco and who knows, maybe someone does a few lines when they get home tonight, why would you care? Or you’re on the other end of things: no tobacco, no cannabis, no alcohol, and if you choose to take any of those into your body you’re a horrible person who deserves to suffer because clearly you don’t care about yourself!

Just… Ugh. No men, no pets, no smoking. Yes to meat, yes to sex, yes to booze. I’d ask why that’s such an incredibly difficult concept, but then I remember that it’s only incredibly difficult when you’re trying to spend over 90% of your above-the-table income on rent, and you’re not likely to find even the bottom-end options for under 150% of your income.  I’m too broke to ask for basic access needs, and if I do, I’m somehow a super-picky bitch.

I just wanna go home.

Wake with a headache like every other day
I think I’m clenching my jaw while I sleep
Bounced awake today by the crashing panicked sounds of
Half-an-hour-late-out-the-door
(which means running early, honestly, for them)
and that goddamned
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP
From every entry or exit
(why are the wealthy so desperately afraid?)

I manage to get myself upright
Empty the bladder
(and this time I don’t even have to find a way to cover my body in pretended shame)
Start into the morning routine,
Checking mail
Paying next month’s bills
(since I have enough money to do so now)
Look through Facebook, nothing critically important
Just a handful of posts complaining about
Fat women comfortable in their bodies,
Gay men enjoying sex for themselves
Religious and ethnic minorities daring to question their shitty treatment
(why do the folks benefiting most from oppression so full of hate?)

Before I can get away, get dressed, get out, get fed
The others are back again
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP
Announcing that the perimeter has been breached
(they’re coming for us! you’re not safe! there’s somebody in the house! be afraid!)
Though the sniffing, snorting, nose-blowing, coughing, choking, guh-HURK! guh-HRRRRRRRRHHHHKKKKK!
Of a still-untreated sickness just as loudly signals to me
That I am not safe
That I am not alone
That I am not allowed any peace
(why are my simple and specific needs so difficult to consider, so hard for others to take seriously?)

So instead of actually getting anything done,
I’m sitting here typing up this stupid thing
Doing anything I can to make more noise
Because the only option I ever seem to have is to harm myself
In a manner of my own choosing
Or to let others decide the method and amount of harm

fuck everything

I’ve been up a little less than 6 hours now. I slept for about 10 hours before that, after finally knocking myself out with NyQuil.

My head has been absolutely THUNDERING PAIN since I woke up, and at first I figured I was probably dehydrated, and possibly a little bit hungry too. I went to get something to drink just after I was awake, but I had so  little energy that I just drank a glass of milk because I didn’t feel like pouring any more than that. I got some leftovers out and heated them, and after 3 minutes of heating I didn’t care if it was warmed through or not. Hungry. Took that back upstairs and ate a little bit, but had no appetite and finally dragged the rest back to the fridge…

Then I figured since the headache was still around, I’d take a bath. I was already feeling irritable because when I was trying to microwave my food, I didn’t have anywhere to set things as I was wrangling with the haphazard house-of-cards mess that comprises the fridge contents, because The Rabbit had left her mess of stuff all over when she went to bed (she doesn’t tend to clean up behind herself, though, which is a continual frustration for me.) So I go in to the tub with a headache and a foul mood…

…and then I spend almost 15 minutes cleaning up after her so that I could take a bath! She had left her shampoo precariously balanced on the edge of the tub the other day when she took a bath this week (she seems to only bathe weekly or less,) and that must have been the crashing noise I heard when I was using the toilet a couple days ago. I didn’t think to check, because I’m pretty much fed up with constantly cleaning up after her, with that work never acknowledged or thanked or possibly even ever noticed. Well, that shampoo bottle wasn’t in the tub anymore, but the long trail of shampoo that had poured out across the entire length of the tub down to the drain was in the tub.

That stuff makes a hell of a lather, I’ll tell you that much.

Took my bath, nice and hot the way I like it (and the heat actually lasted through the entire time filling the tub, which is unusual.) Head is still POUNDING. All the coughing I’ve been doing hasn’t helped, either. The worst of this cold was fairly short, but this fucking cough has been killing me still, almost a week after the rest of the symptoms have gone.

So I sit down to write about it the headache, and as I’m looking at the numbers, I realize that from the time I ate dinner on Monday night until the time I pecked at a tiny bit of my leftovers was over 24 hours without food. And the worse part is shrugging my shoulders at the knowledge that it’s not unusual at all for me. I don’t have very much in the way of food I can eat here, and even when I do, it’s not much help since I’m usually trying to get the fuck out of here to attempt to maintain my sanity.

I still have no idea how I’m going to find a place to live. I can’t afford the luxury of a safe roof overhead, and I can’t afford the constant sensory assault, the complete lack of time alone, and the consistent stressful interactions with the people here, living on someone else’s schedule. I don’t have enough energy to throw myself into any significant work, and all of the things I need to accomplish require help or input from other people. Even something that should be simple, like cleaning this room I’m staying in I can’t do alone; it requires The Rabbit to get her stuff cleared out more (and she’s promised and promised that she’ll make some closet space free so I can at least put my clothes away.) That doesn’t happen without her actually putting in the time and effort. And when I’m not sleeping well, or enough… and I’m not eating well, or enough… and I’m not masturbating regularly even when I’m horny… and I’m barely scraping by in far too many ways… I don’t have the energy to do more than that.

My head still hurts, so I really ought to publish this, get some more liquid in me, take some ibuprofen, and maybe throw in some cough syrup to the mix because this stupid tickle in my throat is driving me crazy.

Just thinking about how it often seems that taking measures to keep yourself safe is seen as evidence that you’re doing something “bad.”

Carrying condoms or other safe sex supplies on you? You’re obviously doing sex work, and those supplies are still used as evidence of your alleged “crime” in plenty of places.

Using encryption tools on your electronic devices? You’re obviously a terrorist or a violent child rapist (the two currently-trendy bogeymen endlessly hauled out to frighten people into giving away their rights and freedoms) and the fact that you’ve used those tools is often used as evidence of your alleged wrongdoing.

Keep your money in cash stashed somewhere instead of keeping it in a bank? Use a pre-paid cheapo phone, maybe even get one that (in the U.S.) isn’t locked to a specific mobile carrier? Both of those are frequently deemed “suspicious” and pointed to as obvious indicators that you’re up to no good.

You know what I hear in all of that? I hear the echoes of a (hypothetical) abusive partner saying “If you really loved me, you wouldn’t have any boundaries, and you wouldn’t hide anything from me, and you’d let me take care of everything for you! Just trust me!” And that raises all sorts of red flags…

I’m in the process of reading an excellent non-fiction book at the moment, “Harmful to Minors: The Perils of protecting children from sex” by Judith Levine. Only made it about halfway through so far, but it’s a brilliant read already.

Published in 2001, it’s at least as relevant today as then — and refreshing to see one more voice among the very few willing to speak truth and cite sources instead of simply parroting the politically palatable lies and hysteria that (sadly) seem to dominate discourse on the subject today.

From the inside cover blurb of the dust jacket: “Through interviews with young people and their parents, stories drawn from today’s headlines, visits to classrooms and clinics, and a look back at the ways sex among children and teenagers has been viewed throughout history, Judith Levine debunks some of the dominant myths of our society. She examines and challenges widespread anxieties (pedophilia, stranger kidnapping, Internet pornography) and sacred cows (abstinence-based sex education, statutory rape laws). Levine investigates the policies and practices that affect kids’ sex lives– censorship, psychology, sex and AIDS education, family, criminal, and reproductive law, and the journalism that begs for ‘solutions’ while inciting more fear.”

The book starts with a foreword by Dr. Jocelyn Elders — y’know, the former U.S. Surgeon General who was fired from that job for daring to say that masturbation is a natural and healthy thing to do (gasp! The horror! Quick, clutch your pearls with me! Let’s all scream in unison, “THINK OF THE CHILDREN!” Whew! That’s better… almost let in a bit of sense there, didn’t we?) and continues through several themed chapters, each addressing an area of common misconception, or bad public policy, or backwards social standards. She makes simple, easily understandable arguments for her positions and references primary sources, shows parallels between the current moralistic panics and similar ones throughout history, and brings into sharp relief much of the absurdity surrounding the contemporary received wisdom — making a solid case for why the measures taken to “protect” children from anything and everything to do with sex are the things which are truly (as the title states) harmful to minors.

Looking forward to finishing the rest of the book soon, and perhaps I’ll write a bit more when I’ve done so! If you have the opportunity, pick up a copy. Try your local public library if nothing else — you might just find that a shot of truth, neat, no chaser, will open your mind… and maybe even give you a glimpse of something other than irrational fear to motivate you!

I posted my usual “off to bed, goodnight!” on Facebook ages ago, but I couldn’t sleep… so I pulled out a stack of hard drives I’d taken out of my stuff in storage last time I was there, to see which (if any) of them worked, and what might be on them.

