I’m inclined to give Edwin a pass for a few different reasons, but the largest is that he really is so self-centered and socially clueless that he almost certainly never meant any harm, even when his behavior left a great deal to be desired. While I don’t want to date or fuck or even be close friends with prohibitively self-centered and socially clueless people (socially clueless is sometimes endearing to a point, but there are limits), I don’t mind a casual friendship with one here and there.

It’s weird to talk to an ex after a long period of no contact. Sure, he’s called me a few times sporadically on some pretext or other, but we stopped talking regularly last Fall, and now we seem to be inching toward a casual friendship point again. I guess. There’s something awkward about not knowing what you’re supposed to talk about, what’s going to open up old wounds or just plain be too personal. I pay attention to these things; I’m not sure he does.

In just a few conversations he’s mentioned a lot of odd and personal things, including but not limited to the following:

• He can’t go to the club without being hit on by all the ladies. (He’s mentioned this one on at least three separate occasions.)
• He lasts longer in bed than he used to.
• He’s so damn good-looking.
• The shower in his new residence is perfect for fucking in.
• He wants to find a Halloween costume this year that will show off his damn good-looking body.

It’s not that I have an issue with intimate disclosures (duh), but it all seems a little over-the-top, considering. Maybe he still harbors some resentment about the break up and wants to “[tell] me what I’m missing”, or maybe he thinks these are the sorts of things I’d be interested in because we’ve always been pretty candid in the past. Whatever the reason, these tidbits read as slightly off coming from an ex. Or possibly anyone else: I don’t want to hear anyone go on and on about what it’s like to be insanely fetching. Who even says that? It all ties in perfectly with his ongoing self-centered, socially clueless shtick.

I’m not exactly worried that he’s trying to entice me back or anything. Well, maybe a tiny bit, but I’m not vain enough to assume it. For now I’m just going to call it curious, funny, and slightly off-putting.  Still well better than our relationship when we were dating, though!

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I’ve never (literally never, which is probably weird at my age and player level) given nor solicited a phone number at a random pick-up spot. Flirting from a stranger always shuts me down right away. I know it’s terribly rude, but I don’t mean it that way. I’m just a shrinking violet. Really, ask anyone! (Okay, not really. But I really do hit a brick wall when it comes to flirting.)

But the fact is that with the cell phone number of a near-stranger I’d be tempted to send disturbing, creepy text messages, like “You’re painfully beautiful when you sleep,” and “We’re almost out of milk.” Because at that point in the possible courtship you really have nothing to lose and can really fuck with someone. And I’m afraid that it would seem like a perfectly good idea at the time!

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Hopeless tool of the patriarchy that I am, I just don’t like having very much pubic hair. I’ve been shaving to various degrees since I was sixteen, even though no one was helping me enjoy it until two years after that. It’s a tactile thing: I like feeling smoothness when I play with myself; I don’t want hair dampening sensation. To me, a shaved pussy doesn’t look much– if at all– better, and as long as I can sort out what’s where I don’t mind other people maintaining a healthy bush themselves.

But I’ve always had different standards for myself than I have for others. That’s why I feel confident saying you’re a degenerate for reading this smut.

In the realm of pussyshaving, though, you know what I hate? Razor burn. I hate it with the passion that we reserve for those who disagree with our politics and cut in front of us in line. It itches, and looks ugly, and sometimes even hurts (especially if you try to shave over it). I’m going out on a limb and guessing that every person who’s ever seen me naked, and not mentioned a razor burn that I had at all, didn’t exactly swoon over it either. I only fuck the brave, oblivious and/or polite, apparently.

Because, you see, I tend to get it a lot. Those chicks with gorgeously naked genitals swathed in silky, flawless skin? I’m not sure what they’re doing but I suspect they’re not shaving. Or maybe they are, and my skin is even more sensitive and fussy than I thought. Or I’m a Oh God I’m a freak of nature, aren’t I?

Bikini Zone cream has always helped the issue, but I accidentally transferred it from my hands to my lips after applying once, and the taste is not something you want on your pussy unless you’ve utterly despaired of getting oral sex that day. So there went that solution.

It’s actually been a lot better lately because I’m following the rule of only shaving with the grain of hair growth, which I used to think was for pussies. It turns out that it really, truly is, and should be observed accordingly. I’m also shaving a little less often (mostly because I’m exhausted and therefore not as precious about my bush these days), and conscientiously applying coconut oil after shaving.

Still, based on the recommendation of some head-shaving friends, I’m wondering if a safety razor is actually a gentler, superior shave, or just makes them feel like fancy gentlemen. Also, if this stuff works.

Oh god, no.

This…

…is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.

I’m so sorry, guys. I cannot take her anywhere.

