Wednesday, December 24, 2008

A Christmas alone

It is hardly alone. I'm at my parents' place, about to head to a party with all the extended family, including my sister and her two heartbreakingly adorable children. After Christmas I'm going to go to the US to be with some very good friends, to spend a whole week in their company, catching up on work. So I have no cause to whine.

And yet, I do have to say this is the worst time of year to be a bachelor. Everybody goes to their families. New Year's Eve is a caricature of this. My best friends all do family things, and I get invited to parties by other friends.

My best New Year's were with my Soulmate, and they were always good, never alone, for some 10 years. I had one very good one when I was here in Toronto with Music. We wandered the streets and then settled at a random restaurant on Queen Street and I can still remember staring at her all night, specifically her boobs, she'd dressed fancy and I didn't have one second of wanting to be anywhere else.

But Music's long gone. Soulmate's going to a South American beach.

And so, as it turns out, is Voice, who is escaping the city with her fiancee to lounge around on some resort somewheres. She and I have been fighting and I suppose, we've broken up again. And I miss her calling me twice a day on her schedule, expecting me to modify my own to accomodate hers. Like I miss her telling me I'm beautiful. And that she loves me.

And I'm here. The pretty snow is getting rained on. My city's become a slushy mess. I haven't been able to focus on any work today.

I don't deserve any sympathy. In fact, I've experienced a very pleasant seduction over the past week. A co-worker of mine, a different department, junior to me, but a bit older. I'd definitely noticed her around more than once this fall (the boots didn't hurt). Lean, built like a gymnast (which she was in her teens) she's got an incredible ass, and wears the tightest jeans that I've ever seen. I think even a few years ago she would have been, too much for me to handle, maybe. The whole thing progressed as if we were reciting lines from a script. We ended up on a project together, for which she gave me her cell phone "just in case" - I then gave her mine. When the project ended I called her to talk about "follow up" matters, which turned naturally to workplace gossip. A social outing neither of us would have gone to, but we both went and I sat with her the whole time... she sat with her knees to her chest and her feet on the chair, so when I was touching her I would touch her knees and her ass in the normal course of the conversation. Did she want to catch a movie at the Carleton? Should we have dinner first? Did she want to come over for a movie? Did I drink? Should she bring over a bottle of wine? Was red wine good? The movie watching room is my room, since I don't have a TV, and there's nowhere to sit but on my bed.

When I kiss her, she says: "I don't feel comfortable doing this. You're a senior and I'm a junior at work." I say: "Yes, but I'm not in any supervisory role over you and will avoid such roles." She says: "But I could get screwed more than you by this." I say: "I understand. If you don't feel comfortable..." The conversation takes place with me lying on my stomach, leaning on my elbows facing her, my hands together and interlaced on her belly while she leans on pillows on my bed against my wall. She says: "No, I just wanted to make sure I said it." And then kisses me very hard. We do it twice, I think she's leading but she's leading me to be pretty aggressive, though she's not passive at all herself. No talking, no names are called, but she does moan and dance for me. She pushes her ass in my face, thrusts her pussy down my tongue, but doesn't come until I'm inside her. Later, she looks out at the snowstorm and says: "I better leave." "Stay," I say. "I don't have a toothbrush". I have new ones. She leaves early, before breakfast. I offer her the toothbrush to take with her. "What about leaving it here," she says. I smile. "I'll have to write my name on it," she says.

We did it again yesterday. There's something about this one, a lack of sentimentality, a kind of refusal to be vulnerable. She's her own woman. She wants what she wants from me, and so far, demands nothing more than that. I get the feeling she wouldn't reward any sentimentality on my part, and the way this all has played out makes me realize some missteps I made with other women over the past few years, getting sappy and getting attached in an un-reciprocal way. This one said as much over the wine, and before the bedroom. "Sex is just sex," she said. "It's entirely separate from love." I told her I didn't agree, and the worst was when that was true for one person but not the other. She acknowledged that was a problem. I don't think it's a problem for us. But that fact itself makes me sad, somehow. I told her afterwards that I'd heard and respected what she'd told me. She nodded.