Found a bunch of video diary clips I thought I’d lost forever, although not (sadly) the ones I have been hunting for from when I was head-over-heels in love for the first time. (I recall seeing myself giggling as I attempted to recite lyrics to “All The Things She Said” for example, and it was both delightfully cute and acutely painful to know just how ignorant and blind I was, and how much misery she’d leave me with just 3 weeks later.)

Then on another disk I found a directory full of images, video clips, and miscellaneous documents I’d downloaded ages ago from a handful of sites that don’t exist anymore and would be difficult to track down at best… and more likely impossible for me to find again. I had put a significant amount of time and effort into getting these, and I thought they were gone. Turns out I have them still… score!

As if that weren’t enough, I also came across a handful of photos my mom had sent me, at my request, of me at various points in my life before I left home. They were lower resolution than the ones she’d sent the first time, but those high-resolution copies got eaten on my end and then later when her system crashed, too. Either way, I have several old photos of myself that I had though were gone forever.

Took a bath after copying files off of several drives, and as I stood up from the tub, I opened the window…

Outside, I could see only a patch of starry sky. I was struck again by the intense reminder that I haven’t been out under a starry sky in a very long time, and I want that again. I don’t have any interest in camping alone, mind you; I want to go out with someone I care for, but not to go out in the woods and have sex (even though I hear it’s, like, fucking in tents!) but to get away from everything with somebody who understands that we can get away together, and can share both silence and conversation as we both desire. The last time I had that was… long ago. Before the last time anyone came inside me, and the last person to do that was my psycho ex, back at the very beginning of 2011.

I need a break from all of this, though. From the daily stress and constant overwhelming sensory overload. From the petty squabbling and pointless chatter around me. From the isolation when I dread it and the complete lack of privacy when it’s essential.

Oh, and sex on a more frequent basis would make a world of difference, too… just one night with Again and I felt so awesome, so refreshed and so alive. And then I slept wonderfully, and my sleep was filled with dreams, and my dreams were filled with sex, sex, sex, and more sex. My mind and body remembered this thing I’d gone so long without; the appetite again awakened and stirred from sleep left my sleep stuffed with sex of all sorts.

I write quite often when I’m tired, I’ve noticed. Ditto with making my audio and/or video diaries. I’m okay with that, just something I’ve noticed. Also, going back through some of those old entries, I’ve found several bits where I detailed a dream I’d had, and I want to transcribe some of them… there’s some pretty interesting stuff in there!

A few thoughts rattling around that I want to get out before I sleep…

Self-determination. I see it as essential. It is what underpins my support for access to abortion for anyone who chooses to do so. It’s why I see it as important for people who fuck to be able to do so in any way that works for the ones involved, and why I think that the law needs to back out of the bedroom.

It’s also why I feel it absolutely critical that someone who chooses to end their life have that as an option. Whether that’s someone who is at the end of a long and happy life who is ready to leave, whether that’s someone old and miserable and in the final stages of cancer and asking another person to help them die, whether that’s someone young and hurting for any number of reasons — the ability to determine one’s own course is more important than pretty much anything else.

That’s why I’m not comfortable forcibly preventing someone from suicide. I’m not okay with involving law enforcement to negate the right to self-determination, not to mention all the other ways that cops fuck things up.

And yes, I realize that it may sound contradictory when I say that I’m doing everything I can right now to keep someone I care deeply about from suicide… but I’m not going to force anything. I’m hoping to change a mind, but I also fully acknowledge that the choice is not mine to make.

“My body, my choice!” It’s not just about so-called reproductive rights. And I can’t claim to support doing what I want with my own body if I won’t equally support everyone else in doing the same, no matter how much or how little I agree with their choices.

I’m going to sleep now.

Today I have been single for longer than I was together with MFP. We were together 1 year, 1 month, 11 days. It’s now been 1 year, 1 month, 12 days since I broke up with her (though it was much earlier than that things were falling apart, sadly.)

I’m lonely.

I’m horny.

I’m stressed out and frustrated and homeless, and the last few times that I’ve had a glimmer of hope that things might go somewhere with a girl, it’s ended horribly.

One chick who was crushing madly on me and when we sat down to have a talk about “where do we wanna go with ‘us” from here” she realized that me just being me was going to bring up childhood trauma for her, and she cut things off. Another woman who brought me back to her place and then stopped returning my messages after the sex was mediocre at best, didn’t even have the decency to say “hey, this isn’t going to work.” Another woman recently was totally into me, making a point of how much she wanted to hang out and get closer… and then told me to fuck off and get a sense of humor because I had the gall to say, “actually, that ‘joke’ is kinda mean and it hurts my feelings.” And just before I met her, there was the amazing lady who spent a good chunk of a night out at the club smooshing my face against her tits and both of us enjoying her having me as a service submissive… and then a few days later I got a threatening message from her boyfriend telling me to stop “harassing” her, or else. Still no fucking clue what happened with that situation.

And so when there’s the possibility of a connection, I don’t even really want to put myself out there, because it’s hard to feel like it’ll be any different from all the other times before. I need my heart held, my body connected with another, mutually pleasurable sex and pain and whatever… but I’m scared that I’ll have my heart torn and dropped, my body remembering the touch of someone long gone, lousy sex (if any sex) and the only pain coming from “goodbye.” And there’s a fine, fine line between that and “you’re wonderful” — I just keep finding myself on the wrong side of that line.

Sunday, I didn’t get much sleep. On Monday I only caught about 4 hours, and couldn’t get any more rest despite all efforts to do so, and wasn’t feeling all that great. Went out for a drink, and on the way back — about 11:30 — I asked Rabbit if she wouldn’t mind stopping for something along the way. Went to Wing Stop, since I knew they’d be open, and grabbed 20 “boneless wings,” half Atomic (AKA “Flaming Asshole in the Morning”) flavor, and half Teriyaki flavor. Since it came with a side dish I got fries, and as for the drink — I wanted to steer clear of caffeine, but I didn’t feel like whatever their lemon-lime offering was, so I went with orange.

Fast-forward to 9am Tuesday morning, and I was still awake, and frustrated, and wondering what had happened. Then I suddenly realized: I bet their orange soda was Sunkist! Caffeinated, no question. Oops! All that careful work to avoid it, wasted. It was almost noon on Tuesday when I did finally get to bed again.

So! My plans for Tuesday rather went out the window, then… but I got quite a bit of sleep. And when I slept, I had some intense and incredible (or perhaps incredibly frustrating) dreams!

When I woke shortly after 8pm, it was from a dream where I had been at my usual pub, making eyes at a very lovely young woman across the room, and she had been quite enthusiastically returning my glances. I can still see the low scooped neck of her blouse, thin blue and white stripes making plenty of room for her ample cleavage to show… I can picture the exact shade of her skin, the way her long hair moved around and with her…

Anyway, after a few moments of distant flirting, she stood up, walked over to me, and the first thing she said to me was, “Um, excuse me, but… are you trans*?”

Ouch. Not exactly the best opening line ever, but I tried to handle things gracefully, and I replied, “Pleasure to meet you! You’re quite lovely. You might keep in mind that your first words to me were to ask about what’s between my legs… now, I’m also quite interested in the potential for seeing your naked body [in the dream I paused briefly, took a pointed look down to her crotch, looked back up, then began speaking again] and I’m certainly flattered that you’ve expressed such an interest in mine. My name’s [I gave her my name] — what’s yours? Oh, and yes, I do have a cock.”

I woke just before she could reply. My brain, I tell ya — it loves teasing me! Grr. Even in my dreams things end before they get started.

I went back to sleep a few minutes later, and woke again around 10:45pm. This time, I had been walking around in public somewhere in my dream, and there was a guy leading a woman around on a leash, crawling on hands and knees. She wasn’t wearing much; I seem to recall that whatever she had on made room for her extremely large breasts to hang out in the open.  I moved closer to see what was going on, and by the time I got near, it was quite obvious that he was fucking her face, and doing so in the middle of the sidewalk. This wasn’t gentle fellation on her part, either, this was rough, throat-deep, how-does-she-not-have-a-gag-reflex fucking from him. He had just pulled out and left quite the load of cum in and around her mouth; she was licking herself clean and I stepped up to him to ask, “Pardon me, sir, do you mind if I have a go?” He shrugged, said simply, “Sure,” and handed me her leash, stepping to the side to watch. I lifted my skirt, slipped her head under, and just as her lips touched my skin…

I woke up. Seriously?! And yes, unsurprisingly, I was extremely erect when I awoke, and because everything was so noisy here and I needed to get to the bathroom to empty my bladder, I couldn’t do anything about it.

I really need sex. And soon. And more often than once every few months (it’s been since the beginning of October, and before that would have been maybe sometime in August.) Because at the moment, I’m dreaming my life away!

I guess I’m just weird in my ability to just not give a fuck about so many things.

