quizzical pussy

You may have already figured out that I am single now. You’re smart like that; smarter than I am subtle. But it’s high time I explicitly stated it here, it being an important part of the narrative and all.

Laramy and I aren’t together anymore.

No, it wasn’t my idea, and yeah, of course I was crushed. I’m still kind of crushed. If you’ve been reading this blog you may have noticed how smitten I was with him; that doesn’t fade overnight. But I’m not asking anyone to feel sorry for me or take sides. Fundamentally, we had a good thing together, I’m grateful for what time we had, and I respect his choice even if it’s hard for me to understand.

So that’s the official update and declaration of QP’s singlehood with special bonus resolution to stop moping about it.

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I lay no claim to being exceptionally dateable. It can’t be easy to let yourself fall for me, and maybe it’s not even smart. I realize everyone has their own personal red flags, but logically, I must live in much of their overlap.

When you read discussions about evolutionary psychology, debates about weight, or even conversations on general attractiveness, someone will always raise the point that human beings are fundamentally attracted to health. This probably seems like a diplomatic, benign way to speak about physical beauty: Can’t we all just agree that we’re programmed to read signs of health as beauty? Isn’t health really the most important factor in choosing a mate?

Every time I hear that, read that, I flinch just a little. It’s such a casual way to tell someone that no matter how she actually looks,  she doesn’t count as pretty.

I am not healthy. My body has not been healthy for several years. I am disabled; I am sick. I have debilitating fatigue, chronic pain, a compromised immune system, and a low tolerance for activity.  I wouldn’t have a breath of a prayer of surviving in the wild. Despite the fact that even I get mesmerized by my ass sometimes, in one sense I’m unattractive on the most basic level. And even ignoring bullshit theories and pseudoscience, being in a relationship with me day-to-day must be frustrating.

Want to do a fun activity together? Depending what it is, I might be able to do it if I have a week’s notice so I can rest. And a free week after, so I can rest. Want to do a fun, spontaneous activity together? Haha fuck you no.

Feel like grabbing a bite to eat together? Okay, but right now I’m off gluten, dairy, sugar, and fifteen other things just in case it helps my illness. So far it hasn’t helped much, but it means we definitely can’t order that pizza. Also, I bring my own sugar-free ketchup or wheat-free soy sauce along, which I acknowledge might be weird.

Do you want a partner who can be your workout buddy? Who’ll go dancing with you every weekend? Who lives a normal, productive, active life? Who can work a normal full-time job? I’ll say it now: you can’t rely on me. I may never be this for you no matter how much I try.

Add to this the fact that even if I were perfectly healthy I’d still have my emotional issues and my weaknesses, just like anyone else, and most people would run away, sweating from the adrenaline rush of having just dodged a bullet. Wouldn’t they?

But I know something they don’t: I’m worth it. Not to everyone, maybe, but to the few, I’m so entirely worth it. I will love them so fiercely and sweetly, we’ll laugh together so joyously, and those things I do offer will bewitch them so thoroughly that my health will be a detail, trivia, like the maze of color in my eyes. Like the ridiculous songs I make up. Like the brownies I bake that I can’t even eat myself, but I know you like them. Like my insatiable lust for the people I love.

I’m no one’s textbook ideal mate. No one describes their perfect woman as always sick. But I make up for it. I try to. I have to believe I do.

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So my ribcage is hinged now, like a huge pair of jaws. It yawns wide, and there’s this chasm, a throat, where I normally expect my heart to thrum. Then it snaps shut in a low growl without warning, crushing my lungs, chuckling at the idea that humans need air. Either way my chest aches. Either way I’m powerless against the grinning beast. It has no tongue. It’s all teeth. Like a heartbreak with no explanation. Exactly like that.

I am all searing thorax. The rest of me is numb.

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One unpleasant side-effect of a campaign to start remembering your dreams is that when you dream about someone who’s died you wake up with their face burned into the back of your eyelids. They’ll gently pad beside you your entire day, drifting through your thoughts and darting into your peripheral vision when you least expect it. Thanks to your lucid dream experiments, you’re now being haunted.

I miss her.

We were roommates for one year in college. I always wished we’d stayed in touch, even though things were a little strained by the end of that year living together. She would get angry at me, she said, because I didn’t put as much work into my academics and writing as I did my part-time jobs and maintaining my long-distance relationship with Reginald. Even then I had to admit she was right, but I also felt like my priorities were my business. I also suspected she resented how effortlessly my good grades came to me. She was gifted, but also a very hard worker. Reginald also moved back in-state at the end of that school year, and he didn’t much like me having friends separate from him. Also, sometimes I’m just shitty when it comes to keeping my friendships together. There were lots of factors, I guess, but one way or another she and I talked a few times over the summer and then passively let our friendship lapse. When we met each other on campus during Junior and Senior year we smiled and were cordial, but we weren’t even a shadow of what we’d been.

