Yesterday, I did something so out of character I’m still not convinced it was really me out there. The boi had convinced me to join him for the Dyk3 March and next thing you know, I was marching through the streets. The last time I was in a parade was when the school made all the varsity athletes participate in a United Way thing because we’re docile sheeps. Anyways, there we were marching along with the leatherfolk and let me tell you, when you march with the leatherfolk, there are a hell of a lot of cameras pointed your way - and with good reason. Our tiny little contingent included a woman cracking a single-tail whip around, a boi walking on stilts while led by a leash and best of all, a (human) pony carriage. That’s a whole hell of a lot of photo-worthy shots for a group of maybe 15 of us. Of course I think people also just wanted to take a picture of the ‘freaks’ since the boi and I were just minding our own business, marching with the group, smoking a couple of cigars and some random media guy was all, ‘ooh, cigars! Come back, I need to take a picture of that”.

With all the cameras pointed in our general direction, I actually found it rather irksome. The boi wore leather yesterday and it turns out that when you wear leather out, people will try to take a picture of you. Since I was expected to stand next to him for the day, I probably ended up in most of the shots. The thing that bothers me I guess is that I don’t understand why people would want pictures of people they don’t know.

Oh well, enough with the griping. Despite my photophobia being ramped up into overdrive, it was a heck of a day.

(There, I’ve blogged. Guilt relieved until next week.)

Alternately titled: hardwood floors aren’t meant for cuddling after the age of 25.

As I have not-so-subtly mentioned before, I have recently gotten in touch with my inner libertine and started sleeping around. My only excuse is that I’m lonely. I live alone, I work alone, and I have no friends in the city to call up and hang out and this is my temporary solution.

I’ve discovered that it’s easiest to play with kinky people because boundaries and expectations are clearly laid out and respected. (At least, they are if it’s an experienced person I’m dealing with.) I had tried the dating thing before - meeting new people with much less violent expectations of how the evening will play out but I quickly realized that I don’t have the emotional capacity for that form of interpersonal interaction right now.

My modus operandi has been to kick them out right after and settle in for a movie on the couch and I rarely call up the same person twice. ‘Distant’ would be an apt way to describe how things are. Lately though, I’ve been thinking how nice it would be to just get a hug without getting smacked in the face first, which leads me to my current dilemma.

I’ve been meeting the boi that threw me on her bike and dragged me to the woods with some regularity and this past weekend, we kind of kicked our interactions up a notch. There was cuddling! And other affectionate *shudder* things, which had been wholly absent from my life for a while.

So now as we try to gauge each other’s mindset in the most obtuse manner possible, I’m at a loss in terms of what I want. She’s hot and adorable, a lethal combination, but also not really someone I would commit to long-term so there’s not much risk on my end. We have a lot of fun together, sleep with other people, and I’m interested in watching how our dynamic is growing as we get to know each other better. The problem is, I have a hard time justifying reaping the benefits of dating without investing anything into it. It seems selfish and potentially damaging to the other party if we get further involved while I remained emotionally vacant. I do recognize I am not responsible for someone else’s emotional well-being but I believe there is a threshold to that. I don’t know where that line is and I don’t want to accidentally cross it.

I know I’m over-thinking things but I like to plan ahead and map out potential road blocks and potholes to spare myself the possibility of coming up against detours and the like. At the moment, I feel like I’m wanting something that I don’t really want and no matter which way I turn I still end up stuck in the middle of minefields I am not prepared to conquer.

So many words. So many instances. So many moments in time. We can never fully capture the shifting nature of our beliefs nor the fluidity of our identities.

My life has always been lived as so many bubbles like a child gone delirious with her first bubble wand. Each bubble, self-contained, constantly shifting, the oily pattern on the surface in perpetual movement. Each bubble, untouchable in it’s delicacy yet still we try to grasp at it, to possess it.

I’ve always tried to live with both feet planted firmly on the ground lest I float away, lost. Perhaps that is why I cling to concrete labels of instances in time: female, immigrant, academic, mother, lesbian. They are not just words and labels but encompass in their entirety the full depth of meaning behind each identity. Still, they are all just moments in time; they do not capture the reality of change, the shifting meanings behind the words. But they are necessary for me. I need the labels, I need the words, I need the moments. The moments define me. The moments give my existence permanency.

Are you guys tired of reading about my sex life yet?  If so, let me know and I’ll stop.  I just don’t have much else to write about these days since the rest of it is rather mundane.  

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I’ve been saying lately how labels are only so many words that don’t mean much as an excuse to rationalize my recent behavior versus my long-standing identity. I mean it’s not unexpected to be asked about my sexuality when I’ve had more capers with guys than girls these days at quite an alarming 5:1 ratio. 

I was thinking about it today on my way to meet this guy and how I’ve been out since I reached sexual awareness.  I never questioned being gay, I never had a ‘maybe I’m bi’ moment. I was a big ol’ dyke and that was that. (Well, sometimes I was a gay man trapped in a lesbian’s body but that’s not what this is about.) It’s been almost 15 years since it occurred to me that I was gay but over the years, that identity seems to have been slowly eroding.  