I drink — and enjoy — Coke and Pepsi, and diet versions of both, as well as plenty of other colas and other flavors of soft drink. I use Windows on my main computer, but I’ve used — and had both good and bad to say about — multiple versions of Mac OS, Linux, and a handful of other less-known and less popular operating systems. I don’t drive, but I also don’t see the sense in zealously clinging to one manufacturer and the bloodlust for anyone who doesn’t drive the same kind of vehicle. Sports team rivalries, fights about which genre of music is “the right kind of music,” or about which band is “actually good” within a certain type of music, seem strange to me.

And then there’s all the other false dichotomies I watch people set up, seemingly so that they have something to be “right” about (and so that those who disagree can be “wrong.”) Like, the completely bullshit division between “good” herbs and “natural” medicine on one hand, contrasted against “artificial” pharmaceutical drugs and “manufactured” treatments — or, if you’re on the “other side” of the made-up argument, the “benefits” of modern medical technology and the “backwards” attitudes of the people who “still use folk cures.” And similar to that is the artificial dicide between “good” medicine versus “bad” drugs / “fun” drugs versus “Big Pharma’s” pills.

Guess what, though? It’s all bullshit! You can totally take ibuprofen or Vicodin in the morning to help with your headache, if you partied hard the night before with lots of drinking and other drugs. Recreational use and therapeutic use work together just fine. You can boil some willow bark in the evening for a pain-killer tea, and take your prescription blood-pressure pills with it. Modern medicine and herbal remedies can go hand in hand. Or maybe, like I said, maybe I’m just a freak because I have no interest in picking an artificial “side” to stand on, and I’m happy doing whatever work in any given situation.

And I see the same thing play out in other areas, too. Articles crying about how “we’re addicted to technology” and how we need to start interacting with other people face-to-face “the right way” before it’s “too late!” Other people talking about how it’s critical to “move fully into the future” and how being able to connect digitally is essential, that we should strive to transcend the “limitations of” physical interaction as a thing of the past. I’ve heard passionate arguments about how “games with physical components” like boards and tokens are so much better than “those stupid techno-gadgets” and how we need to “get kids off of the computer” to play “real games” instead. And I’ve heard equally passionate arguments for “immersing kids in tech” from the earliest ages, making sure that they can “adapt to the new world” so that they don’t get “left behind.”

Again, bullshit. And I don’t understand why it is so absolutely critical for some people to cut themselves off from possibilities in order to fashion an enemy for themselves to hate. I’ll pick up my e-reader sometimes, and other times I’ll grab a paper book. I can enjoy shooting aliens on an Xbox, and have plenty of fun with Cards Against Humanity too. I can appreciate Carcasonne whether it’s played with physical tiles or digital ones. I can get out and take a long walk, smelling the flowers and trees… and taking some amazing photos of them with the camera/computer/communications device in my pocket. I can go play frisbee golf in the park, and use Facebook to organize a group of people to play… or I can play digital golf online, and happen to do so with some of the friends I was in the park with a few days before.

I know that people have their preferences, and that those preferences often not only inform their actions but dictate their worldviews. I just don’t get why so many people insist on creating such arbitrary and artificial distinctions, and adhering so closely to one “side” while loudly declaring how they abhor the other “side” of the division they’ve created…

In the last few days, from more than a couple of friends, I’ve seen statements of frustration and helplessness.

I get it. And then I’ve seen something I really don’t get — others who know these friends, whose suggestions (unsolicited, of course) have been along the lines of “Well, you should just get yourself to this specific religious group, because organized religion will solve not only all of YOUR problem, but it will fix all of the problems in the WHOLE WORLD, too!” And these “suggestions” have been given to friends who are not subtle or closeted about their specific rejection of the very real harm that religion has wrought on the world, people who have made it quite clear that as solutions go, that’s NOT one.

And yet somehow there’s surprise when “go to church!” is not received particularly well… hmm.

Look, if I said that I was dealing with an upset stomach, and one of you said “Go to that guy on the corner of 5th and Main, he sells this great brand of Snake Oil!” I would pretty much expect a chorus of replies pointing out how stupid that was, how pointless and unhelpful that suggestion was. I would likely write a scathing rant in reply to the offending commenter, and might make a point of how I’ve laughed off plenty of others in the past for similar ridiculous suggestions, complete with links to evidence demonstrating that fact.

And if I — or any of my friends — talk about how fed up we are with current events and feeling compassion fatigue, if we talk about how we’re slowly slipping away because we’ve been trying so hard to be self-reliant and it isn’t working, and one of you says “go to church! It’ll make everything fantastic for you!” you’re going to get at least one reply from me pointing out how stupid that was, how pointless and unhelpful that suggestion was. And that goes double when the folks you’re telling to seek out religion have made a very specific point of talking about the harm it’s done, about all the reasons why that’s a dangerous and unsafe place to be.

Or, put another way… next time someone who has shared their history of self-harm with you says they’re struggling, think about how “helpful” it would be to tell them that they could fix things by going shopping for a brand-new set of knives… and then shut your fucking mouth.

This place is killing me. Still awake over three hours after posting my usual “off to bed!” on Facebook, just out of a bath that I took because I was ready to scream at the prickly pubic hair growing in. Washed my hair while I was there because it’s been a few days. Heart pounding. Realize as I step into my room that I’m holding my breath; I let it out. Breathing is a task that requires my focus and deliberate attention, not something I’m doing without trying. I feel the knots throughout my body, the tension in tendons and scrambled-up muscles. This is a place where I am angry, I am tense, I am so full of ugly emotion that I feel like exploding, like grapes in a microwave, like an apple under a sledgehammer. I was horny earlier, got distracted, didn’t do anything about it. Now I’m so wound up that relaxing enough to get myself turned on again isn’t really an option. Then again, neither is screaming and screaming and screaming until I’ve let a little bit of this out. And there’s nothing available to destroy that doesn’t matter; I could benefit a lot from crowbar and hammer to wooden pallets, for example, or an old mattress, or other unwanted and broken furniture. Sleep is the only escape i have, and it’s so little, and so insignificant in its assistance. At least I breathe when I’m asleep.

Watch.

Watch how people react. Watch how they freak out, how they distance themselves, how they find hoops to jump through, contort themselves into finding reasons for “good people” to have really been “bad people” all along.

Listen.

Listen to the threats of violence, listen to the way words are twisted and their meaning obscured. Listen to the “solutions” offered to the “problem.”

Observe.

Observe the reactions, the calculated change in how people treat someone. Observe the demands for extermination, incarceration, destruction.

And stay silent.

Silent when yet another “joke” gets thrown out about how you should be killed. Silent as another person says “hey, maybe it’s actually not a big deal,” and they too are marked as evil, shunned and hated. Silent as they preach about how “love is never wrong” and then make a point of finding an exception (that isn’t love, that kind of love is wrong, it’s impossible to really love that way, you’re making it up) but be sure to nod your head in agreement when they ask you to confirm for them that you agree that you are worthless and undeserving of love. They don’t know what they’re really asking you.  It’s small comfort, but it’s what you’ve got.

Silence is golden, but it’s not the kind of gold you can spend.

The heteronormative assumptions the rest of the world makes about everything are really depressing.

“For men and women, or the other way around” (women and men, that is) is supposed to be all-inclusive. Love is so much more beautifully varied than that! And I usually end up just taking the hetero bullshit and trying to find bits and pieces I can relate to, because there’s very very very very little out there that looks like me.

It’s not difficult to look around and see stuff that is clearly “role play” in the form of “Daddy’s Little Girl.” It’s a power exchange dynamic, one that benefits from social assumptions about gender roles and power. A guy in charge, a woman underneath him. I mean, what’s an insult you throw at a guy to highlight his supposed lack of masculinity? “Momma’s Boy.”

What about the gay men? For a long time I figured that George Michael song was supposed to be about men on men, because I had only heard “Father Figure” in the context of guys who like guys. Then I saw the music video (it’s kinda creepy, but then lots of creepy shit gets romanticized…)

What about the men who don’t have any problem with “women on top”? I’m thinking about a lot of the reading that I did for a while, blogs about dominant women and submissive men and shattering stereotypes of all sorts. I’m thinking of people like “Stabbity” at Not Just Bitchy or “Professor Chaos” of Lab Coats and Lingerie — I honestly read more for the perspective of loving, dominant women, and often did plenty of the same kinds of “find what bits I can relate to” as with most hetero stuff, but I DID relate to plenty there.

What about women like me, who want to find themselves safe in the arms of a mommy? You won’t find dozens of blogs dedicated to Mommy/Little Girl relationships, the way you’ll find ones about Daddy/Little Girl couples. But then, you also won’t find “I <3 My Girlfriend” sparkly pink shirts and undies and everything else in most clothing stores, not the way that it’s simple to find a wide selection of incredibly femme “Best Boyfriend Ever” products.

And what about all the people who don’t fall into a ridiculously rigid binary classification of “boy or girl?” They are even less visible, less acknowledged than everyone else. What do they model their relationships on? Where do they get any voice in things?

I could also mention just how disgustingly white the Daddy/Girl stuff is, how overwhelmingly lacking most of the memes are in racial diversity… unless, of course, it’s to regurgitate racist tropes and hold up bigotry as somehow “beautiful” — but really, I’m not the one who should be tackling that topic.

