Never Ask a Question Unless You Are Sure You Can Live With the Answer

For years, I have cherished the memory of how a friend, about to leave the country, had kissed me, her impulsive expression of the sincere affection and unspoken sexual tension between us.  I remembered the pressure of her arms around me, the tiny flick of her tongue against mine, how I felt warmed inside afterward, knowing that she had affirmed that never-expressed connection between us.

The other day, I asked her why I didn't hear from her anymore.  She told me that recent events, some personal and some public, had enabled her to admit that she had never felt the same towards me after that time I grabbed her and forced my tongue into her mouth.

It would be easy for me to angrily deny that it had happened the way she recounted it, but I can see that no good would come of doing so.  It would not restore the friendship I had damaged so carelessly, nor would it restore the illusion I had before.

Often, when someone asks me a rhetorical question in an argument, I am able to provide a non-rhetorical answer, to my great amusement.  I will often follow that reply (with links to documentation supporting my claim) by saying, "Never ask a  question if you aren't sure you can live with the answer."

"What Sort of Training Do You Need, My Dear?"

"I need be trained into a good submissive. Learn to take whatever is being done to body and not saying or moving.  — a******6"

That is an interesting proposition.  It reminds me of a time when I stood facing a blank wall and was punched again and again, never knowing where or when the next one would land.  I was thinking about that incident just today, as it happens.  Problem is, I wasn't a sub doing a scene with my lover.  I was a kid being physically and emotionally abused by my brother, his command to remain in position enforced by a savage kick to my kidney or my testicles when I tried to move.
Incidents like that may be why I am a Dom today, I don't know.
But enough about me.  How shall I go about training you?  Let me think on that.

Still My Favorite Valentine

Definitely, and by a long chalk: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlequin_Valentine

It Really Was, No Kidding

Not that I expect you to ever believe it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voqL5ksOuoo

Most likely I will go to my grave unforgiven.

Such is life.

Life goes on.

The Woman Who Received Many Blessings

Once there was a woman who received many blessings in her life, so let us call her Deo Gratia. "D.G." is a suitable name for her.

D.G. received many blessings, but she was only allowed to keep two of them.

The first thing that happened to her was that she received the gift of life, and that is not a small thing.

She had a fiance who loved her and gave her two daughters. But first her fiance was taken from her, and then her girls.

She suffered for years from a terrible disease, but one day her doctor delivered two blessings: not only had her disease gone into remission, but her disease was one which, if it went away, it never came back.

This was an especial blessing because she was still young enough to have another child, now that she knew she would live long enough to raise it.

She had a boy, and then she learned that the disease which would never come back, had.

D.G. had another man, and he said he would marry her, but when it came down to it, he let her down.

She had a profession which brought her satisfaction and money, but there came a time when she could not work at her trade, so she worked at jobs which gave her too little satisfaction, and far too little money.

In the end, there were only two blessings which would not be taken from her:

First, her son. Even death would not separate them, because he would love his mother forever.

Second, all suffering eventually comes to an end.

Playing Cat and Mouse (Over and Over In My Head)

For several years I have been haunted1 by "Cat and Mouse"2, an episode of The Twilight Zone3 in which a woman invites a stray cat into her home and learns that he is a man who has lived for centuries cursed to spend every day as a cat.4
They become lovers, which is beneficial to her since she has hitherto been crippled by extreme shyness (she is the "mouse" of the title), and he makes it clear from the beginning that he is interested only in a very casual relationship. Even so, she is crushed when she learns he has had sex with a friend of hers. So much that she decides to drug him, and he wakes up the next day in a cat-carrier at a veterinary clinic, where she is arranging to have him "fixed".

1 No, that is not too strong a term.
2 Which never should have occupied so much space in my head, but there it is.
3 And not even the classic Rod Serling series, but the 1980s color revival.
4 At night, he can change voluntarily between cat and man.

So why does this story keep coming back into my mind? Specifically, why did it climb into my head when I woke up at 3:00 AM and prevent me from getting back to sleep before the alarm went at 4 and I had to get up?

What does it mean to me? Do I feel as though I am in danger of being emasculated -- sexually, or socially, or . . . what? I don't get it.

My sex life is actually pretty good right now, and I seem to have better control over my sexuality than before -- it's been quite awhile since I did anything stupid and destructive on account of listening to my dick.

Not having regular work bothers me a lot. That could be it. It certainly makes me feel weak and helpless and impotent, and it prevents me from "doing my duty" by my wife and to a lesser extent by other people I care about.

Do I feel as though I am, like the cat-man, the victim of some immense, cruel, disproportionate revenge?

Possibly. Several times recently I have felt ill-used by demands and complaints that seem irrational and arbitrary.

I don't know. And I don't know why I have been feeling so irritable all morning when it has actually been a very enjoyable and undemanding day.

I've been feeling very pleased with myself over my increased self-awareness since I went through therapy, but times like this show me that there will always be limits to it. But at least I am noticing that my feelings are irrational, and not trying to blame them on someone or some circumstance around me.