This feeling informs very little of my behavior during actual sex (I have convinced myself, and dearly hope is true), but it dramatically influences–nay, dominates–the way I flirt, or even interact with my friends and the people I fuck. A great example of this is that fact that I do not, will not, can not send anyone sexy/risque/flirty/myspace profile/whatever pictures.

No part of me projects these self-judgments onto other people who take, send, and share sexy pics of themselves. Oh, not by any means. Please feel free to test me on this.

Over the weekend I went to a party at the local goth club. Objectively speaking, I can get pretty tarted up as long as I’m convincing myself that this is “just for fun” and not anything remotely close to trying to be sexy. I do tend to give myself the benefit of a doubt when it comes to dressing. It’s similar to my completely sense-making habit of enjoying wearing cute underwear but being terribly embarrassed whenever I’m found out. This particular night I put on a short skirt, high (as I can manage with my walking issues) heels, a t-shirt I assaulted with a pair of scissors, and these adorable striped thigh highs. And a good time was had by all.

Laramy wasn’t able to come out, having had kind of a shitty day. So as I got home and started to strip off my sweaty clothes, he was on my mind and I had a dramatically uncharacteristic thought process:

1. These thigh highs are kind of cute…
2. Laramy’s mentioned a couple times that he likes my legs…
3. He’s had a super bad day…
4. I never send him pics of me…
5. Ergo… maybe it would cheer him up if I emailed him a picture of my legs in aforementioned thigh highs!
6. I’d better hurry up and do it before I think this through any further.

And I wasn’t even drunk or anything! I’m not going to say that what I produced in the following moments using a camera phone, specialty hosiery, and an inexplicable lapse of inhibition was a “sexy pic”. It really wasn’t. The whole thing was supposed to be a silly “thinking of you” gesture, I guess. But after I sent it, I realized that it was hazardously close to a “sexy pic” attempt. The more I thought about it the more I started neurotically wondering if it was going to come across as entirely pathetic or just mostly pathetic, and by the time I got up the next morning I was grimly expecting the worst.

To his great credit as a gentleman, Laramy’s reaction via instant message was a lot more “I like the thigh highs” than “You preposterous creature, what’s with the flailing abortion of a jpg in my inbox?” But it was a bit of a struggle to resist asking, “So like, that picture is pretty much an embarrassment to everyone involved, right?” I felt kind as if I was watching myself in horror as I proudly brought roadkill pie to the cool kids’ sushi and sake party. My stoicism through all this was an inspiration to both of me.

Mere minutes later, I kid you not, a friend sent me a genuinely super-sexy pic of her amazing bare breasts, asking me to forward it on to Laramy. Which I did, gladly, content that I had actually found a way to at least help brighten up his morning in a much more productive way than my previous attempt.

“Same old same old.”

“Last time I saw you you were naked, so…”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much what I meant by same old same old. Turns out I’m naked a lot.”

“Cool.”

It’s pretty frustrating. I’m certainly not feeling productive in any sense of the word. Lately, showering is my big adventure for the day. Also, there’s an unconfirmed rumor that I’m taking expired vicodin. As the kids these days would say: FML.

This brings me, of course, to that old chestnut: “Not tonight; I have a headache.”

(Disclaimer: I’m pretty sure I’m a sex fiend, so my views on this subject might not apply to all, or most, or even many.)

I want to have sex when I have a headache. I want to have sex when I have an insanely terrible headache. I might not want to move around a lot, nor be on top (which I normally like), but I want the comfort, the distraction, the orgasms, and the neurotransmitters. It’s good, free, pain management.

In fact, a few years ago when Demonstabbyhead was an unrelenting fixture in my life for months at a time rather than days, I would often catch myself absently reaching down to my clit and working it like worry beads. It was relaxing, reassuring.

So this week I’ve had some amazing sex. I’ve also masturbated a lot, often while watching episodes of the X Files and The Men Who Killed Kennedy with the volume turned down low. Body distraction and unrelated mind distraction seem to work well in tandem.

In short: OUCH! Sex, please.

“Well, I mean…” I tilted my head thoughtfully, “It really depends what you’re counting as ‘together’…” We started fucking about a year ago, but we’d been making out for a month or two at that point. We sort of sauntered casually into “seeing each other” and lingered there a while until we finally admitted we were “boyfriend and girlfriend” about six-ish months later (our friends-in-common were all pretty amused when we finally figured that one out.) But we still didn’t say “I love you” until months after that. And we started being “in a relationship” on Facebook a while later.

It’s possible that we have commitment issues. Either that or he’s just been incredibly understanding of the ones I know I have. Which really aren’t that horrible. It’s just the swift, jarring kind of commitment that scares the shit out of me, so my tendency is to take it to the other extreme: the laughably obvious kind of commitment that gets lapped by molasses-flavored glaciers.