I’m just… sad, I guess is the word, I’m sad at how invisible I feel, at how little the world seems to care about a small and off-the-beaten-path voice like mine. Seeing yourself in stories outside your own head, seeing reflections of yourself, knowing you’re not a monster… it’s important. Critical, even. I don’t see myself very often.

I find it interesting how many people I hear talking about their sexuality and sexual interests, the way they describe things that turn them on as “dirty” and “freaky” and “nasty” and “perverted.”

As far as I can see, the fact that the things that arouse them are not “mainstream” — or at least are not openly acknowledged as normative — is a significant part of the appeal for a lot of people.  That they feel they are being transgressive is much of the point, and the source of most of the erotic value in these acts.

But it doesn’t make any sense to me.  I mean, sure, I can acknowledge it on an intellectual level, but I don’t understand.  I personally am turned on by a whole lot of things that are not particularly “standard,” by things which are certainly not the socially accepted, normative, typical-script sex stuff… but I don’t see any of it as “nasty” or “wrong.”  If there’s one thing I know with absolute certainly, having come of age in a world where it is so easy to digitally connect with people across the globe, it’s that nothing — absolutely nothing — is unique to me alone. “If it exists, there is porn of it,” otherwise known as “Rule #34,” is a relatively concise was of expressing much the same thing. Hell, just spending a bit of time lurking in /b/ will do wonders for showing you the sheer variety of things that people find sexually appealing! And yes, I used to. Not my scene anymore, but mostly because I’ve found other places to more effectively address many of my interests…

So, I know that I’m not alone in my sexual interests, varied as they are.  And I have learned very well that I don’t need to fear my sexuality — I had a pretty effective crash-course in that one, mostly as part-and-parcel of unlearning the shame and stigma instilled in me from a Mormon upbringing.  And I know that I feel better when I’m comfortable with who I am in any respect; shame about who and what I am is never anything but damaging to my overall well-being.

With all that in mind, I have made some conscious shifts in my vocabulary to better reflect my relationship to sex.  I avoid references to body parts that carry a negative connotation — I don’t have “junk” between my legs, thanks, my cock is quite a treasure!  When I’m fucking, I’m not “doing the nasty” and there’s nothing I could call “getting down and dirty” about eating out a partner’s ass (unless they haven’t washed there recently, in which case I might help them wash up as part of our play!) Wanting to be tied up or locked up by someone who cares for me, and then whipped, flogged, pounded and penetrated with toys or hands or other bits of flesh (or all of the above) doesn’t make me a “freak in the bedroom,” it makes me a woman who enjoys some particular things on some occasions, and other things at other times.

As I mentioned in a recent post, I don’t need to feel ashamed of who I am or what gets me off.  Plenty of things do, and I’m okay with that.  I’m much happier being okay with it than trying to convince myself that I’m supposed to enjoy getting off more because “they” don’t want me to, because it’s somehow forbidden and therefore better.

And when my approach to life is to “seek pleasure first and foremost” and constantly evaluate what there is to gain and what harm there is in things as I go, it’s foolish to deny myself pleasure because somebody else thinks it might not be “normal,” because somebody else says it’s always bad, can’t possibly be sexy, has to be “dirty” and “wrong.” When my own lived experience says otherwise, why should I trust anyone else’s judgement on the matter? If it makes me happy… it can’t be that bad!

I don’t understand some people’s delight in surrounding themselves with only people who are exactly like them. The declaration with beaming pride that you only associate with your own kind, that you make decisions about who to trust and who to believe and who to exclude based on identity markers.

And some of you at this point are nodding your heads in understanding and murmuring agreement — maybe you think I’m talking about racist idiots who only deal with other white folks, or rich snobs who wouldn’t dare to be seen walking in the same door as those poor working-class stiffs…

But I started writing this post because I’m sick of seeing people around me who are self-styled “progressives” and “liberals” and “open-minded queers and trans* folks” bragging about how the only people they have on Facebook are other queers, or how they don’t visit any businesses that are connected to right-wing leaders, or how wonderful it is that trans* women “all” have each other because “we” all understand the way the world works and nobody else possibly can.

Look, folks. Separatism sucks ass. Standing in an echo chamber where you can only hear your own words — or words identical to your own — just shuts out any possibility of hearing someone else, and if you happen to be full of shit, you’ve made sure nobody else can point that out to you.

I’m absolutely thrilled to have people on my Facebook, and people I interact with in meatspace too, whose ideas and opinions and worldviews are very different than mine.  Some of those views I can say with absolute certainty are wrong, and are harmful to me and many people I care about — and I’d bet money that many of my own views and opinions fit the exact same description.  But if I’m not willing to listen once in a while, I won’t have anything but myself and my echoes to tell me that I’m always exactly spot-on.

And I’m not saying that I’ll have my mind changed by simply listening — I don’t currently have any friends who try to tell me that the earth is flat, but if I did, it would be just another reminder that there are some people who insist on believing things that are demonstrably false. Same for other things that I do hear from friends, things that just make me more certain that I’m right when they repeat their lies. It isn’t a matter of “listening to both sides of the debate” to make an informed opinion — not when there’s only one side against a bunch of people scrambling hard to wish away reality.

And yeah, occasionally I walk away from an acquaintance online, or cut ties with a physical-world friend, when the only things I hear from them are of the “Nuh-uh, the world is too flat!” variety. I only have so much energy to spend on having that kind of silliness shouted at me.  But I still make a specific effort to keep people around me who see things differently than I do — and not just “keep around” but have significant relationships with, to know them as people and not merely as props to remind myself that I’m right… because sometimes, I’m not.

So, I suppose that means that I’m not in a hurry to walk away from the many trans* women I know who only associate with other trans* people, though it does certainly irk me when I hear another hallelujah chorus about how they’re lucky they have hardly any cis* folks in their lives.  And I’m unlikely to cut ties with the handful of “Guns and God and GOP, America’s the best country!” friends I have, either, though I do filter things on my own end to limit how much toxic nationalism-and-firepower-as-the-only-religion memes I expose myself to.  And I won’t be saying “see ya” to most of the queer people I know who post about how they find pleasure in noticing that there are no straight people on their social media — because their voices are generally balanced out by the majority of people I hear daily discussing how “those people” are an odd minority.

Diversity in practice is a whole lot more enjoyable for me than homogeneity and lip-service to “inclusion” and “tolerance.” And I’ll probably still be your friend even if you find life more fulfilling for you in an echo chamber of clones — because my more diverse connections with friends and acquaintances means that yours isn’t the only voice I hear, and I can choose whose words I listen to.

Sex is wonderful.

Bodies are beautiful —  in every size, shape, shade, and configuration.

Orgasms feel great… but they also aren’t the only goal in sex, as long as it’s enjoyable for everyone involved!

Whatever or whoever turns you on — no matter how fucked up it might seem, no matter how bizarre or unusual or dirty or perverted you might believe it to be — I guarantee there are lots of other people around the world who are just as aroused by the exact same thing.

You don’t need to feel ashamed of who you are, what your body looks like, or for getting off to whatever you do.

With luck (and often lots of patience) you’ll find an opportunity to make it happen for you! No guarantees, of course, which kinda sucks (and not in any of the good ways…) but it’s more likely than you might think!

Everybody’s different when it comes to the infinite complexities of sexuality, but we have far more in common with each other than we have different between us — and that’s a marvelous thing.

AND! It’s just as valid, just as much totally okay, if you’re not a sexual creature! Plenty of humans don’t find themselves sexually attracted to anyone, don’t get turned on by stuff the way other folks do. That’s okay!

You are beautiful, you are okay, and I love you. ♥♥♥♥♥

I guess it’s September now. I hate, hate, hate these markers of the passage of time — reminders of how little has changed, how stagnant life still is, how dreadfully hopeless my prospects still are for finding anything stable, anything functional.

7 and a half months I’ve been homeless (this time around)
10 months I’ve been single.
13 months I’ve been trying to find a place to live (again, this last time around.)
10 different addresses I’ve had since I moved out of my parents’ place.
5 and a half years since I “left the nest.”
Too many sleepless nights, too many days I don’t eat enough food, too much stressing out and worrying about everything, and so little control over any of it…

Letters I’ve needed to write for years. Items that I ended up with that need to go back to their rightful owners. Money I still get hounded by debt collectors over, going on 4 years later.

33 years old, over halfway to 34, and all I see is day after day of uncertainty and fear and chaos.

“What do you see yourself doing one year from now? What about 5 years?  What about 10 years?”