What we had been was pretty awesome. She was the only real friend I made in college, considering Reginald’s gentle suggestions that I never talk to anyone but him. She and I, we challenged each other and bickered and then made up and had serious discussions and laugh-until-you-very-nearly-pee discussions. We shared almost everything. We danced together to Leonard Cohen. We competed and supported and comforted by turns. And no matter what, every night we’d read to each other before bed. Both of us being technical virgins, of course we usually read books about sex. Our favorite was (if memory serves) the hilarious¹ Reclaiming Goddess Sexuality, which followed a fictional young woman through what was probably a very historically inaccurate sexual initiation in an ancient matriarchal culture that I have never found any indication existed. It suggested that for first-time intercourse we be positioned side-by-side with our partners². Man-on-top sex is not very empowering, apparently. We sternly reminded each other when our attitudes weren’t goddess-like enough.

At times it was almost like we were having a romantic relationship, except the entire physical/sexual facet was trapped in books and we read it aloud instead of acting on it. Also, we both had boyfriends. But still, I sometimes wondered what it would be like to leave mine and have a girlfriend instead. A girlfriend with perfect lips and big eyes and a mop of short, wavy hair like hers.

And then, a couple years ago, she died.

I don’t know what happened. I was searching for her online one day, thinking I’d email her to see how she was doing, and I found her obituary. She was an award-winning poet. She’d been living twenty minutes from me. She was deeply loved and dearly missed. She was gone. I dreamed about her last night and I woke up and she’s still gone. And I miss her. That’s all I can really say about it. That’s the entire story.

She’d have written it better.

1. Just to be clear before I go into details: we knew it was hilarious. We were naive, maybe, but not stupid. [↩]
2. I’m guessing this meant spooning, but I will likely never know for sure [↩]

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I often forget I’m an extravert. Most of the time I don’t really feel like one. I’m normally not very shy, but I can be reserved at times, and I do eventually stop talking once I run out of things I can convince myself are at least the tiniest bit interesting to other people.

But my Myers-Briggs type starts with an E¹, for whatever that’s worth, and I’ve noticed that being social with people I like does indeed energize me more than time alone. In fact, quite often the former can feel like a euphoric drug. Which I suppose makes me some kind of junkie… besides the orgasm kind, which we already knew about.

But, strangely enough, the E doesn’t actually stand for “Everyone love me NOW!” Orientation isn’t skill, and as it turns out, a vowel doesn’t magically make me the life of the party.

For an instance, the people I already knew who attended last week’s poly munch with me all came back with at least one or two new Fetlife friends. In my case, not so much. I’m pretty sure this means I’m doing munches wrong, or at least that E is most definitely not for “makes friends Easily”. Which again, like my continuing addiction to orgasms, we (or at least I) already knew.

But even though I had moments of feeling like I had nothing to say and no one to say it to, the people were awesome and geeky and I’ve probably seen at least half of them wandering around local Sci Fi cons over the years. We’re not friends yet, obviously, but I could see it happening. Eventually.

So that’s cool.

Going back to vowels, Laramy’s a classic I, and wasn’t in the mood to meet a score of new people, no matter how enticingly geeky they might have been. But I think he might enjoy it another time.

A digression: To overgeneralize blatantly, I can imagine downsides and upsides to every introversion/extraversion configuration: Two Es never getting lonely, but also never shutting up, or two Is becoming blissfully happy shut-ins. An I and an E probably balance each other out fairly well, but it’s important to make sure the I’s needs for time alone are respected because it’s easy for Es to overbook their partners in the process of wanting to share the fun, and the Is can get burned out very quickly that way. When really Es can be social with other people while the Is recharge. So it needs to be I before E. Except after C, which is children. Once you have children you don’t get to be alone anymore, ever. Sorry.

(digression ends)

After mentioning jealousy in my last post, I realized that I didn’t make it clear that jealousy is not something I’m particularly struggling with right now. Rather, it’s just an example of a thing I wish I had someone to talk to about. Currently, there are a lot of things like that: my curiosity about kink, navigating my first open relationship, even just figuring out how to make sure my emotional needs get met.