As a result, Laramy and I don’t really have an “anniversary”. In fact, anniversaries confuse me for the reasons stated above. They’re so arbitrary. I understand wedding anniversaries. A wedding is a finite date that you can point to and say “something started here”. But short of that, it’s murky: the kind of relationships I have don’t have inaugural ceremonies. I have never, in my life, thought I was on a “first date”. Of course, you don’t need a first date. You can use any of the following milestones as your anniversary:

• first awkward pat/hug
• first kiss
• first grope
• first manual sex
• first oral sex
• first intercourse
• first penetration with produce (not advisable, btw)
• first fight
• first time you met each other’s friends
• first time you met each other’s parents
• first time you had to apologize for asking to meet your new paramour’s parents because s/he’s an orphan

…and the list goes on and on. If a bunch of these things happened to occur on the same day, that makes it easy (note: I did not just call you easy), but otherwise it ends up being, like I said, pretty arbitrary. Then, some people have the grand idea of celebrating anniversaries for every little progression in their relationships, which for me would feel much like the:

• first time I wanted to die.

Seriously, that would suck.

Edwin Pomble, my boyfriend previous to Laramy, was more pro-commitment and pro-fanfare. To give an example, he told me he loved me the second time we had sex, when we’d known each other for a month, tops.  (I’m not saying that’s a bad idea in general, only that I sure as goddamn found it alarming.) He and I were together for four years, and I never quite got the hang of when our anniversary was (or what, precisely, it commemorated).  I was pretty sure it was in a month ending in “ber”, but I never advanced beyond that. If I’m being honest, I wasn’t very happy in that relationship and it’s possible that I actually just didn’t find it particularly worth celebrating. So my brain passive-aggressively refused to remember the date, which was a dickish move. And it bothered him that I couldn’t be arsed to keep track of which day in which “ber’. It should’ve been a clue to both of us that it was time to move on.

So I don’t know exactly how long I’ve been with Laramy. A year-ish. A really great year-ish, during which I’ve gotten to get closer and closer, at my own pace, to a person who amazes me and complements me and tolerates me and makes me happy. I’m incredibly lucky that way. And we’re worth celebrating, but I honestly think we do, constantly, in our own ways.

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If you verbally abuse someone, I don’t trust you. If you break things in anger, especially to intimidate or otherwise send a message to your partner, I don’t trust you. You can say it a million times: “I would never raise a hand against anyone!” “I’m not the violent type.” “I know not to cross the line.” Yeah, sorry. I still don’t trust you.

When I was a kid, no one sat me down to lay out the List of Unacceptable Behaviors. I honestly didn’t know that breaking things and punching holes in walls right next to me were red flag activities. I thought that if a guy didn’t hurt me, I wasn’t really allowed to complain. I didn’t understand that when a partner takes steps to try to isolate you from your friends and family, it’s time to dump the motherfucker already. If he told me he cared about me, well, that meant he did! Why would anyone bother to lie about that?

Yes, I was naive like the cosmos is big: beyond imagining.

I can’t blame anyone for my lack of education here. My parents certainly didn’t expect their daughter to find herself in an abusive relationship as a teenager (or ever, probably). In fact, I’m sure they thought I’d meet a nice Christian boy who would agree with my dad and treat me like a treasured helpmeet, and we’d get married young (the most reliable way to prevent premarital sex) and bless them richly with WASP grandbabies approximately nine months after I finally discovered on my wedding night what a penis looked like. They may or may not have also expected me to learn to speak in tongues, but this was merely implied, never discussed.

But despite my parents’ peculiar and inaccurate prophesies concerning my romantic future, I think they were deceptively typical: few parents want to plan for the worst, and perhaps fewer see the looming specter of an asshole on the horizon. I wonder how many parents ever give the List Of Unacceptable Behaviors talk.

Do people pick the list up from pop culture, peers, mentors, or their own common sense (of which I’ve never claimed adequate amounts)? The chilling answer is that far too few of us do until we’re taught the hard way. Far too many of us learn what’s unacceptable by accepting the unacceptable until we reach a crisis point. For me, the crisis point occurred with Reginald Sleeth after he broke things, after he called me names, after he hit me, after he choked me, after he threatened to kill me, and after so many other Fucking Well Unacceptable Behaviors.

I’m not a therapist or any other kind of expert in abusive relationships, but I have spent a lot of time processing and examining my experiences and the stories of other abused partners. Often there seems to be a pattern of escalation. An abuser might test to see if he (or yes, she) can get away with throwing something across the room so it almost hits his victim. If he liked the response from that, he might smash something right next to her, seeming almost about to strike her with it, and scaring her even more. After that, he might start shoving. Just a little. And so on.

