quizzical pussy

The most sensible, straight-forward safeword is probably “red”, within a “we’re doing that traffic light thing” context. I like the gooey, waffley security of having “yellow” there in case I need it.

Safewords that miss the point include “no”, “stop”, “ow”, and “motherfucker”. You might think saying “safeword” would fall into this category, but on further reflection I think it would actually make a pretty good safeword. It’s just not very imaginative.

The most evil safeword is almost certainly “pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis”.

I think perhaps the meanest, yet most insidiously effective (at stopping play; not so much at fostering a healthy dynamic), safeword would be “I’m bored”.

The best of all possible safewords is “narwhal”. That’s been scientifically proven by science.

On a semi-related note, I want every single motherfucking one of these. Immediately.

Anyone feeling libidinous lately? I jockeyed myself through about fourteen orgasms yesterday, although to be fair I only squirted three or four times. As my victory lap, I’m posting confessions I find especially hot in some way (or at least inspire me to think dirty thoughts). I actually get a lot of arousing confessions, and they wouldn’t all fit in this ConTuesday installment without the compilation thereof cutting drastically into my masturbation time, so perhaps this will be the first of several “QP’s Choice” ConTuesdays. Who knows?

But seriously. This way lies hotness.

When I was in studying philosophy in undergrad, I would regularly be reading something so interesting that I’d somehow get aroused and have to take a masturbation break.

I feel weird defining myself as a sapiosexual because that implies that I’m such a smartypants I get to decide who and what is intelligent and then use it to satisfy my own sordid desires, but fuck it. I’m pretty much a sapiosexual and this makes me feel funny in my smartypants.

This is Confessor #4 from June 7th: I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but he never called. Ah well.

I have this funny feeling it was his loss entirely. Thanks for the update.

This is very very simple. From an early age, I had a terrible crush on a totally amazing older ”father figure” man. He was well-off, well-educated, well-traveled, well-read, well-everything. Tall, slender but strong, blue eyes, darkblonde hair, wonderful voice. He had lost his first wife years ago, married again, had two children with his second wife and I had never met his children because we didn’t live in my hometown anymore. (Actually, we lived in the country, all of us. He had homes in several places.

Years go by, I run into this man, about ten years older than I…and he seemed so familiar and so nice and handsome and sexy and elegant and classy. Ta-da! My preteen crush’s son…over that summer I attended several family functions and parties…the two of them were there. OMG! His father, my serious first crush, had only gotten more handsome, more charming, and he and his second wife were still very much in love. I was considered too young to date this man’s son by my strict father…but I was allowed to go on many family trips and visits.

As if my little mind had a mind of its own, soon, very detailed dreams began of being, uhmm, sexually and romantically involved with one or the other of these two men. And wait. There’s more. Sometimes, the dream revolved around being with the Father…and he and his son ”share” me. Then, it switched, in this dream, the son and I are very very involved and somehow, the son and father began to share me. In incredible and erotic and intense ways. I never really lost my crush on the Father…and I may have seriously fell in love with his son…only our age difference got in the way and then I met my beloved husband.

To this day, we occasionally see this family socially and in and around town. The father’s lovely wife recently passed away, tragically. The son…oh my. He’s very much a chip off the ol’ block. Two more handsome elegant charming and truly kind men, are hard to find.

And I still have vivid dreams and yes, fantasies of belonging to both of these men, and of course, now include in various ways…my beloved husband.

I. Am. So. Bad!

Just for the record, I think it’s really sweet and romantic that your husband now figures into your fantasies. It has to be true love when you share with your lover in even your most hidden fantasies.

I have a cute friend. A cute friend, recently available, whom I would kind of like to fool around with. I think it could be a lot of fun for both of us, probably not too serious, good times all around. Sadly, the cute friend has an extraordinarily crazy ex, and, alas! I am having serious reservations about involving myself in any of it.

Clearly you’re wise beyond your years, ignoring the fact that I have no idea how old you actually are. Too many of us would grasp the shiny and ignore the giant warning signs that we would have to file a restraining order before the whole thing was through.

I feel bad for cute friend, though. One (possibly sustained for quite some time) bad decision could potentially hobble cute friend’s fooling around prospects for years, depending on how scary the ex is. This is why we need to start training and distributing Hell’s-going-to-have-no-fury sniffing dogs (who should all be Papillons because awwwww). Prevention is the best cure here.

But failing adorable toy dogs and time machines, sneaking around can be really hot if you want to start fucking not wisely but too well.