I can’t see myself one year from now. I don’t have the capacity. I don’t have the framework to begin to conceptualize what a year ahead might look like, or even what a month ahead might be.  I can’t make plans because I can’t grind against the gears of this enormous machine that is rolling the opposite direction and always threatening to crush me underneath. And so rarely has something I’ve planned actually worked the way it was supposed to — the  trip to meet DE-B, or the one for my miserable birthday with Lime, or the one that didn’t even end up happening due to circumstances (and people) beyond either of our control when I thought I was going to visit Shine (whose name I don’t think I’ve mentioned here before) earlier this summer to celebrate Independence Day.  Things haven’t gone the way I’ve planned with simple things or big ones, and I have such limited power to accomplish things on my own, so little power to wield…

Where is my home? Where do I go? I don’t know what to do, and I’m scared. I keep posting my “looking for housing” craigslist ad, I keep checking out every single notification from PadMapper that comes in from my saved search (and there’s really not much) but there’s just nothing that I can possibly afford that’s also safe, that has any chance of lasting or being even remotely stable.

I don’t know what to do.

Oh hey, here’s a cool person I’m getting to know on Facebook! Oh, and their account just got deleted.

Oh, hey, here’s this amazing Tumblr blog with content I enjoy and haven’t seen anywhere else! Oh, and it’s gone…

Oh, hey! Here’s a cute girl who is as much into me as I’m into her — and she’s even down to fuck! Oh, and she’s cut off contact and pretending to be a prude.

Oh, hey, here’s an amazing woman who gets me in so many ways, and is competent and skilled in some kinds of sex that I’ve missed out on… and she’s crushing on me! Oh, and there she goes, saying that me being honest about some of my interests is too scary for her.

Oh, hey, something good happens or comes into my life! Don’t hold your breath, it’s headed right out the door again! I hate trying to be happy or excited about anything I have, because so often it has ended in heartbreak, and ended quickly.

This is the massive post that I’ve been putting off for too long.

So, a little over 9 months ago, I broke up with MFP. As I mentioned in that previous post, it was a difficult thing to do; what made things even more difficult was the shitstorm that hit just afterwards.

See, I already had plans to hang out with Plush the next day, and I figured I might get the chance to have a listening ear from a friend.  What I hadn’t counted on, however, was that within moments after I told MFP goodbye, she’d gotten in touch with Plush and told her side of things, and handed her house key over to be passed back my way — so when I met up with Plush the next day, I didn’t get an ear, I got an earful — at some point Plush asked if I wanted to talk about what had happened, and as I started describing what had happened, she cut me off and said, “I’ve already heard this from MFP, just letting you know.” Left me wondering why she’d bothered asking me to talk about it, honestly.  Hurt, but not entirely deterred, I gave an extremely abbreviated version, and then got back an angry rant about what MFP felt, and how I’d hurt her, where MFP was coming from and her viewpoint on things (as filtered through Plush) and then the thing that pissed me off the most… was being told by Plush that I “needed to apologize” to MFP because “that’s not an okay way to treat somebody.”  So… yeah. I was miserable, struggling with a really hard decision, and someone I thought was a friend is there telling me how I was a horrible person and needed to apologize to my ex-girlfriend for the way that I broke up with her. Well, that didn’t go very well.

Now, one thing that was a consistent problem in our relationship (me and MFP, that is) was that when there’s something wrong, when I’m overwhelmed or I have a problem with what she’s done, the first thing that I need to do is step back from the situation, get myself together emotionally, gather my thoughts, then sit down and talk about it when I’ve had the chance to put myself in a frame of mind to do so.  She, on the other hand, when there’s a problem (or might potentially be a problem, or she’s imagined a problem out of thin air by overthinking everything) she needs to talk about it, that very second, right then and there, and keep talking about it until she’s satisfied with the outcome.  Naturally, this was a point of conflict in itself, because I was often unable to take the space that I needed in order to be able to talk things over with her; that dynamic was one of the problems that kept repeating itself and one of the things that factored heavily into my decision to walk away.  It hurt like fucking hell to come to that point, and I loved her dearly… I just couldn’t keep sacrificing myself for the sake of that relationship.

That dynamic didn’t change after I walked away, either. I tried to step back from things, but she was posting on Facebook about how there was definitely potential for us to be something still, maybe not quite what we were, but how she was super hopeful that I would be back.  She reached out directly to me a couple of times to tell me that she was open to whatever possibilities there might be down the road, too.  And on top of that, she called seemingly every single person that we both knew so she could have dozens of sympathetic ears — I heard from Again and Muddy (who I haven’t mentioned before, but she’s been a very dear friend for quite some time) not long after, telling me that they had received multiple phone calls from MFP, which they were uncomfortable with, especially since a) neither of them generally take voice calls, b) the calls were coming at less-than-ideal hours anyway, and c) they each felt awkward being put in a situation where she was trying to get in touch with them right after knowing that I had broken up with her, and seeing the way she was posting about the situation on Facebook (the “we’ll still be something eventually” type stuff.)  Those were the only two people who reached out to me to see where I was with things.  In the months that followed, when I ran into someone I knew but might not have talked with recently, or when I went out of my way to find someone that I knew, and who she might not have been as well acquainted with, I heard over and over again, “Oh, just so you know, I’ve been talking with MFP, being a friend and an ear for her, but don’t worry, I’m still cool with you.” Even 7 and 8 months later, running into good friends that I don’t see often — one friend in particular who I hadn’t seen in almost a year — mentioned that she’d gotten a call from MFP just after the breakup, a call that came in at 7 in the morning and woke her… and that she’d been an ear for my ex.  I had tried sending this friend a couple of text messages, at the point where I really needed someone to talk to about the situation, and couldn’t find anyone who hadn’t already heard the whole thing from her side… so I was looking for people I wasn’t quite as frequently connected to.  I didn’t get a reply to my texts, but from the sound of things it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because she’d already heard about what a horrible monster I supposedly was by that point.

I didn’t have a therapist at the time, and I was in bad shape — when I was ready to talk about things, I didn’t have anyone to turn to.  I struck up conversations with strangers at the bus stop, or in coffee shops, as I generally do, and got some chance to talk a little bit about my situation with people I didn’t know… I got to chat about things a little bit with people I knew a little bit while they were working at these same coffee shops, or other places while they were on the clock, but I didn’t have anyone who I knew well to sit down and pour my heart out — MFP had done a fine job of making sure that she talked about it,  that very second, right then and there, until she was satisfied with the outcome, and left me unable to take the space that I needed in order to be able to talk things over.  That space was all taken up by her, and I spent a long time hurting emotionally over that.

At the beginning of February, I was way behind schedule for moving out of the old apartment I’d shared with MFP. I’d had help from The Rabbit in getting things organized and hauled out, though I’d also done plenty on my own, since there was a self-storage place (literally at the end of my street) where I had rented a unit.  The Rabbit had offered, early on, to see about arranging things with the tenants in one of the properties that she owns to use some of their basement space to store my things; she insisted that it would be “helpful” because I wouldn’t have to worry about the cost of a storage unit.  I thanked her, and said I’d be okay, but she kept pressuring me, kept bringing it up until I finally gave up and gave in. The storage unit I had was easy to get to — even on public transit — and something I could access any time I wanted.  My initial suggestion was that we rent a U-Haul type truck and arrange one day where I could gather a bunch of friends to help haul everything out, but The Rabbit assured me that she could make things easier by using her small car with a relatively large cargo area to move things in batches.  Especially after she finally got me to agree to use the private storage, she said it would make more sense that way.  Nevermind that the house she was offering was at the top of a hill, or that it wasn’t anywhere near public transit and required someone with a car to get there, or that for a few months I didn’t even have a key of my own, so I had to have her specifically to drive me out there on her schedule — she was being “helpful!”  Oh, and of course we had to also move all of the stuff I’d put into the storage unit right back out again.

At one point, The Rabbit asked what I thought about hiring movers, “just to take the big stuff, the heavy furniture and stuff.” I thought about it and said, “Actually, that’s a great idea!” A couple of days later, she said, “Well, maybe let’s not do that. I have a good friend who can probably help with lifting, and I know he has a couple of sons who can help, too… we could just rent a U-Haul and take that to move stuff.”  I’m pretty sure I pointed out that I had suggested the U-Haul from the beginning, and said that getting movers would still be a really good idea.  Turns out that sure, her friend was available to help… but one of his sons was busy, the other was out of the country, so she passed things back to me to make arrangements to get a bunch of people over on a specific day to put stuff into a U-Haul.  On the day everything was supposed to happen, she finally looked at getting a truck, but they didn’t have any.  The best they could get was a cargo van, which took two or three trips to get the few large items out of the apartment.  Between the delays caused by first being “helped” by refusing the idea of a U-Haul, then the extra time that it took to move everything back out of the storage unit, then planning to hire movers, and then having that cancelled, and then waiting around to hear about The Rabbit‘s friend and whether he could help out, I was a few weeks behind schedule in getting out. I was also running on almost no sleep, constantly surrounded by noise and stress and going quite mad, actually. Barely coping.

In mid-February, I headed to Arizona. Lime had purchased a Greyhound ticket as a birthday gift for me to come visit her — with the thought in mind that we could have some great sex, that she could show me some of her favorite local spots, and it would be a nice birthday trip for me.

It was hell.