She's not 100% unsentimental. Afterwards, when we spooned, she took my arm and held it close to her chest. After I came, I pulled out, keeping the condom on, and said - I need to take this off. She hugged me tight and didn't let go. "But I can take it off later," I said. She laughed.

I like the way this one looks and feels, I like being with her and it feels fine, like a sharing between friends. But is it because I have had something much deeper that I can't seem to enjoy this for what it is? Should I just accept that sex without attachment messes me up? Or should I keep heading further down this road, knowing that it might cost me something I can't replace?

Before I met this one yesterday I had lunch with my sexy lawyer friend, who asked me about Music, as I'd never told her about the breakup, and told me she'd been through something similar before her current marriage, and that it was probably for the best. I said I'd never know. I definitely don't, now.

I have a few readers now, google analytics tells me. Thanks for stopping by. Have a good Christmas, everyone. Love hard, cause you won't have what you have forever.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Curse you, google analytics!

I am in a strange position, here.

You see, one of the things I do is, I'm a writer. I have a modest web presence, thanks to publishing on a few dozen niche websites. I do that publishing under my own name, and in fact, I even have another blog. The traffic at that blog is a few hundred visitors a day. I have been running that one over four years. This one a couple months. That one, I'm part of several established online communities and we feed each other traffic. This one, I'm starting from zero. And, partly, I don't know what this one is about. And as I find myself stuck, I don't know whether to disclose more, whether to take a break, whether to move towards more insighftul essay-type postings and less personal ones, that have readers when I write on other topics, or whether to just keep doing what I'm doing here.

I read an interesting discussion by Bennett Haselton on slashdot, for example, about the difficulty getting audiences. The author describes "My own favorite blog that nobody's ever heard of is Seth Finkelstein's InfoThought, which is usually logical and insightful and is only about 25% of the time about how "nobody ever reads this blog, so what's the point"

Here's the other quote I like from that post:

I know plenty of people who could write insightful essays about social and technological issues, essays that would give most readers a new perspective such that they would definitely say afterwards: "That was worth my time to read it." But it wouldn't be worth it to the writers, because they know that their content isn't going to get magically sorted into its deserved place in the hierarchy.

I definitely feel that way about this blog, much less so about my other writing.

And yet, here I am. Why? I think, I think, because there are some things I have to get out, out into the world, before I can properly heal and move on and maybe write in ways that I want to. Is there a thing called blogotherapy? Surely if there is body work, movement therapy, dance therapy, art therapy, blog therapy must be a kind of therapy too. Being able to write everything, to the world, without having to answer for it as yourself (unless someone matches blog with author, though that would require readers), surely that might have theraputic effects?

You'll notice I cracked and added the Naked Loft Party and the puatraining blog to my links. I was reluctant to add both even though I read them both regularly. I was reluctant to link to Naked Loft Party because of all the porn all over the site. I like the porn, but I wish I didn't, and I somehow want to distance myself from it, to tell the world and readers "hey, that's not the type of guy I am". And I think there is something there, to that reluctance, that I should explore. So I'm linking it and will say much more about porn in the future.

I was reluctant to link to the puatraining blog for two reasons. One, because of all the associations of pickup, a similar kind of reluctance as I had with wanting to associate myself with it. And two, because I am skeptical about anyone setting himself up as a 'trainer', a 'guru', on relationship matters. That's one thing I like about the Bad Man - he sees it as a skill, to some extent, but he doesn't set himself up as a guru. It's all very subjective, in any case, and I am not convinced that a lot of these gurus have any more 'game' than I do. I don't like that they talk about it in terms of attaining 'levels', and so on (Strauss's 'The Game' has a funny line about that somewhere, about how guys can't resist systems that involve hierarchical levels of achievement, belts in martial arts or levels in dungeons and dragons). And yet, I find the fellows at puatraining to be endearing (and Kezia to be breathtaking). I like that there's a brown guy there (Dharam), because I wasn't sure about how multiethnic the pickup world was, and I think they have some insights about overcoming shyness, developing confidence, and trying to apply some discipline to going for what you want.

I'm not sure what my next move will be here. Whether I will go into some painfully honest disclosures that might lead to interesting personal writing, do some book reviews or essays on topics that I wouldn't do in my other blog, or do something else entirely.

For now, I'm going to get back to work.