I’m allowed to talk to Laramy about these things, but it’s difficult for me to make the conversations productive because he and I relate to these issues so differently (and in the case of kink, Laramy is more or less just not interested). I don’t know if it’s our vowels or if it’s other letters, or if it’s just that I have a really difficult time describing my wants and needs, but things don’t seem to go well when we try to have these talks. It seems like it’s better to have myself sorted out before I broach these subjects with him, otherwise I just end up making him think he’s doing something wrong.

But sometimes I want emotional support while I process things and explore all aspects of how I feel about them. I want to feel like it’s safe to explore new things. I don’t want to worry about things getting a little messy. It’s no one’s fault, unless perhaps it’s my own, but I don’t feel like I have that. Lately I’m feeling overwhelmed and lonely and frustrated.

Obviously I don’t expect anyone to step in and fix these issues for me. It would just be nice to have someone to talk to, at some point, who could relate to what I’m feeling, not think I’m ungrateful or talking shit about my boyfriend, not blame him, not blame our non-monogamy, and maybe give me some advice. Or, like, a hug. Most of all I want someone to tell me it’s okay– normal, even– to feel things and want things and need things. Right now I want so much. I feel ravenous with it, and it’s beginning to consume me.

Oh, god! I hope it doesn’t start on my ass…

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1. More precisely, I’m supposedly an ENTP, for those who are curious [↩]

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There is an ancient prophecy. It’s been passed down from crippled harlot to slutty gimp through the generations¹. Though originally recorded in ancient Sumerian, the English translation somehow manages to be a perfect Petrarchan sonnet. Disabled trollops must have been quite magical at one point.

The tablet upon which it was carved so long ago is kept in a secret underground vault at the base of a wheelchair accessible ramp, and is guarded by vicious Gila panthers. I’ve seen all this with my own eyes. Once.

Of course, I didn’t memorize it. Even if I did I couldn’t share it on the internet, not verbatim, on pain of Hitachi Magic Wand torture. But trust me, the rhymes are ingenious coming from people who couldn’t have possibly known the English language would even be a thing.

I can tell you the gist of the prophecy, though, and it’s this: Someday thou, Quizzical Pussy, shalt stoppeth being so damn insecure. Verily.

It’s actually a little surprising that this ancient, precious prophecy ended up being about me, when I stop and think about it. Was that nice of those Sumerians or what? Anyway, knowing the future like that is a great comfort to me in times like this.

Because really, I am ridiculous.

I told Laramy a few days ago that I’m kind of waiting for him to get sick of me and leave². Which, as it turns out, is not a charming thing to say to one’s sweetheart. In retrospect, it was hurtful. It brushes up against ignoring what we have together, telling him I don’t really think he loves me even though I absolutely know he does. The problem is really that I don’t understand why, so I keep waiting to fuck it up by accident.

This is all mostly-to-entirely because I’m insecure. This is the same reason I lose touch with friends while I’m trying not to bother them. This is the same reason I feel like a creepasaurus creep whenever I try to flirt. It’s even why I’m afraid to say no to people I don’t want to have sex with. Insecurity has gotten me into so much more trouble than cockiness that I wonder why I’m still careful not to brag or build myself up. It should really be the other way around by now. But! Here we are.

Laramy never seems insecure about our relationship. We have a good thing going, and it doesn’t seem like I want to end it, so he doesn’t worry about it. This is pretty much just sense, but it feels like alien logic. I can’t imagine feeling that way. I’m glad he does, but it’s so counter-intuitive to me that part of me insists he’s not worried about losing me because it really wouldn’t matter much. But that isn’t fair. He’s probably just doing what emotionally healthy people do.

Why should anyone assume they’re on borrowed time in their relationship? What good does it do? And it’s not even that being single scares me as a general rule; I just specifically don’t like the idea of not being with him. We really do have a good thing going. And I think my insecurities have the potential ruin it more thoroughly and efficiently than anything else.

Does anyone ever really know why they’re loved, anyway? Is it necessary? Is it possible?

1. Did you not realize we have a sacred fraternal order? Cause we do. [↩]
2. This is not because of something he’s done or anything in particular about us. I’ve tended to feel this way even while in shitty, ill-advised relationships. [↩]

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The other key, of course, is Pong.

If someone with a not too terribly impressive amount of judgment were to come to me and ask, face so straight and tone so earnest: “Quizzical Pussy, what’s the key to a good relationship?” my first priority would be to not snort while I was doing all the laughing. Really, the “I Make Wonderful Romantic Decisions, And In Case You Were Wondering, Yes, That’s Sarcasm” sash I was awarded in 2004 didn’t win itself.

And then I’d be tempted to say “blind luck” because that’s certainly how I’ve landed in the one I’m in. But then I’d give my real answer.