Figure about 16 hours on a bus with no legroom (these were the “extra room” models, but I have LONG legs.) That wouldn’t have been so bad, except that I had figured on a bit of rest once I got there to recuperate. That didn’t happen. Lime and her wife are very much “morning people,” and both up and making plenty of noise through very thin walls at the ass-crack of dawn. TV turned on and turned up, loud conversation and laughter… I barely slept. And every morning, Lime wanted to take me to a different quirky little cafe — Tucson has more than a few to choose from, and her only regret was that she couldn’t show off more of them in my few days there.  I would have killed for plain old Starbucks most of the time, something predictable, familiar, the comfort of mediocre coffee in a recognizable format.  Instead I was running on more stress and less sleep than usual, and dealing with someone who, quite frankly, doesn’t seem to be “all there” mentally.  It wasn’t an immediate recognition, but it didn’t take long to realize that her wife wasn’t joking when she consistently apologized for Lime‘s inability to get jokes with, “She’s… slow. Don’t worry, I got it though. Clever!” One instance in particular stands out; Lime was driving me out to meet someone I had known from Facebook, a woman who had expressed mutual sexual interest and wanted to meet up since I was within a couple hours’ travel time.  We were on the road, and hadn’t yet gotten to the highway, and she read out loud the sign that said “No U-turn.” I responded with “So, that’s like QRSTV-turn?” She looked at me for a minute, then said simply, “huh?” I repeated, more slowly, this time, “You said, ‘no u-turn,’ so I said ‘Q…R…S…T…*pause*…V…W…X…Y…Z…” Waiting a moment, she finally said, “Like… the alphabet, you mean?”  Yeah. I mentally repeated to myself her wife’s apology… she’s slow. She’s slow. Don’t worry, she’s just kinda slow.

The one time we did try fucking, I had made sure to latch the door — they had a couple of cats, and since I’m allergic they were kept out of the room I was staying in for the duration of my visit. Didn’t want cats on the bed while we were having sex! As we started getting into it, right as Lime began to get especially noisy (which she does when she’s enjoying sex, it’s kinda cute really…) I heard the door click open. I paused, looked over in confusion, and saw an eye peeking through the door… then her wife slowly opened the door and walked in.  Being walked in on isn’t necessarily a problem, but I kinda figured there would be some sort of “oops! sorry! I’ll let you two alone…” Instead, she wandered in, looked around, walked to the other side of the bed, stood for a few moments, then walked back to the door, hovered around for a few moments more, and then said, “oh, um… yeah…bye now.” and walked out again. I had pretty much lost whatever arousal I’d had going, but finished getting Lime off with my hands.  When she was done, she asked me excitedly, “So, what did you think? How was it being walked in on?!” When I told her that I wasn’t really sure how I felt about it, she pressed again, “Well, was it positive, neutral, or negative?” Each of those words was accompanied by a hand gesture, thumbs-up, thumbs-middle, thumbs-down. I repeated that I wasn’t quite certain about my emotional response to the situation, and I thought to myself that the whole thing was a little bit weird, that there was something “off” about it.  Then she gushed to me about how she thought it was “really super hot, especially with the whole taboo aspect of the thing, it was a huge turn-on!” It still smelled kinda fishy to me, but I left it alone for the time.  It honestly felt like a set-up situation for her to live out a fantasy, and I hadn’t been involved in the process… especially with the “customer satisfaction survey” at the end.  I did try asking her the next day if it was really an accident that her wife had walked in, and she told me it was. I still have my doubts.

I came once during my trip there, and that was in large part to a little “happy birthday” photo sent to me by a wonderful long-distance friend, a bit of “inspiration” to brighten my day. I sent back a “thank you” photo of the good use her gift had gone to.

Because I was so far behind schedule in getting moved out, I wasn’t even finished with getting the last few things packed into storage. The Rabbit did that for me while I was in Tucson, which meant that I was denied the chance to say the goodbye to that house that I needed.  I live many things in my life by the Paul Williams song “A Little Bit Of Love” — and the first line always hits me hard in the feels: “She’s the kind who says goodbye to houses when she’s leaving them for good.”  It’s something that I had done long before I heard that song, and it’s important to me.  I still found a way to say my goodbyes, but in a significantly lesser manner than I really needed, and I was rushing off to the nightmare of a birthday ahead of me.

Lime had discussed the Greyhound being cheap enough that she could afford to send me out to visit both for my birthday and for Spring Break — by the end of my birthday trip she had cancelled any plans of another trip… which was just fine by me.  She had planned to travel up to the Bay Area, since she has family near here, and talked about maybe having some fun in bed while she was up here, instead of in her bed in Arizona.  She also had been helping to support me financially for a number of months, and then shortly after my visit she told me that she was going to have to start paying tuition for her niece and nephew to go to preschool and kindergarten. I wasn’t aware that kindergarten required tuition fees, but between the two of them it was apparently about $100 a month. Or she could have been using that as a convenient excuse to stop supporting me financially, which wouldn’t surprise me. Either way, I wasn’t interested in hanging onto someone I didn’t much like just for the money.

Which is also what happened with Plush, actually. After her initial rant about how horribly I had treated MFP, and all the reasons and justifications for MFPs side of things and the very clear “you have to apologize!” things had been rather tense — there were a few other things that I had been uncomfortable with about interacting with her, including the fact that she would often say cruel things, throwing insults at me and then telling me that she was “teasing” and that I needed to “relax about it.” She pointed out more than a few times that everybody else that she spent time around understood it, and was cool about it — well, everyone except her parents, and that was a whole different frustration, apparently. Plush had also been supporting me financially, and I was struggling with the issue of knowing that there was no way I could hope to find a place to live without a little bit more dependable income than I had, but at the same time not wanting to have to keep pretending to be someone I’m not for her sake.  She was one of the “always angry” people who could not let go of her fury at the injustice of the world, could not enjoy anything without ranting about how it was broken and how upset it made her that things weren’t a perfect world. She saved me the trouble, because she wanted to meet up for dinner and after everything she waited for a moment as I was about to leave, asked for her house key back (she’d given me a spare, in case I ever needed an emergency safe place to crash.) Then she told me that she needed to end things. “Okay,” I said. Apparently that threw her off, took the long speech she’d prepared or something, as she asked, confused, “But… did you need to hear any more?” I told her no, and then she proceeded to give me more detail anyway.  We’d already had two fights in the two hours or so we’d spent together, which was about par for visiting with her, and I wasn’t worried about why she wanted to leave… just relieved that she was going, and that she had saved me the hassle of figuring out how to break things off.  I walked around the rest of the evening with a huge weight off my shoulders and an extra little bounce in my step.

I briefly saw Poco a few months after breaking up with MFP. Briefly, like, we literally had an hour together, she slipped me into a packed-full schedule while she was visiting for a professional conference related to her field of work. I was completely unsurprised to hear that MFP had been in touch with her to talk all about the breakup, we grabbed some dinner and chatted a little bit. I haven’t really heard from her since then.

Everyone who was there in that one beautiful moment a year ago May is gone from my life, as are most of the people connected to them. SoCal has grown distant, too, and I finally told her that I couldn’t keep pouring my efforts into attempting to connect with her if she didn’t put any effort in too, that only hearing from her briefly when I reached out and being ignored otherwise wasn’t going to cut it, that flaking on meeting after meeting wasn’t okay.  I let her know that I would reach back if she ever reaches out, but she hasn’t done so yet. It’s been months. She still pokes me on Facebook, still “likes” some of my posts, but beyond that… I hardly even know her.

Again is still around, but often has a completely packed schedule, and it’s been difficult and frustrating for both of us just how little we see of each other.  I do get to visit with her tomorrow, though, and I’m super excited!

Escrow (new name, finally mentioning you…) is an interesting case.  I had been staying with The Rabbit and her spouse for a few months, and we were all wearing on each others’ nerves. There had been a shouting match between me and The Rabbit‘s spouse, and I needed to get away, get out, get space. Escrow is someone that I knew through MFP and Plush, and I thought she was incredibly attractive, but I hadn’t ever really pursued anything… but she offered me a bit of room to sleep in a relatively quiet space for a couple of days, and we got the chance to get to know each other, since we’d only been acquaintances before that.  She was getting ready to leave the state, finishing up a semester of school and transferring to another college, so one of the trips we made was to a particular Goodwill store that she knew would have some of the clothes she was stocking up on for her trip. After a couple of days of flirting back and forth, but also being unsure how much was flirting and how much was just clever minds appreciating lewd wordplay, on the long bus ride back from the thrift store in cramped seats, Escrow dropped her exhausted head onto my shoulder, and there was little enough room that her hand brushed my thigh… I welcomed it, and we started confessing that we’d both been attracted to each other but too shy to say anything or to offer the physical affection that we both wanted and wanted to give.  That night was a wonderful one.  She’s moved across the country, now, and I sometimes manage to catch her online — if we’re lucky, we can get Skype working over two less-than-fantastic internet connections — but that doesn’t carry the warmth of her touch.