The Slippery Slope is a fallacy because it does not logically follow that circumstances will inevitably escalate. But neither does not logically follow that an argument’s automatically invalid if it notes a process of escalation. When a person self-justifies abusive actions shrewd to provoke fear and grant him control over someone, he can’t be trusted to adhere to higher frequencies on an honor code spectrum he’s already breaking. Not all verbal abusers and object-violent abusers graduate to hitting their victims. But many do, and those who don’t are still abusive and still patently Unacceptable. And if no one’s ever told you that before, I’m damn well telling you now.

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Oh, I know what you’re thinking: “Silly Pussy, chicks don’t have balls.” Well, you haven’t seen me sing karaoke, then. It takes serious stones to belt out Sister Christian by Night Ranger when you haven’t had a sip of alcohol since last October.

I guess you do have a point, though. Maybe I don’t literally have balls to be kicked in, and maybe Laramy’s cock doesn’t literally have feet with which to kick. But what did happen resulted in some crazy sensations that seem roughly parallel.

For a long time I’ve likened having my cervix pounded into to getting kicked in the balls. This was based only on the fact that it hurts and cramps and makes me want to stop having sex (I’ve met very few men who want to soldier on after I’ve accidentally taken out their artillery, if you know what I mean. Boo.) But one thing I pride myself on is my ability to understand proportion. I knew all along that it wasn’t a perfect comparison. There seems to be some sort of blinding nausea that comes into play in the balls scenario. As someone mentioned on twitter, it’s “like someone dropped a load of cement on your guts.” Also, there appears to be a profound full-body weakening that skates past mere pain and into the realm of horrifying comic book vulnerabilities. My cervix has never worked this kind of alchemy.

Until, perhaps, recently.

Laramy and I were in agreement: we were damn well about to fuck any minute. First, I thought I’d put on some music to drown out my caterwauling so I was bent over my keyboard, ass presented. Laramy came up behind me, my pants collapsed to the floor, and suddenly I found it incredibly difficult to concentrate on pointing and clicking anything. His cock slid in and I gasped as it split me. I’m not sure what it was: my pussy gripping harder than usual in ever denser and more furious orgasms, or some slightly altered angle as he fucked me from behind, but the intensity was blistering. I either had roughly 300 orgasms in rapid succession or one incredibly long one. I honestly couldn’t tell.

After a while like that, I was starting to feel crampy enough that the mad orgasms weren’t dulling it anymore. It was really starting to fucking hurt, actually. But I have these priorities, see. When one position is bringing pain, you don’t throw the baby out with the sexual bathwater (…it got weird, didn’t it?), you change position. So I switched to an even lazier posture: missionary. And then we fucked some more. The pain seemed less urgent. I pretended I didn’t see it sitting there, watching us fuck. The orgasms (orgasm?) kept coming in, crashing. Laramy was pounding harder now, building. It suddenly occurred to me that when all that climaxing, analgesic of the gods, stopped I’d probably have something unpleasant to deal with. But you know how when you’re in the throes of passion you just don’t care?

But, as they ever must, the orgasms eventually came to an end. And sweet leaping Odin, a singular and absurd pain broke across my body. It was rather like the feeling one has during and just after a spinal tap: blasted with weakness and nausea and an inexorable pressure. I was shuddering and hysterically panting/giggling, though I assure you it didn’t seem funny at the time. I wanted to get to the bathroom in case I had to throw up, but I could barely move at first. Just shake. And laugh. Then I tottered semi-successfully to the bathroom and splashed some water on my face. I felt right again within 10 or 15 minutes.

I think I traumatized Laramy a little. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt me, but I was so set on ignoring everything to keep having awesome sex he ended up not getting much of a choice. It was so totally not his fault, but I know he felt pretty bad. Probably because I looked so wrecked from it. Fortunately he wasn’t so upset that he’s refusing to have sex with me now or anything.

But you know, it did kind of feel like someone dropped a load of cement on my guts, so I’m wondering if somehow we fucked at an angle where his penis kicked my cervix, and that I experience the female version of being kicked in the balls. Either way, I’m going to recommend you go ahead and not try it.

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Modern demons have advanced a bit.

Words are like people. Complex. They each have a history, an evolution. And just like when you sleep with someone you’re also sleeping with everyone that person has ever slept with (hawt), when you say a word you summon up all these wonderful tendrils of ghostly meanings that you might not even realize.

And some of the tendrils just tickle me.

Chastity and celibacy are now used interchangeably to mean “miserable”…er, rather, to mean “the state of not fucking”. In days of yore, though, neither of them meant that. You could actually be either and also get laid. Chastity referred to having no illicit sexual liaisons, so no-frills sex inside marriage for purposes of procreation was perfectly chaste. Celibacy simply meant “the state of not marrying”. Celibate clergy would have loads of bastard babies back in yore.

The etymological roots of incubus and succubus come from the Latin for “to lie upon” and “to lie under”, respectively. This suggests that even demons observe the missionary position. How bland.

There’s no point to this other than the fact that I find it terribly interesting.

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