My girlfriend posted on twitter tonight that I had left a pair of my panties at her house after spending the weekend there. A few moments later, she texted my to say she’d just masturbated while wearing them. It’s one of the hottest texts I’ve ever gotten and I just had to share it with someone.

That is insanely hot. I don’t know which of you I want to be more in this scenario, but I’m willing to try either. Or both. Yes. Both. In a “trading off” sense; not in a “both parties are me” sense, because frankly I already masturbate wearing my own panties and while it’s not half bad I think we can do a hell of a lot better if one of us starts being someone else.

Tell me a secret.

Yesterday, while cleaning out a cupboard, I found an old journal I kept while Reginald and I were together. We were living in separate states at that point, and we agreed to write journals for each other so we could read them when the long-distance ordeal was over. This seemed more romantic than simply keeping in touch via chat and email, I suppose, which we did anyway. We were always looking for the most romantically dramatic way to navigate our relationship, including crying uncontrollably whenever completely unnecessary.

I wrote in mine faithfully a few times a week for about a year and a half. I think he wrote about two or three entries total in his. I remember how that hurt and confused me. Understandable, because it was somewhat telling as to the nature of our dynamic by then, about which I was even more clueless.

I wasn’t a girlfriend at that point; I was a supplicant. I prayed. I mooned. I counted the days between us like a rosary and I’d never even been Catholic. Reginald was my false and golden god. A blond god with floppy hair. I wrote florid fantasies that seemed to long for his pity and love in equal parts. Even if we were to ignore the fact that this man was abusing me emotionally every day, and each time I visited him he’d physically abuse me, everything I wrote  was desperate, needy, and absolutely starved for even the meanest scraps of affection. It is frankly disgusting. I’m so glad I never put that shit up on the internet.

I didn’t have much time to devote to reading that old artifact, but I felt a mild nausea flutter through me as I skimmed it. I wanted to reach back through the pages, grasp the wrist of that little girl as she spilled herself across them, and tell her exactly what she was wasting. So many years– her college years, which could have been a fun adventure. So much dignity. Her very self.

And truthfully, she probably wouldn’t have listened to me. She seemed to think that mortgaging everything she was and everything she could be was a small price to pay, when really she just wanted to be loved.

Teenage girls are so pathetic when they’re me. Honestly.

I wrapped the journal in a plastic bag like a thing that stinks and shoved it in the dumpster. Exactly where it belonged all along.

Sometimes I have to remind myself not to wonder who’s sending ConTuesday confessions. I mean, of course I can wonder, which is really only natural, but I made a pledge to myself early on not to try to figure out who sent in secrets. First off, it’s a fool’s errand. Although I know a handful of my readers, most are complete strangers. Secondly, the whole point of these are that they’re anonymous. It would be hypocritical of me to try to subvert that, even just through guesswork. After all, getting your dirt in my inbox is a sacred trust.

Well, maybe not sacred. Anyway, through no effort of my own I know exactly who sent in precisely two of the following confessions. But I’m going to try to play it cool, okay? Okay!

I just found a BDSM association in my area (all donations are tax deductible!) and the only thing that comes to my mind when reading their website is: oh my god, you are so adorable!!

If I knew who you were maybe I could figure out where you live and check out this adorable website! But no, I must be strong.

…Or do I know who you are?

No.

So…my boyfriend wants me to eat his poop. He essentially wants to poop in my mouth, and then kiss me, like we are snowballing his poo.

He poops in tupperware containers and puts them in our fridge. I’m afraid he is going to make poop pancakes!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s pretty much all I have to say to you, person who I totally don’t know who you are at all.

I have what might be described as an unusual fetish. One of my friends posted a clip of an old kids’ movie on facebook in a fit of nostalgia, and my immediate response was, ”Oh god, must not tell him that clip used to be some serious fetish fuel for me back in my youth…” So I’m telling you instead.

Curiosity overwhelms me right now. I’m not asking, though. I’m not asking.

Hi, it’s Ozy. I used to confess things a lot here, but now I don’t have anything to confess because it all goes on my blog. :( Sorry, sex confessional! I’ll try to think of something really good for you soon.

Your confessions are missed, Ozy. Not that I know which ones were them, at all. Excepting one.

I identify as a switch. I’ve discovered that I prefer to be dominant towards men and submissive towards women. I am in a fairly open poly relationship. My girlfriend is submissive and my boyfriend is dominant. -.-

Sometimes though, I imagine them each as the other one. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t like that so much.

Hey, I’ve been feeling the itch to dominate a bit lately. Maybe if I knew who you were we could… wait. No. Sacred trust.

Seriously, readers, your secrets are safe here. Fascinating and safe.