It’s been a well-kept secret to the people who know me well but…maybe I’m not the dyke we all believe me to be. In the past couple of months, I’ve been holding on dearly to my gold star but it almost seems forced and I’m not sure why I’m holding onto it anymore except maybe it’s because you can’t get it back once you give it up. 

In any case, I am now completely enamored with this guy I met today even if he did give me beard burn. (Damn my sensitive skin!) He’s funny, intelligent and hot.  Seems rather kind. And rather twisted, which might be his ultimate saving grace. I haven’t quite thought it all out yet so I’m just going to enjoy the moment. No one is getting hurt in the process so it’s all okay by me.

Oh friends, let me tell you about my Friday and how I found myself on my knees, face down in the dirt with a boot on my neck and my hands tied behind my back in some dark, isolated, wooded area across town.

These days, I’ve turned into a bit of a craigslist whore and on Friday, I headed off to meet a stranger whose name I did not even know. I had thought we were going to an alleyway close by but she handed me a helmet and asked how I felt about motorcycles.

Now, let me tell you…I had at one point forbidden rollermilf to even pretend to imagine getting a bike let alone ride one because I wasn’t going to lose her, especially not to such unnecessary harm. The thought of sitting on a machine speeding through traffic with nothing to protect you is insane. In fact, it’s been a life-long belief that one should just say no to motorcycles. I remember one time when we were kids in Italy, one of our friends, Paolo I think his name was, had a moped and offered all the kids a spin on the back of his bike around the parking lot. I was terrified and refused to entertain the thought of getting on that thing. Point is, motorcycles and my self-preservation instincts don’t get along too well.

So what did I do on Friday? I threw the helmet on, hopped on the back of the bike and we sped off with my naked arms flapping in the wind. Yup, no leathers. And that’s how I found myself on the other side of town. I’ll leave the details of how the rest of it happened on my dirty blog to preserve the few delicate sensibilities that might be reading this.

The odd thing is, at no point in time was I afraid and I’m always afraid. I’m not sure what changed - perhaps being back on meds might have something to do with it. I don’t know…I just know that I have no fear of consequences at the moment. I was lucky that this particular stranger turned out to be quite the gentleman and she’s quite the cute little boi too, which always helps.

Anyways…back to whoring I guess.

These days, as I sit back and evaluate my past relationships while watching my parents’ marriage teeter on the brink of collapse, I often wonder about the generational differences in how we approach relationships and marriage. I know my parents will stay together because their marriage has been teetering on the edge for the past decade and will likely stay there for the next.

I think with each new generation, the more we believe the world is at our fingertips. We are conditioned to believe that we can have everything that we want and more often than not, we actually do get it. We want a myriad of conflicting things and we want it all in one package. I think the way we yearn for that new gadget that takes pictures, plays music, folds your laundry and fits into your pocket carries over into how we understand love and relationships.

Speaking for myself, I know what I’m looking for in a partner changes with the tide. Well, there are the core values that remain unchanged - of wanting acceptance and support - but it’s with the added features where we get distracted. I want my partner to be a buffet for me to pick and choose from at will to sate whatever appetite I have that day. Of course this has never happened but I do wonder what the implications of having that available would be. I wonder if it would end up like any other buffet experience where you gorge yourself on mediocre ‘food’ and wind up on your couch with a belly ache groaning about that last bite you really just shouldn’t have had.

I spent an evening last week with a large group of polyamorists and it got me thinking again about how it might not be such a bad way to go about things. You can have everything that you want separately, in managable portions so to speak, without over-burdening your partner with expectations and yourself with guilt for wanting more.

I had spent a couple months as an accidental polyamorist. The experience was mixed and leads me to wonder if I actually have the mindset and the moral structure to adopt that lifestyle. Perhaps we just need to simplify instead. Stop believing we need everything and we deserve to have every desire fulfilled. Maybe there really isn’t such a thing as unfettered happiness and the best we can hope for is a little stability and love in our lives.

Oh, right. That would be my name. On the masthead. Of a nationally distributed magazine!

Ok, so they spelled my name wrong but I spent my entire collegiate varsity career, amongst other things, with my name spelled with an ‘i’. And technically it’s not my first publication since I do have two theses collecting dust on a library shelf and there’s that textbook that published this blog. However, it’s still exciting since it’s printed on prettier paper, about 1/50 the length of my last thesis so it’s actually accessible to readers, and now my name is out there on something permanent, sitting on people’s coffee tables, bookshelves and bathroom reading stack. It’s pretty neat and looks like it might turn into a longer term deal since I already have another article in the works that’s already partly approved.  And in further fame-whoring news, my Masters work was selected to appear in a calendar on social equity research - kinda like the naked firemen calendar equivalent for earnest nerds. 

I never thought it was important for me to get my name out there and have people know who I am but it turns out that I do in fact want to be somebody.