I met Chop at the end of June, at the same bar where MFP and I used to go to drink absinthe. She was very interested in me, and we went for coffee briefly on the afternoon of July 3rd, when I was also scheduled to see Again, Crowbar, and Pout for dinner. I ended up going back to see Chop after dinner, and we ended up in her bed after going out to drink for a while and hanging out with her friends.  I hadn’t known at the time, but she was in the early stages of an ugly divorce, and it had been a very long while since she’d had much sex at all, so she was happy to make up for it.  The next morning, she offered me a bunch of her clothes and jewelry, trying to make it easier for her to move out, since she was planning on leaving everything behind and maybe even moving across the country to where she was raised.  I thought maybe we’d stay in touch — and she had also mentioned more than a few times that she might decide to stay around if it meant more great sex like I’d given her! Then she suddenly blocked me on Facebook and sent an email to yell at me about how she “couldn’t be connected with” the suggestive but well within the “safe for work” category of sexy pictures that she had seen when she went to my profile, because she was rebranding herself as “family friendly” since she had decided to pour her efforts into getting some giant Monopoly-style game built, and “THINK OF THE CHILDREN!” essentially.  How me posting stuff on my own wall makes it impossible for her to hype some tourist attraction to other grown-ups, I have no clue, but she was willing to cut me off over it, so I’m probably just fine without that kind of bullshit in my life.  One of her friends had quipped just a day or two before that, that “nobody who’s friends with Chop worries about being ‘appropriate.’ We’re too busy enjoying life for that!” This was in the context of looking — with Chop and me — at the very-much-explicit pornographic animated wallpapers on my cell phone.  If she’s fine with suddenly doing an about-face for a tourist trap, and cutting ties that easily, I couldn’t trust her to stay around anyway.

A couple of days ago, I got word from The Rabbit that she and her spouse had decided that I have to be out of here in 3 months or less, and that when I find a place they can offer me slightly more financial assistance than they have been.  Unfortunately, that only brings me back up to the level I was before being cut off by Plush and Lime, and housing costs have only gone up in that time.  I’m not sure what’s going to happen to me at the point where they decide to kick me out and I can’t find a place to live.  Oh, and it’ll be just in time for the Crap-Crappiest Season of All, the winter holidays where everybody is sitting down to huge feasts, surrounded by loved ones…

Going through local Craigslist ads for housing, since I’m still struggling to find a place after 6 months of looking… and a few themes popped up.  Now, I already count on the general overall message of “we don’t want you here” that comes across, but I kept seeing a handful of things repeated, enough that I started saving little snippets from various ads that illustrated my point.  Roughly filed into the following categories, here are a few examples:

Be quiet, be gone, don’t remind us you exist.

• Pets,drugs, loud party and smoking are not allowed on this property.
• No pets, smokers, or overnight guests.
• We don’t use drugs, 420, or alcohol, so I’m looking for a woman to share a no-drama, clear-headed lifestyle.
• This is a Non-Smoking, QUIET and PET-FREE house.
• looking for a single person who likes to live in tidy environment, and is considerate of noise levels, especially at night.
• I need the living room and kitchen to be relatively quiet at night after 9pm, and the living room lights need to be off starting at 10pm.
• Serious people only.
• preferably male, quiet, regular easy-going, working or student type.
• This is not a silent house, but is intended to be very peaceful and relaxing. At the same time, it is intended to be super fun and free, so their must be consensus between everyone.
• I will have some long and busy days and like to have my home be a space to recharge, so I value quiet evenings.
• looking for a chill roommate, preferably a mid 20’s kind of person, with a 9-5 sort of gig (like us).
• Grad student/ busy full-time employed person preferable…

Kids, pets, and/or smoke required — kinda the opposite of the previous.

• No pets, but there is a cat onsite.
• There are 4 pets in the house 2 dogs and 2 cats. I will consider another animal.
• 420 friendly, and work full time.
• there will be 2 children in the house
• Preferably no more pets, definitely no dogs
• two amazing dogs!
• we have one cat
• I have 2 nice cats.
• three roommates, who are employed and students, and 2 cats.
• there is already a cat in the apartment
• There are already two beautiful Persian cats in house
• Kitchen privileges. References required. private half bath. Must be ok with a cat
• The house is 420 and LGBT friendly.
• Household has two young cats, which spend the majority of their time indoors.
• nice, respectful, queer friendly, 420 friendly, dog friendly
• We have a 10-yr-old

Extremely specific requirements

• No meat or fish can be brought into house, this is a vegetarian household.
• Ideally, you have a daily meditation practice and have sat a 10-day Vipassana course as taught by S.N. Goenka.
• You: healthy life-style, financially stable and responsible, very clean, respectful, honest, common sense
• share some details about yourself, including your schedule, lifestyle, why you’re moving, links to Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, etc.
• someone who is fairly tidy and does not wear shoes indoors
• please have 2 references available for verification.
• work exchange for occasional care of our 5 yr old daughter
• I do not want the house smelling of bacon or pork. Gross!
• I am a guy looking for a fun open minded female roommate in a shared bedroom / You must be easy going and fun, and want to save on rent in this tough economy
• No perfume, incense and/or strong scents please!!!

No requirements (and maybe no standards?)

• studio apartment you’ll be sharing with me / typical bay area guy.
• Male or female theres one female already and two guys. Were looking for a forth.
• Please send a short description of yourself and what you are looking for.

And of course, “No wonder it’s that cheap!”

• Available now for Summer rental.
• single room in a big house with around 15 others
• looking for a roommate to live in a cornered off space of a large living room.
• for the the next school year.

Look, all I’m trying to find — absolute basic essential criteria — is 1) no men, 2) no pets, 3) no smoking. Unfortunately, the folks who also want “no smoking” seem to be uptight assholes who also want no alcohol (“no-drama, clear-headed lifestyle”) and no sex (“QUIET,” “quiet evenings,” “no overnight guests,” “quiet after 9pm,” “considerate of noise levels, especially at night,” “quiet, regular easy-going” etc.)

The folks who might not mind sex and alcohol gotta smoke their pot — which I don’t have a problem with, I just can’t live in the same space with the smoke (done that before, it does NOT work. Read back through my archives about living with the Girl-Child and Stoner Dude… ~shudder~)

And living with animals is apparently required if you’re among folks who understand that humans aren’t soulless robots meant to never enjoy anything… (“4 pets in the house,” “there is a cat onsite,” “two young cats,” “two beautiful Persian cats,” “already a cat,” “and 2 cats,” “2 nice cats,” etc.) My lungs and sinuses would like to be able to function, thanks, and I don’t much like animals around even when I’m not dealing with allergies from them.

I’m staying with The Rabbit right now, not dealing well with her cat, and isolated from public transportation. I’m trying to scrape by on $880 a month, a government check which is only that “high” because California supplements the federal amount of $720 monthly. Yes, you read those numbers correctly: The US Government expects someone who qualifies for SSI — essentially “permanent disability” — to be able to survive on $8,600 annual income, anywhere in the country.  And California’s added amount means that any permanently disabled person in California should be able to do just fine with barely over $10,000 a year to live on! For reference, that’s equivalent to an hourly wage of $4.13 and $5.08, respectively.  The federal minimum wage is currently $7.25/hour, and yet the same government expects someone who cannot work at the same capacity, someone with particular care needs beyond the average person, to survive on far less than that.

In fact, let’s compare one other set of numbers: The “Federal Poverty Guidelines” are a set of numbers that the government uses to determine, essentially, whether you’re broke enough to qualify for various assistance programs.  All the numbers I’ve been referencing so far are for a single individual, because those are the ones relevant to my situation, although the amounts get calculated for lager “family” sizes as well.  So, here’s the thing: the current “single individual” amount, the annual income that says “anything less than this means you’re so broke you automatically qualify for assistance” — is $11,670. Now, you might, if you have even a tiny bit of sense, notice that number is significantly larger than either “barely over $10,000″ ($10,524, specifically) or $8600.  And if you’re particularly clever, you might even stop to ask, “Why, doesn’t that mean that the people living in poverty, the ones who are permanently disabled, are being given just enough ‘assistance’ to keep them in poverty?!” Yes! Exactly. That’s exactly what’s going on!

So, yeah. I have an income that’s equivalent to 70% of the federal minimum wage, 91% of the federal amount that says “you’re so broke you can’t handle basic needs,” being administered by the federal government. I’m not naïve enough to think it’s a matter of the left hand not knowing what the right one’s doing, especially when I’d be dealing with 56% of minimum wage and 73% of the “you’re definitely broke” amounts if I didn’t have that tiny extra bit from the state of California… Ebenezer Scrooge would be delighted to see the poor dying off, decreasing the supposed, imaginary “surplus population.”