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. [↩]

I’ve lost a lot of friends over the years. It’s an inevitable side-effect of being more anxious not to bother people than you are not to lose them.

When I was a kid I was nothing but an annoyance. I knew this like I knew each careful syllable of The Lord’s Prayer. I felt it from my parents, who had too many children, from my older sisters, who despised me as older, stronger, more popular kids naturally will. I came to feel it from everyone around me eventually. I don’t know how much of this I was imagining versus how much I was/am naturally bothersome, or if it became a self-fulfilling belief.  But it was very real to me.

Whatever the reason, I still get snagged on that feeling. Every time I initiate contact with someone instead of waiting for them to approach me is a struggle. I want to connect with them, but I worry I’m intruding. There they were, in the significantly more comfortable state of not having to deal with me, until I went and fucked that up.

Even now, I usually don’t even email a friend unless I have a specific reason to. I’m not so good about checking in on someone, or planning excuses to hang out, or other things that normal people who want to make and keep friends tend to do.

If you’re thinking right now that I must be a shitty excuse for a friend, I’m tempted to agree with you. The problem, of course, is that if I’m respecting the sanctity of someone not having to deal with me, that pretty much puts all the work on them. If there’s going to be a friendship, they’re going to be making it happen. I remain a grateful, passive party. That’s why I’ve lost so many friends. It’s my own damn fault.

I’m working on it.

In the past, quite a few male friends have stopped talking to me when it became clear we probably weren’t going to fuck each other. Either I started a relationship with someone else, or they did, or advances were made and rebuffed, or they just got tired of waiting for me to pick up on all the none-too-subtle hints that I would later realize, in astonishment, meant they actually wanted to have sex. And then they would just disappear. These situations felt different from my typical experience of losing friends. In these cases, it wasn’t as simple as drifting apart. I knew I’d disappointed these guys, and after that there was no more friendship, so it was easy to assume that all along they’d never had any interest in actually being my friend. Now that the something more was no longer there as a lure, they had no use for me.

A feeling like that tends to bleed backward, tarnishing all past interactions with someone. Every word I said, was it just so much noise to wait through until he could make a snatch at my pussy? Was every kind word and favor just down payment on what he really wanted? Was he ever really my friend, or was this just a very long, aborted pickup?

Out a friendship and none too happy about it, it was easy to suspect that I’d been dealing with a victim of Nice Guy Syndrome all along.

You know what, though? There’s no way I’ll ever know that. If I’d made a good faith effort to keep the friendship going, this time without the sex thing sitting there, glittering yet unreachable, I might have succeeded. But I didn’t try.

It isn’t easy to fight to hold onto a friend who just rejected you. It isn’t easy to stay in touch when you’re in the throes of New Relationship Energy. It isn’t hard to read someone’s lack of communication as a sign that they’re pretty much done with you. I would. Hell, I did. Maybe they did too.

I couldn’t possibly be the only person to have jumped to similar conclusions. Nice Guy Syndrome is a real thing, sure, but I can believe it gets over-diagnosed. Isn’t it worthwhile to give someone you’ve considered a friend the benefit of a doubt before assuming he’s an entitled creep just biding his time until he can get into your pants?

Sorry, guys. Maybe you really were nice. It would’ve been nice if I’d at least given you the chance to prove it.

(image source)

You always hear that rape isn’t about sex, it’s about power. And that probably holds true if you look deep enough, but why in the world would a rapist do that? On more casual reflection, I think that dictum has the potential to allow people to easily deny that what they did was rape. A lot of times, in their minds, it was completely about sex. They weren’t paying particular attention to consent, but they think they probably got it, more or less. And besides, they weren’t trying to take anyone’s power away. They weren’t being violent. They were just trying to get laid, man.

I believe that it’s easy for people to think “Rapists are monsters. I am a person. Therefore, I must not be a rapist. IT’S LIKE MATH.”

Piers Vitiard liked to bike and play lacrosse. He knew about Classical mythology and was good at Soul Calibur. He thought everyone should see Donnie Darko and the entire Godfather series. He was a pretty nice guy. He also raped me.

Reginald Sleeth dreamed of being a filmmaker. He always wove intricate stories in his head, but rarely wrote them down. His voice got louder when he was self-conscious, and he spoke in a fake Scottish accent when he wanted attention. He worried about getting fat. He thought that orange striped cats were the best kind. When he gave you a compliment you tasted it for weeks afterward. He was emotionally, physically, and sexually abusive.