It Wasn't True

I looked at an old post today, and was shocked by what I saw there.

I wrote about how it was that, when it seemed there was no chance I would ever be reconciled with my wife, she asked me to come back and try again, and how my abrupt decision to give her a trial hurt other people.

What I wrote back then was an attempt to paint a gentler picture of what happened, out of a desire to exculpate myself for going back on my word, and to scold someone else for what I perceived as going back on hers.

What I said simply wasn't true, and I think I knew even then that it wasn't.

I was really a mess back then, but that is not an excuse for the many ways in which I hurt the people around me. Having figured out that my mind was confused and disordered, I should have withdrawn from human relationships as much as I could until I knew who I was and what I wanted. Instead, I rushed about in all directions at once, causing harm all around me.

And then I distorted and misrepresented what I had done.

I shouldn't have done that, either.

Head Above Water

Last month, I tried a new antidepressant. I won't annoy you with the brand name or a testimonial of its effectiveness. It works for me where others did not -- YMMV.

But I really do feel very different.

I can now look back over my life and realize just how abnormal it was for me to feel as though I were swimming along the surface of a pool of dirty, stagnant water, trying hard not to disturb my perfect equilibrium of buoyancy lest I sink beneath the surface and have to fight my way back to the air.

The disturbances that could send me sinking were almost any unhappy thought -- regrets from the past, worries about the future, dissatisfaction with the present -- anything upsetting.

It seems a lot easier for me than it ever has been before. I think I will be able to make more progress in my life now.

Maybe. We'll see. I live in hope.

The only alternative is to live without hope.

I Can See (A Little More) Clearly Now

I can see, more clearly than before, at least, that my biggest problem is and always has been my own image of myself, my own harsh assessment of myself.

When I first met Mrs. Psycho, I was 23 and she was 46, she had been married, she had lived all over the country, she had raised four children, &c. I wanted her but I felt totally outclassed by her.

And now, 26 years later, older myself than she was back then, and having raised four kids my own damn self, I find...that I still feel inferior to her. But now I can see that it's just me.

I also see how much of the misery I have lived with for most of my life really has been my own fault. Not all of it, no, but a lot. And I see how all of it would have been easier to take if only I had been on my own side then whole time.

I have other problems in my life, and not all of them are inside me, but I feel a lot more confident of being able to deal with them now.

It Worked

The other day, while looking after my frail old father, I arranged an outing for him. I took him into town to visit his sister and her husband. Also present were my wife and her former husband, who by chance lives in the same neighborhood.

It was a pleasant, low-key event (my wife referred to it as a "tea party", and in fact tea and cookies were present). When I had taken my father home and gotten home myself, I felt inordinately good about the day's accomplishments, and wondered why.

It's not as though I had never orchestrated an event involving multiple persons, one of whom was quite dependent on me (I've raised four children, after all). But I think it's possible that this was the first time in all my five decades of life that I initiated such an event and organized it from start to finish, as opposed to having at least part of it (especially the initial idea) be someone else's work.

I Give You My heart

Once there was a boy who loved a girl, as so many do. And like so many boys, he had been told by his mother that one day he would meet a girl and want to give her his heart. So he did.
He came to her door with the front of his shirt still bloody, so that she cried out with alarm when she saw him, but he brushed aside her concerns and pressed a bundle wrapped in white paper into her arms.
“Go on, unwrap it,” he said eagerly. “See what I have done for you!”
Backing into her house, still casting anxious glances at his bloody shirt, she carefully unwrapped his gift. When she saw the rounded bloody mass, excitedly throbbing in her hands, she nearly fainted.
She looked up at him, horrified.
“What…?”
“It’s my heart. I have given it to you!”
She looked at the heart in her hands, and then at the bloody front of his shirt.
“But why would you do such a thing?”
He looked stunned.
“Last night, you said you loved me, and I said I loved you. Isn’t that what you ought to do after you have pledged your love – to give them your heart?”
She cradled the heart in her arms and stroked it gently with her fingertips. He moaned softly with pleasure.
“But…that’s just a saying. You shouldn’t do it literally!”
He shook his head, confused
“Are you saying you don’t want my heart? I thought you cared!”
“I do care. I care too much to see you put yourself in so much danger over a silly gesture like this.”
His eyes darkened.
“You think it’s silly? I did this for you!”
“Well, you shouldn’t have! Don’t you see how dangerous it is to take your heart out like this?”
As she spoke, she carelessly clutched the heart just a tiny bit too hard. The boy gasped in pain and doubled over, clutching at his heartless chest.
“Oh, dear, did I do that?”
“I’m sorry, I know you didn’t mean to do that. Just…be careful with it.”
She gave the heart some careful strokes, then stopped and sighed heavily.
“God, I wish you hadn’t done this. There are other ways of showing that you care. You didn’t have to do this to yourself – or to me.”
“What? What do you mean, do this to you?”
“Well, look, what am I supposed to do with your heart? Am I supposed to just carry it around with me all the time?”
“Well, why not?”
“For one thing, I have work to do. For another, it’s just too much responsibility. Carrying your heart around with me is like having a baby to look after. If I make a mistake, I could kill you, or cause you so much pain.”
“Well, what do you want me to do then? Take my heart back? Put it back in my chest?”
“Yes. Your heart needs to be in your chest, protected by your ribs. That’s where it belongs. That’s the best place for it. It won’t mean I love you any less.”
The boy sighed.
“All right, then.”
He unbuttoned his shirt, and reached for his heart.
“No. Let me do it.”
She nestled the heart lovingly in its spot, and gently reconnected the aorta and vena cava. She withdrew her hands, and his ribs quickly closed around his heart. The skin followed moments later.
The boy looked down sadly at the unbroken skin between his nipples.
“I’m sorry you didn’t like your gift.”
“Well, I’m sorry I couldn’t accept it. I do love you, you know.”
She placed her hand on his chest.
“I can still feel it beating, you know.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Come feel mine.”