Inside jokes.

Yes, love and trust and patience. Absolutely. And fabulous sex usually doesn’t hurt either. But it’s harder to quantify those first three things, and sometimes even tricky to detect when they’re fading away. And the sex? It’s possible to have fabulous sex with someone you actively dislike.

But if you’re always laughing together at things that would elicit shrugs and eyebrow twitches from all the rest of humanity, you have this secret language. You’re each choosing to be in closed, joyous company, which in my experience is the last thing you want when you’re fundamentally unhappy with each other. In essence, inside jokes are an old magic that transports you to the island nation of Us, a place of moderate climate and ruthless border control. You are never dragged to Us, although you can often convince the other person you’re already there just by smiling and nodding politely. But there will still be an ocean between you.

And this isn’t just romantic relationships. Not at all. I never feel like I’m fully friends with someone until we have at least one inside joke together. We’re just on the shore, friendly together but sharing no homeland.

Maybe this is just me. I could be biased by the amazing sex Laramy and I had yesterday between spates of laughing at things that are sheer nonsense to everyone else. I could be placing too much value on laughter for this to apply to anyone but me. But that would be my answer anyway.

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Guess whose desktop PC bricked out the day after her computer genius boyfriend went home after visiting? Yeah, totally me. And I may be a nerdy in my useless, fact-spouting, “It’s a Fact” girl way, but I don’t know enough to get myself out of this kind of mess. That is a fact.

Laramy, aforementioned computer genius boyfriend, insisted on making a special trip back up here yesterday after work to fix it for me, which he did. Utterly. Then he insisted on taking me out to dinner. Why, you ask? What did I do to deserve all this, you ask? Nothing. I’m just unreasonably lucky and he’s incredibly amazing.

And the very best part? I got to see him an extra bonus day.

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One of my coworkers was recently telling us about her son’s impending engagement to his longtime sweetheart. It’s going to happen any day now. Her eyebrow turned a confidential arch as she detailed his plans for the proposal, and the engagement gift she wants to get them. She worried they’re too young, having just finished college, with years of grad school ahead of them. She sighed. She beamed. “They’re not shacking up, though,” she added. “They’re going to move in together after the wedding.”

“That’s good,” said another coworker. “That’s the way it should be.” General concurrence.

“Really?” I asked her in my quizzical way, not just because this woman lived with her boyfriend for a year before he recently became her husband.

“I think it’s the ideal. I mean, I admire people who can do that.”

“It’s great if they want to wait. But I don’t think there’s any one right way. I just think people should do whatever works best for them,” I shrugged.

“Well, yeah. I do too. I just think it’s really classy when people wait to live together,” she asserted. Another shrug from me. “It’s just classier,” she tasted the word again.

As I went back to my work, I wondered what’s “classy” about abstaining from sex before marriage. Indeed, what’s classy about not even abstaining from sex, but maintaining plausible deniability that you’re having it with the person you love. It just doesn’t compute for me.

Let me take a moment to tell you that I’m actually pro-marriage. I’ve had several conversations recently leading me to suspect that a lot of people get the opposite impression from me. People who read my blog might think this because I’ve written that marriage isn’t something I consider important to the continued stability of society. Or possibly because I also stated that a free stand mixer was a perfectly valid reason to enter the sacred institution of matrimony. Or maybe just because I’m so obviously cynical.

But honestly? I’m thrilled when people get engaged. I will squee right along with the best of them when two people I love want to exchange vows. In this society just the word “wife” or “husband” has more heft, more meat to it than “girlfriend” or “boyfriend”, and this is fact. I’m not immune to it, whether I can intellectually justify it or not.

But also, there’s this innate power in having said “You and me, okay? For as long as we keep breathing. This is the goal.” You can make that commitment without being officially married, of course, and I respect that choice as well, but when you’re married you’re more or less asking people to automatically assume it. And that’s powerful too. However it might seem when I’m snarking, I’m pro-optimism and pro-love and pro-commitment. So Yay Marriage! Yay Marriage between any two or more people who want to make that promise to one another.

Is it for me personally? I don’t know. To me, marriage is largely just like any relationship, but with a stated goal (which may or may not work out) and all those little perks like possible tax breaks, legal status, and the ability to easily share insurance benefits. In and of itself, it is neither scary nor numinous. In my able-bodied early twenties I guess I used to think it would be really great to have that kind of bond and goal with someone. Like, hypothetically. But since becoming chronically ill, it feels uncomfortable to even think about asking for that degree of commitment from anyone. I’m aware that I’m not the best long-term investment*. So I don’t know. Probably not.

