ages since i posted. 



but i need a confidante. 



my 41 year old boyfriend of a year and a half has been totally unattractive to me since i got back from a three week trip to indonesia.  hmm.  this is most likely the result of me cheating on him for the last week of the trip with an indonesian boy.  with much mutual affection and attraction and handholding and fun.   i never was so comfortable with sex with anyone else...and really....my history of partners is very very small...and me, anxious.  i don't know.  i never thought i would do that.  it was just so comfortable....startlingly....such a rarity for me.  and there was chemistry!  and attraction!  it was nice to be with someone who was a year older than me...instead of 15 years older.  the age thing wasn't so much of an issue...but now all of a sudden i have some basis of comparison.  but....it's strange....i can't really imagine anything of the sort happening with twentysomethings in san francisco all full of hipster sensibilities and alcohol.  it made a lot more sense in bali....walks in rice fields...no alcohol...no pick up lines....just feeling good spending time together and then that grew into something more.   that's how it happened with my boyfriend too.    eek.



i am thoroughly confused.  that this falling for someone else thing would happen with so much loving honest relationship for the past year in the background...is scary and sad and strange.



on the other hand, while i don't want to try to absolve myself with excuses....but sex life with boyfriend has been difficult...but every other thing has been great.  it's not very clear that he is attracted to me.  the times we did have sex....he was so painfully distant afterwards that it was kind of horrible.    he has genital herpes which makes everything far more careful and anxiety producing.  it took us a loong time to have sex for the first time...several months with a lot of touching and pleasure....and it was mostly me who was full of anxiety...having a hard time relaxing..and sometimes he would get quite frustrated with me....and i would feel bad and abnormal.  but then we finally did it!  and it was nice and i was rather excited to start a new phase of things....but instead just after that:  he loses all sex drive, is very distant, and gets an outbreak shortly after.  long time passes....we try again....same thing happens.  it's so strange.  oof.  and meanwhile, time passes...hormones change....and i feel my sex drive increasing...a new thing to really feel it....and not have it sort of pulled out of me by a partner. 



so we saw this happening...and then we read this book: peace between the sheets.  about how orgasmic sex makes everyone crazy.  man turns distant, lady turns clingy--let's fight and hate each other.  it seemed to fit out pattern to the t. and we thought we might try this whole non orgasmic thing.  no grabby touching.  no thrusting.  open heart giving stay still.  but all that is prefaced by this fourteen day series of exercises to break your old orgasm "addiction."  but we haven't had fourteen consecutive days together in months.  so long time...not so much bedroom activity.  hmm.



meanwhile....that funny book...i wonder if i am under the influence of my brain chemicals and experiencing some big sex hangover from the overseas experiences....and maybe two weeks and i'll snap out of it....that's what the book says.  two week orgasm hangover.  so i miss this boy for whatever reason....brain chemistry...or genuine connection.  meanwhile...trying to settle back into city existence and boyfriend co-existence.   and going a little crazy. 



i really want to tell boyfriend what happened and talk about the whole sex issue and maybe we can work it out somehow.  we love each other....and he is always the brutally honest one.  but....i also feel like maybe i should wait because we have planned to go to england to meet his family at the end of march.  and i'm scared to create a terrible context for that.  of course...i know he can feel that things are weird between us.  i don't know....everything seemed really perfect for a while....i would hate to think that the sex thing is the deal breaker....but maybe we are just best friends struggling to make ourselves lovers.  or course....maybe my cheating would be a deal breaker anyway.  it's all very scary. 



i'm not really a big sucker for romantic hoopla...or a big sex monster.  he was a sweet boy with a good heart...and we liked each other's company...perhaps i am a sucker for this.  ug.  i just don't really feel that bad about it...i'm happy that i met him and we got to spend time together...but the likelihood of seeing each other again any time soon is very very small...sad.  now i just feel terrible about how my boyfriend will feel when i tell him....and full of fear that this is the end.  though maybe the end makes sense.  or maybe it won't be the end..just difficult....maybe the beginning of a different phase of our relationship? 



oof.  i feel a bit embarrassed having written all of this.  but....not quite ready to tell various friends....i think i need to put this somewhere...so here it is....

i am in portugal with mister boyfriend man. 

very strange indeed.