They weren’t monsters, they were just people who did some fucked up things. And people don’t let themselves feel like abusers or rapists. They might have moments when they realize that they’ve done some fucked up stuff, and even feel guilty, but the homeostasis of the mind demands that our thoughts move on from there. We need to justify, rewrite history a little. We need to slant events in such a way that allows us to be the heroes of our own stories.

And along a similar vein, I’m no righteous, innocent victim. The choices I made were monstrously wrong, if I really examine them. I played into Reginald’s abuse, responding to his manipulations as if he’d scripted them and I’d memorized my part. I let our dysfunction teach me what it meant to be in a romantic relationship. Every chance I had to stand up to him, I folded; right up until I found the strength to leave at the very end. I excused Piers after he violated me, and made a point of trying to make it seem to both of us like what had happened wasn’t a big deal. That was unfair to me, to him, and to the next woman he got alone in a room. He learned nothing from what he did to me.

I got it all so wrong. I denied myself the protection and respect that were mine by right. I told them it was okay to disrespect me, harm me, use me. I allowed myself to become inhuman. Maybe I didn’t feel human in the first place. I do now, though. I know better now.

You can be a real person, even a normally decent person, and fuck up big time. You can be weak. You can collude against yourself in the sickest ways imaginable. You can be a rapist. You can be an abuser. Maybe you didn’t mean for things to happen that way, but motive isn’t everything. Sometimes what actually happened is important too. And you’re allowed to forgive yourself, but that really sort of requires admitting it to yourself first.

(image source)

When you work as a phone sex operator, you are often essentially being paid to pretend you believe bullshit.

Yes, of course your penis is the exact dimensions of a foot-long meatball sub.

You’re talking to me while a Victoria’s Secret model is sucking your cock? Wow, Mister. That is really something!

So let me get this straight: You have interacted with real, actual people before? In public? Unsupervised? Oh, baby, that’s so hot.

I was uniquely suited to this task because I am naturally straight-off-the-bus gullible. When I was younger I somehow didn’t grasp the concept of lying to impress people. I loved to invent stories with fictional people, and I’d lied for self-preservation before, but it had never in my life occurred to me to prop myself up with false claims, and somehow that left me blind to it when others did it.

This led me to marvel at how that nice Mormon girl I knew in eighth grade had managed to join a gang of drug dealers. It also left me wondering how Reginald Sleeth, my first boyfriend, had managed to ghostwrite so many songs for indie bands without ever getting paid for it!

I have since learned to be a bit less credulous, but it’s still embarrassingly easy to lie to me sometimes. And this serves me well when people are lying to impress me and I’m supposed to seem duly impressed.

But this one guy took the cake.

I think one customer was single-handedly keeping the struggling phone sex company I worked for afloat. He called in almost every night I worked, and the dispatch ladies told me it was far more often than that.

As far as I could tell, he really did just want to talk.

I never heard any panting, quickened breathing, or sloppy slapping sounds. He never wanted to talk through his fantasies, he never wanted to talk dirty. He just wanted to talk.

Sure, it was usually about sex. He liked it best when I was playing a naive, innocent character and he could explain things to me. He’d tell me about his countless sexual exploits, and his preferences in women, and almost shyly describe his prowess. He loved to make a woman come over and over.

And I might have believed him, too, if it weren’t for the train story.

He’d traveled extensively, he said, in the days when that was as likely to mean great trains gliding across the country as airports and flying machines. And he had found women everywhere he went. This is a potentially true thing, since women are indeed just about everywhere. I have heard that scientists recently found a woman in Antarctica.

Once he was on a train and made his way through the observation car to the very back, where he could cling to the rear railing and get some fresh air.

As he took in the scenery of the tracks unraveling behind his mount, he smelled an unknown but intoxicating ladies’ perfume, and felt someone approach behind him, close, closer, pressing lightly against his back. He felt warm breath play at his freshly barbered neck, and then a soft kiss: a flutter, really. Lips on him, and then a gloved hand covering his eyes.

He felt his meatball sub of manhood stir, as the mystery woman’s hands reached around to unbuckle his belt and undo his pants.

And then they had sex, he told me. He never saw her face.

“Wow, that must’ve been really hot for… wait, you couldn’t see her face through the whole thing?” Trying to keep my voice giggly and shrill.

“She was behind me the entire time,” he told me, wistfully.

“But you had sex? Like, penis-in-vagina intercourse?” Completely breaking character now.

“Oh, yes. It was,” my customer concluded, “the most erotic experience of my life. She was the most beautiful woman I never saw…”

Oh god. Anatomy. Mechanics. Just… impossible. Hand over mouthpiece. Cackling. Gasping for air. Deep breath. Smile. Now. Give him what he’s paying for. Give him buoyant.