News

News about me: My injured back is feeling much better, thanks to physical therapy and regular exercises.

News about my father; He fell and injured his hip, and he is going into a nursing home.

News about my son: After being out of contact for over a year, without even the unpleasant updates provided by police and rehab centers, I had begun toresign myself to thinking of him as dead. Then the other day my daughter called and said she had seen him, that he looked reasonably healthy and did not show any obvious signs that he was either drinking again or homeless again.

There is news about a couple of other people in my life, but maybe I will save that update for later.

New Perspective

At feministe, quoting from http://collegecallgirl.blogspot.com/ :

One of the cruelest tragedies of the sex industry is that it attracts girls like me who already have skewed ideas about sex and self-worth and then completely reinforces all our secret fears. The men you meet, the whole lifestyle, whispers to you that you were right all along, that all that really matters is being desired.I still struggle every day to change my thinking. It makes me almost sick to my stomach to meet new people whether in a personal or professional capacity, because I worry they will not think I am pretty. Most of my friends are men with whom I have had former dalliances because I just do not feel comfortable around people who I don’t know with certainty find me sexually attractive. In my head, my worth is completely tied up in my appearance and sex. As a result of being abused at a young age, my thinking is fucked. There is something wrong with my brain. No matter how logically I know that who I am is more important than how sexy I look, I have internalized the lesson that it is my sexuality that makes me lovable.Of course, this is a trap that will keep me perpetually insecure because not everyone is always going to be attracted to me. When you feel that perfectly normal fact as a deep blow to your self-esteem, it’s impossible to ever really feel confident.

Fuck.

I wonder what my therapist will say when I show her this and say that Friend Call Girl speaks to my condition? My wife and I joked once about my working as a gigolo. Fuck.

Well, I had already decided that, whether with my wife or with R or with N or on my own, I was going to change some things.

But fuck.

Fuck.

How I See Men

I've never had many male friends, nor any very close ones. For a long time, I didn't especially care.

Once in awhile, I wondered if I were missing something, or whether I could safely disregard the company of men since I was not gay and wasn't particularly interested in team sports or cars with powerful engines.

I still don't know. But I'm thinking I need to rethink some things, given the insights I've recently had into my relationships with women (see the immediately previous post).

How I See Women

I've been in therapy lately, and although it seemed to me to be moving very slowly at first, I'm coming away now with at least one significant insight per session (I presume that will level off after awhile...).

Often they aren't so much insights as new perspectives on insights I'd had a long time ago.

Old Insight #1: I once said to someone or other that I found eight or nine women out of ten to be attractive, and I felt sorry for men who are only attracted to one woman out of twenty. Why would I want to live in a world that was so devoid of beauty?

Old Insight #2: I noticed years ago that almost all of my friends were women, that I had very little interest in men, generally speaking. I had a vague awareness that this had grown out my adolescent interest in almost every woman I knew (see above), and my desperate desire to have sex with a woman -- almost any woman.

Old Insight #3: I have always been a committed feminist, have always identified closely with women, have always been acutely aware of the daily injustices faced by every woman, and felt them as though they were offenses against myself.

Old Insight #4: A disproportionate number of my former lovers have been self-identified as lesbian or bisexual. More than one has told me something to the effect that I was the only man she had felt attracted to in a long time. One woman who had previously been submissive with women and dominant with men, came around reluctantly to the realization that she did, in fact, want me to dominate her.

New Insight: I see now that the items cited above are related, and that they are not entirely harmless.

It's not terribly sophisticated or "adult" to think of every woman I like as a potential lover, or a "symbolic" lover. It's not really the same thing as declining to exclude a female friend from the category of "possible future lover". It's not even necessarily the same thing as regarding women as friends, or anyway I shouldn't presume that because I find a woman attractive and interesting, I should consider her a "friend", or presume that I am entitled to call myself her "friend".

I've never liked myself as well as other people have liked me. This isn't an endearing characteristic, and I've been aware of it as something I need to work on. It's interesting that as my therapy progresses and I learn new things about myself that are mostly discreditable, I am still liking myself better than I used to.

I guess that means that as I see myself more clearly, I am also better able to forgive myself for not being perfect.