maybe what i want is to posess people. which you can't do under any rational circumstances.  some unrealistic assurance of loyalty and being present.  settling into each other's hollows and all that.  that familiar loneliness.  wanting people that i can't have.  not living up to expectations of myself.  not even worth the words to say it.  repeating and repeating the same old things.  maybe it's the month of february anyway.  i read last year's blog entries.  the same and the same again.  though...i feel like i would feel better had i been unaffected by the affected nice boy act.  fucker.  some angry sort of melancholy is eager to clutch my insides and twist them up at any opportunity for that sense of not living up. of being boring. of saying not quite the right thing.  so they twist.  i resist.  stewing.  familiar hopelessness.  repeat repeat. trying to redirect.  concentrate on  the concrete, the tasks to complete.  but on the over end of our little dinner shindig thing...the abiding sense of conversational failure...that idiotic fixation on the impossible boy...my mild tummy ache...i'm not feeling so hot so....a brief cliche of a blog entry. creep creep creep.

in other news: yesterday. for the first time in years.  i was able to touch my toes.  i was ecstatic.

look look experiencing life with a level head again i think.  mmm.  some tight little self-defeating knot of unhappy misapprehensions sterotypical western inside empty disconnect self hatred everyone false thing appeared (with real and pretend people and bodily inspirations).  accompanied by much bread cheese and sugar.  and general fatigue.  now.  well.  a more typical cynicism, mild resignation, repeating life patterns, gigglng absurdity, enjoying my little self maintenance tasks.  and little frills.  finding mysterious legume recipes in the ayurvedic cookbook.  starting another batch of kombucha.  the small challenge of trying to incorporate all produce into various lunch configurations before smelly disintegration.  small thrills at nearly finishing old tins of tea.  steaming vegetables.  cutting nails.  scraping the tongue.  brushing the skin.  soak soak soak.

feeling clean again.  released somehow.  and i'm not sure what to make of that tight tense knot, feeling glutted with awful thought and how awful thought feels somehow in my chest like chewed up bread in your mouth. or  like how a grilled cheese sandwich might sit aging a while in your tumbly.  all soft and stagnant.  imprecise.  residues.  filminess.  lack of clarity. you see. in my intestine.  and outside of me.  so. back to the vegetables anyways. like a good little girl. 

but taking pleasure in all these pretty sundries.  maybe just distractions from the stormy underneath?  shall i be a freudian? sublimate?  all that.  oh. great.

no point exactly.  but it is nice that the variously rankled or bright and shiny headspace is conveniently reflected in place and food and digestion.  things are perhaps operating in tandem.  my food preferences are producing funny literalized metaphors.  if not evidence of my little world righting itself, it is still pretty charming that mindplace can manage to place the story and the sense on the big ol mess.  yum.

well what a confused delusional i must've been.  or perhaps what  a mean ol fakester of a boy.  oh well anyway...it's always both, isn't it?  so after this last ditch email effort to say hello come play with a long list of excellent activity options, i resign myself to being ignored by the erstwhile object of affections.  i genuinely thought we had some fine oh fine times.  was excited for more.  the ignoring is perhaps the universe's funny idea of paying me back for my own evil ignoring phone calls after awfully boring uneventful hours fraught with superficial small talk spent with a thirty one year old feller or two over the past two years.   but c'mon post one hardly intimate date...i can rationalize ignoring.  though such logic leads me to believe i must have been a boring lady all around.  and him just hanging out with me in the hopes of a nice fuck.  how sad when i think of my stupidly telling my sister about being smitten in some email and her only reply (no charm, no questions, nothing) was to tell me that rob the idiot boyfriend says i better have sex with him soon if i don't want to mess it all up.  pisses me off to think he might have been right (though i stand by my bitchy reply advice to stupid rob, maybe he should get himself a job.  fucker).  likewise irritates me to think i was pretty ready to fuck that fucking boy.  i suppose i would feel more angry if i had fucked him, gotten more attached...and then he ignored me.  eh?  fuck. 

now i'm trying to read lady chatterly's lover...which is kind of boring.  not sure if i'll make it through.  never read any d h lawrence.  not sure what to expect.  maybe i'll switch to kundera. 

and ooh: mighty fine old time music lately.  the sf bluegrass festival.  i heard the foghorn stringband.  from portland. really nice old time string band music,  fast fast.  i even danced.  weird: i ran into this old guy i met at the airport while waiting for my plane to newark at the show.  last place i expected to run into anybody i knew.  and i suppose i ran into someone i didn't really know. so. hey. and i spent all afternoon at the atlas cafe listening to three bands.  yay i like it.  renewed resolve to go see more old time shows.  kinda maybe thought i might get up the nerve to go to the square dance shebang tonight.  but all these lone outings get to be a bit...well..lonesome feeling.  but what can i say?  when i give into the general roommate preference outing (no one ever wants to go to my choice events) as i did on friday night...man what shitty shitty music i heard.  kid 606 noise rock shit.  no perceptible talent.  no lyrics.  a microphone stuck into his screaming mouth while he pressed the delay button.  unnotable guitar and drum kit.  me drinking a lot of beer out of boredom and general irritability.  it seems there is always someone eager to expound upon their happy blossoming love life while i am trying to hide my hurt as i resign myself to my false ignoring unloved life.  ha. 