But I am pro-marriage for you, if you’re into it. I promise.

However, I have to say it once again: I don’t think being married makes anyone better than non-married people. I don’t believe it sanctifies sexual union. I don’t think that living together and sharing a life before you’re (or instead of being) married is tacky or sinful or intrinsically sub-ideal or anything of the sort. I think it’s just what works best for some people and their relationships, which really aren’t my business anyway. Just another choice in a world full of possibilities.

You want to protect marriage? Don’t play nuptial keep away with the homosexuals. Don’t freak out because a woman wants two husbands. Don’t judge couples for having pre- or lieu-of-marital sex. Cluck not about unwed mothers. In observing these prohibitions, perhaps you’ll find that every time people get married, it gets to be beautiful and meaningful to them. Never perfunctory. Never to appease public opinion. Stop making it about you and your expectations. It may surprise you that your marriage can still be what you and your partner/s and your God and your culture want marriage to be. You’re just finally giving the same courtesy to the rest of us.

Because if you, the judgment mongers of the world, keep picking at marriage, trying to reduce it to your own definitions and rules, it really is going to unravel. And all that’s left will be people trying to love each other and be happy. And I have this strange foreboding that in the end, that will be perfectly fine with everyone but you.

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*These statements do not in any way apply to all or indeed any other disabled or chronically ill people. Just to be clear, I am talking about myself only.

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I don’t even know where the line is between being attracted to someone because of traits they possess (which seems more or less healthy) and being attracted to someone because they belong to a certain group that either do or are perceived to possess one or more traits.

Basically, at what point does it become creepy and objectifying?

You know how some guys seem to regress to preverbal panting when confronted by a naturally redheaded woman? I wonder what it’s like to be that redhead. Is there a rush of power, knowing that she’s the brass ring for plenty of people? Is it annoying because while they’re fixating on her titian hair no one seems to be noticing her beautifully sculpted shoulders? Is it just exhausting because it’s so seldom just red hair they want, but things they associate with red hair, be it sexual dynamism, temperament, whatever the hell people tend to think they know about her before they know it. I imagine it has to be demoralizing on some level to realize that you can be someone’s perfect woman before he knows a second thing about you.

And red hair is just one example. I’ve known Asian women who’ve had a similar problem, carefully wading through fantasists to find sincere dating prospects. I’ve met people who will only fuck musicians, or rich people, or skinny people. And well-endowed women must get tired of all that eye contact their boobs get.

Where exactly does it stop being creepy and start being the normal way attraction works? I do not know. It’s hard for me to feel actual attraction for someone I haven’t gotten to know yet. Maybe if I was experienced in feeling instantaneous sexual interest I’d have a sense of that line. Or if I felt constantly fetishized I’m sure I’d have some opinions on where it is.

I suppose the one fetish/preconception trigger I sometimes feel like I’m brushing up against is the bright hair. It isn’t really the same thing, maybe, but it give me some insight. See, I like to dye my hair crazy colors most commonly seen on the heads of high schoolers and cartoon characters. I’ve been through most of the colors of the rainbow and some change. Immature, unprofessional, attention-seeking, or whatever you want to call it, it’s honestly just the way I like my hair. It looks right to me when it’s ridiculous. And maybe that does say something about me on a deeper level, but I don’t think it says much. I’m very much the same person no matter what my hair looks like.

But occasionally I’ll run into a guy who looks at me and sees a Manic Pixie Dream Girl*. He will ask me about my hair, why it’s purple or whatever, and expect an interesting response. A movie dialogue response. “It’s my natural color. I decided.” will not entirely satisfy. “I like it.” would not be valid at all because it isn’t going to blow his mind and kick off our amazing adventure that will culminate in him growing as a person.

Even getting to know me a bit, when he finds I’m silly and quirky and whimsical and creative, the illusion won’t be shattered just yet. It will take a little while to realize that instead of teaching “broodingly soulful young [him] to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures” I’m kind of just going through life as normal and trying to have a relationship (or possibly just a fling). Knowing me isn’t really opening the world up like a wacky, technicolor flower.

And then he feels resentful because I’ve lied. Not with my tongue and lips, but with my hair and playful attitude, now belied to hell by my being a real fucking person who is too busy being a protagonist in my own stuff to bother being a plot device.

I’ve just gotten tastes of that. Of course most people over four don’t really think my hair makes me magical. If they did, though, I’d have an even longer history of disappointing them.

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* I realize the link describes this stock character as “stunningly attractive”, but naturally real-life MPDGs would be held to a lower standard. These characters are usually romantic interests for main characters, and played by Hollywood actresses, so…

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