“Wow. That is really, really hot. You have had such an exciting life!” Give him brainless.

(image source)

My new strategy for dealing with all types of intolerance, bigotry, and prejudice:

“Aw, honey, you’re just going through a phase. You’ll grow out of that.”

Foaming at the mouth because a mom’s putting pink (pink!) nail polish on her son? Because that somehow tells him it’s okay to be gay or transgender or something, and that’s somehow bad? Happens to lots of people your age. You’ll settle down once you mature a little.

Think you get to hold personal court over every woman who says she was sexually assaulted to decide whether she’s right about that or not? My cousin Denny went through the same thing (Denny’s always been a little off, truth be told), but he got over it and you can too. Not to worry.

Think you’re better than one fucking person on this planet? Feel innately more correct, important, or that you occupy a moral high ground over any one group of people based on sex, age, weight, race, religion or lack thereof, sexual identity, orientation, or, hell, political affiliation? Bless your heart, all toddlers think they’re the center of the universe! You’re just a tiny bit behind, darling. Once you grow up a little you’ll let go of that and be a normal, healthy person.

It’s not being condescending. It’s being optimistic.

I’m going to make this really, really clear, just for the record: There’s nothing clever about violating a sex worker’s anonymity. Ever. This isn’t something that’s done for great justice; it’s not a public service, and it doesn’t accomplish anything productive.

Very simply, if I try to fuck with any sex worker’s real life, family, and/or identity, it’s my pathological attempt to punish that person, usually for the crime of representing sex or a related transgression (to me). That, or it’s a childish vendetta against someone who pissed me off in a more concrete way.

In short, there are no non-personal reasons for this phenomenon. I’ll go so far as to say that all anti-sex “crusades” are deeply personal. They’re never really for the social fabric, or for the children. They’re for one (or more) waylaid pervert’s thwarted kink and guilt-soaked lust.

One of the reasons it sucks doing sex work is because you get negative respect. You know why you can’t tell people when you get a job in orgasm assistance? Because it will very often irrevocably damage the way they see and interact with you. It will jeopardize your future career in other industries. It will inevitably break your poor mother’s heart (because if there’s one thing your mom should care about more than the gory details of your sex life, it’s what the neighbors would think about the method you’ve chosen of not being homeless). Even when you’ve got a shitty, thankless job as a fast food worker or in retail, you’re still liable to hear platitudes like “Well at least it’s honest work”. I’m pretty sure honest work is code for “not sex work” in a lot of cases.

So– because I’m clearly missing something here– why isn’t sex work honest? What’s dishonest about it? It isn’t always legal, and I’ll be the first to admit that the illegal forms of sex work especially abound with coercion, abuse, and outright slavery. But the legal, consensual kind? Even the illegal, consensual kind? The I’ll-provide-a-sexual-service-and-you-pay-me-and-we’ll-all-go-home-happy kind? Seems honest to me.

It seemed honest to me when I witnessed it working in the porn industry, it felt honest to me when I was a phone sex operator, and it seems extra super honest to me when I’m watching the obviously unfiltered, unsanitized look at legalized prostitution: HBO’s Cathouse. God, I can’t help loving that show.

Society (the one I’m entrenched in, but also pretty much all of them from where I’m sitting) has serious issues with sex. In fact, if Society were a person I would advise it to seek immediate, five-times-a-week counseling. But we don’t have to buy into all that baggage to the point where it makes us thwarted, guilty waylaid perverts, do we? Especially when there are so many wonderful, rewarding ways to stick to the straight and narrow path of perversion. It feels so good to embrace what Society “knows” is wrong, like slipping into a warm bath of anti-psychotics.

Fucking is older than Society, older than economics, older than humanity. Sex existed long before the first primate wiggled the first thumb, and then proceeded to stick it in an orifice.

Do you think it’s maybe time we relaxed about sex a little?

Because hysteria over sex workers, or gay people, or any normal, healthy aspect of human sexuality is really just an extension of freaking the fuck out about sex. There’s a tendency to deny sex workers personhood, making them either receptacles of our disgust or avatars–even deities– of sexuality. Sometimes both. But, much like Zaphod Beeblebrox, they’re just these guys, you know?

As long as we imbue their jobs with all this emotional, existential and philosophical weight, is it any wonder they want to remain anonymous? Let’s all treat sex work like the honest work it is, and then maybe sex workers will want to disclose their real names. Until then, we deserve to take all the puns and belabored alliteration they want to give us, and like it.

(image source)