hooray, however, for time to be spent with fun oh fun attraction resistance friend tomorrow.  conversational pleasure plus crazy japanese chainsaw arm monsters and children with magic powers movie.  with all these fun activites and no one to come along...it is nice to get one pal in on it.  eh? 

rumble rumble.  unsteady head.

crumbly underneath curiosities of sleep:

hmm. i rarely remember my dreams.  but this week i seem to be on a memory roll.  certainly vague.  but kind of thrilling. though all rather anxious and odd.  and so transparently indicating various fears and irritations with self.  all in all, really not interesting to put in a place where any one but me would read.  but hey.  i'm nearly just the only one that reads.  almost. 

dream number one.  sitting down in a restaurant to eat with housemate b we end up at a table next to someone who looks like smartboy with some nice looking lady.  rather startled, i decide to avoid eye contact and not to initiate hello sayings so quickly that i am not even sure that it is him at all and b has never met him so wouldn't be the wiser.  but i am quickly noticed and and hello'ed sweetly, hugged, and coddled as though missed, he was so busy, oh blah blah blah.  i am quite taken aback since not only had i expected a little awkwardness, expecting girl to be some alternate alpha dater lady, but this guy doesn't quite look like him or sound like him, but speaks with his intonation and moves like so, and acts as though he is, introduces himself to my roommate and me to his dining friend.  it's as if one of those people that looks almost like an old pal from a block away (always ever happening to me in this too small city), but you don't want to stare, so you place attention somewhere else until perhaps ten feet apart, only to find some vague similarity in their coloring and body type and otherwise puzzlement at one's poor vision.  but that person who looks totally different turns out to be completely sure that he is so-and-so.  no doubt about it.  a disturbing literalization of the creepy crawlies of falsity, masks, pretend everything, else, this, and all that, as relates to all newcomers to or otherwise quick leavers from my little sphere.  certainly significant that this miss you excuses hug darling crap (which, embarrassingly, i want) comes from this hybrid stranger lookalike person.  a mixture of revulsion and joy.  maybe i felt that way anyway.  that feller still too much a stranger at this point anyway.  where _do_ people dredge up all this sudden affection for people thay hardly know? these sudden affections all full of ambiguity that nevertheless manage to lift me an inch of so off the ground, all groundlessly smitten you see.  but then again...i'm not even sure about knowing.  that feeling that you know someone.  comes and goes.  think about most people i haven't known for more than a year or two...and i start to imagine, for one reason or other, that we hardly "know" each other at all.  but what do i mean?  yikes.

dream number two.  a drawn out humdrum fear filled return home, lots of quiet contemplation and trying to hide emotions.  having found that for a reason i don't quite grasp, but somehow preventive and not quite logical, i have to have a second back surgery.  everything reminds me of the first go around.  but it's all made worse by a nagging uncertainty about whether all this is necessary.  and guilt.  no doubt.  a logically derived anxiety dream.  after all.  this fear of and about my little struggle with my body.  it's creeping pains.  strange cramps in the used to be numb part of my leg.  the occasional pick up of small statured boys which makes me nervous.  the less too infrequent once a week yoga practice.  it all affects how i sit, how i move, what i pay attention to, where i hold my tension.  but anyways, not so vivid a dream, but very much an edited version of last year's memory.  hmm. 

dream number three.  well.  i can't realyl remember it actually.  but housemate m was in it.  and something about fast growing leg hair.  something significant happened at some point.  i definitely woke up at three in the morning, freezing cold, half consciously climbing into my sleeping bag, with the brow furrowing sensation of having had a disturbing dream. 

quite odd to have these dreams that so easily mesh with reality.  mixes things up a bit. 

meanwhile.  loving this murakami book.  i haven't been so keen on present time authors these days.  what can i say.  but hardboiled wonderland and the end of the world is a damn fine novel.  though there are still enough pages left to change my mind.  rum tum tum.  but the business of making little self-enclosed worlds in a novel that mirror minds and people and reality, all decidedly bubble like impenetrable mysterious creative crazy places where dream and reality and in between get all mixed up, while maintaining this tone of mundane acceptance as things roll along just as they ought.  a subtle talent.  i support it.  nabokov and kafka did it quite well.  woop. 

anyways.  i meant to go to bed two hours ago.  dagnabbit.