Haven’t left the house today. Barely left my bed. Haven’t eaten enough (and might go attempt to remedy that in a few minutes) and I’ve been bored and lethargic and stressed out. The neighbor’s dog barking all day — from just after 4am until nearly midnight — hasn’t helped my frazzled nerves, nor did the movie blasting out from the home theater downstairs (directly below my room, naturally, but there’s nowhere in the house that I can escape it.) At one point I went to the bathroom, and in there I could hear more than just the bass and explosions… just in time to catch a screaming match between two angry characters.

On the plus side, I did get a tiny bit more rest than usual, and I connected with a few awesome people that I had really hoped to hear from It’s a nice surprise to actually have someone reach out after the initial “hey, this is me, here’s my contact info” — it happens so rarely that it’s really depressing most of the time. Like, out of 250 cards I give away, I end up with 2 or 3 folks who ever even get in touch. And that holds true even when I’ve given my number to someone who is very flirty, not-even-slightly subtle about it, even when someone has pulled me in and made out, even when there’s been kissing and groping and “let me buy you a drink” and “I’d love to take you to bed with me!” — I rarely hear a word.  So, yeah. When not one but two incredible women got back to me today, I was pleased!

Also my mom stopped by the bank and deposited a little bit of money for me, which should take care of the rest of the cost of my hair coloring. Useful. And I killed some time on tumblr, filling my queue up again and finding a few more blogs to follow. I haven’t written the massive blog post that I have been promising myself to get to for ages now, but I’m not sure how I can make that happen, either, because it’ll require me being in decent shape mentally, emotionally, and physically, plus the ability to write without everything smashing in around me, the noise and craziness that consistently make me want to scream.

I don’t want to sleep alone again tonight, and I don’t want to sleep here tonight, but I really don’t have much choice in the matter. Keeping my heart open, keeping my eyes open, and keeping my legs open — eventually the combination will lead me to where I want to be.  I can do Patience… and of course, I’m sure you know what they say: Patience is a virgin, right? She just kept waiting, patiently? Ah, well. Anyway…

so tired
of the
nearly-ceaseless assault
on my senses

the low-frequency pain
churning|rattling|pummeling
my viscera

diesel engines of road construction equipment all through the night on the nearby highway, smashing concrete and asphalt
garbage trucks, their compactors,  their motorized arms to lift and dump, their grinding engines and screeching warning tones
low-flying aircraft rumbling jet engine hell right through me
passenger cars speeding through the neighborhood with stereo blasting but especially the bass, can’t forget the bass, if it doesn’t set off other car’s alarms it isn’t shaking enough
commuter trains, freight trains yanking on the electric whistle like a toddler with a brand new toy for twenty minutes at a time

all of these are physical sensation to me, physical pain
like a
slow-motion
non-stop
gut-punch
symphony
and I am so tired of the same old song

I need silence, stillness, solitude, safety.

I need…
HOME.

Tired and needing sleep, and my only significant thought is just how nice it would be to have a Mommy to pet my hair and shush and tut and coo and fuck me to sleep as she came inside me…

Comfort. It’s quite often all I really want.

(Enough about you, let’s talk about life for a while! Can you handle this?)

I can’t say I ever knew him.

It wasn’t even all that long ago that I heard his name, or knew anything about him.

Probably what first set me on the trail was in the notes for a Facebook event for some guy’s birthday party I got invited to by a mutual acquaintance, there was something about “what to bring to the party” that mentioned “unless you’ve got any designer stuff like the 2C-T’s” and, being the information sponge and eternally curious soul I am, I started down the rabbit hole. Searching for 2C-T found me 2C (psychedelics) and 2C-T-7 — and from there, a name:

Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin.

Just skimming through the Wikipedia article — this was a few years ago when I was still living with the Girl-Child and company — my thought was, “this is a brilliant mind. Holy shit!” Diving into a subject as I do, with blinders on and a disregard for “important” things like eating or excretion, I looked at more and more about the guy, and kept my eyes open for a copy of PiHKAL –which turned up at my local used bookstore in excellent condition not long after I started watching for it. I’ve yet to read very far through the first half; I’ve been horrible at doing much of any reading in the last handful of years, with no stability, and often my sole focus on survival. I do know that it, along with its “continuation” keep a special spot on my bookshelves (when I have bookshelves to hol books, that is, instead of being stuck with everything I own in storage) right at the top, just before the rest of the tomes dealing with pleasure in life: erotic fiction, non-fiction on topics of sexuality, feminism, gender, and sex worker rights activism.

Unconnected with any of my research into Mr. Shulgin, I had picked up a collection of short stories collected from NERVE magazine. The first piece in the book was “Slippy for President” by Steve Almond — and I remember being struck by a clear recognition of myself in the single phrase, “a pathetic little ball of inhibitions.” That was what the narrator was called by a friend offering MDMA… which I recognized from having looked into this Shulgin fellow — and of course, it mentions him by name.  I remember thinking how wonderful it would be to find myself with access to a ‘babysitter’ and an opportunity “to recognize the sadness of something without that heavy, blue feeling. It’s more like a math problem, something you examine, hope to figure out.” Because I’ve had so much sadness, and so much of that heavy, blue feeling, and for so long… that just a little break would be so very welcome.

At one point, when I was reading to The Rabbit from Shulgin’s Wikipedia article, I noticed mention of a campaign to raise finds to help cover medical costs associated with care for his foot.  I went looking further, and was shocked — then shocked that I would be shocked by something so obvious — to discover that he and his wife were still in the Berkeley area. After sending along what little I could, wishing it were more (but I always wish I could give more when I’m helping someone else) I realized that there might be some chance to meet this incredible being, to express my gratitude for all the many gifts that he has left for humanity — so many of which are still not nearly as widely available as they could be if it weren’t for the “War On (some classes of people who use some) Drugs” being fought so tirelessly.

And then…

On June, 2, 2014, Sasha, as he was known to those who called him friend, passed away. I hadn’t realized just how much I could care about someone I’d never even met until I broke down in tears at the news.  And again as I’m typing this, I’m overwhelmed with emotion, tears beginning to fall as I think about all the good that he has done, all the beauty and wonder and joy that sprang from his research and work and life.  If nothing else, I know I will attend his memorial service — wherever he’s flying now, I’m sure he’s happy.  Not gone, just moved higher. Onward.

“Our entire universe is contained in the mind and the spirit. We may choose not to find access to it, we may even deny its existence, but it is indeed there inside us, and there are chemicals that can catalyze its availability.” –Alexander Shulgin

I wish I could speak honestly
About the beauty that I see
That others who see beauty too
Could openly discuss the view
That those who don’t enjoy the taste
Would pass on, and they wouldn’t waste
Their time and words to curse and scold,
To lock us up until we’re old
For daring to do nothing more
Than see
And smile
And love
And live
And harm none
And feel the joys
And the pleasures
And the fire
And the magic
That this wonderful world
And the future
Has in store.

Do you know how many people in your life are left-handed?

I don’t. I know there are a few, but it’s not something that they mention much — certainly isn’t a topic that gets worked into every conversation, not by me trying to find out or them making a point of discussing their handed-ness.

Would you get upset if you noticed somebody’s letters leaning a different direction than yours? Would you confront them about what they’ve been “hiding from you,” or cut them out of your life because they’re some kind of “freak?” Maybe you’d be sure to tell them that it’s really cool that they were brave enough to live that way… because you’re just such a good friend, you might say, you’re glad to hang around!

Some folks, from what I understand, go around looking for left-handed people to date — apparently they find “South-Paws” a big turn-on. Here I would have figured that there’s a whole lot more to a person than which hand they feel more comfortable using to write or pick up objects, but that doesn’t seem to matter to these self-described “enthusiasts” and “fans.”

As I said, I do know a few left-handed people, but to the best of my awareness, they don’t exclusively associate with and date other lefties, and don’t spend all their time talking about how they’d never dream of trying to associate with those more mainstream righties… then again, the fact that I am right-handed myself means I might not see much of that talk after all…

By this point, some of you will have picked up on the analogy.  For the rest of you:

Do you know how many people in your life are transgender?

I have some idea; I know there are several — myself included — but it isn’t something that I really pay lots of attention to. I do know a few trans* folks who make a point of mentioning that fact nearly every chance they get… and if that’s what works for them, great! I know others who never bring it up publicly at all. I mention it sometimes, and it comes up with others on occasion, but it isn’t nearly the basis of my identity any more than most folks who are left-handed frame their entire existence around being “sinister.”

Unfortunately, there are many folks who go around looking exclusively for trans* people to date — they’re really turned on by one small physical aspect of  trans* people, at the expense of acknowledging the rest of the individual they’re fixated on. It’s creepy and unwelcome.

I also see some trans* men and women who surround themselves with other trans* people, who make their entire social circles trans*-only and rarely associate with anyone else.  To me, it seems a bit self-defeating, but then I’ve never much seen the benefit of separatism; standing in an echo chamber seems nice enough at first, hearing voices exactly like your own.. until someone in your little group has a slightly different take on a topic, and it doesn’t take long before the same oppressive structures replicate themselves in your little “like-minded” group.

Anyway, the long and short of it is, some women have penises, and some men have vaginas. Get over it!