prolonged growl.  alll weekend long.  restless and irritable.  bleh.  one of my greatest pastimes is cataloguing the factors involved in making me growl.  fatigue, energy gone to fighting off sickness (everyone's getting sick, i presume i'm on the verge of it, strep throat cough cough etc the works), ever the menstrual bitch.  but in such a crummy crumbly state, my head seems to fixate upon the possibility that i am being ignored by the smarty smitten for boy (unreturned missed call, unanswered text message).  which makes me sad and angry.  i ought to have never let the small thrill of any interest in me get blown out of proportion.  i ought to not want so much to be wanted.  and mister desire resistance has a girlfriend boy ought to not call me on the telephone so willing to come play with me.  silly ironies.  i should like to punch the collective ironies squarely in the face.  the usual lessons learned.  failure at emotional control ruins all.  attempts at emotional control increase emotion (like thought suppression thoery and the white bear).  sprinkle on hormonal fluctuations and immune system working full speed ahead.  little girl longing for connection too negative to spend time with people, cries by herself on saturday night, tucked in the corner with head under the bed.  big girl drinks some wine to calm down.  but what a strange high comes from fine times, feeling wanted, giggly fancy free...such superficial times spent ought not to make me so happy.  seeking a more even keel perhaps.  the ol meditation practice ought to come on back.  tut tut. 

how oh how many oughts.

the happy ending: best college sweet neat college pal calls me sunday morning with commiseration, tales, merriment.  oh the darling.  oh hello. 

anyways...i'm just fine. a-ok.  rat a tat. chemical chat. bye.

what is it about time limited library internet that makes me want to throw something on this blog here? 

but ah what a charming little weekend i had.  a late dater thing with the smart boy eating tapas at ten o clock at night.  ambling around the streets.  sleeping over there less fitfully than before.  fairly comfortable with the progression of things.  dot dot dot.  etc.  my walk home from potrero hill extended for a few hours.  a little eggy business at the st. francis.  a long stroll through the salvation army.  running errands. doing laundry.  fine little funny with the roommates.  a mediocre dance event, reasonably entertaining. 

sunday was slow moving slow to wake up.  but then met up with mutual attraction must resist friend and we walked up to twin peaks from my house.  up and up.  had big bowls of vietnamese soup.  drank tea in my house.  surprise momlike crazy housemate was baking cookies.  watched some crazy movie.  acknowledged our awkward mutual attraction how i feel like wrapping myself around you and etc etc thing.  grasped our logical resistance.  long tight lovely squeeze goodbye.  yikes.  really funny. 

wouldn't it be nice if i could fuse those two boys into one.

 

a rankling circumstance:

this friend feller of mine i once "hooked up" with as the kids say.  i "hung out" with him late last week post long day at work and class.  saw exciting traveling pictures.  heard tales.  lots of fun.  unusual in my life to find i have a san francisco friend with whom i am able to engage in conversation for hours quite comfortably.  all pretty casual.  but it got oh quite late.  and i took forever to leave.  as various verbal digressions always catch me on my way out.  then some half expected half unexpected flirtiness in the kitchen.  these arms around my waist.  a mildly awkward moment.  i had resolved not to partake of this rather strong mutual attraction...and he had too.  and we didn't.  but this resistance right on the edge of that attraction makes me feel weird.  tense.  arms around my waist friendship flirtation ambiguity makes me feel all off kilter.  seeing him again at a party over the weekend--did i act weird?  not sure.  but i was a little avoidant i think. did not want to talk.  felt self conscious.  and then there is the sexy girlfriend and i feel inadequate.  and i'm a little angry.  mainly at myself.  i hate that i can't parse these feelings apart or let friendship plus lustful humdrum live comfortably together.  and i know i'm not very good at not reciprocating flirtatious undertones.  because i like feeling wanted and i'm totally attracted to him.  and i hate that i like feeling wanted.  makes me want to retreat completely.  i'm quite bad at managing my human wantings to be wanted mate finding twentysomething drives in concert with rationality and appearing happy plus good social behavior.  crap.

the big internal empty is never so apparent as when i am with other people. 

but then again...a happy visit with my old college pal.  meandering long oh long conversation about weird things.  we examined some roosters.  fluffy headed chickens.  spoke of terror management theory.  him as a poor twelve year old boy lying in bed at night awake, afraid of death.  what's the point if we're all going to die.  they say we create and persist and build out of some effort to avoid thinking of the terror of death, to leave some solid something behind, and all that. but i don't know.  maybe i haven't been close enough to dying and dead.  i rather like that i will be consumed back into soil at some point...my body properly back into the cycle of things.  i consume so much, use all this plastic and poison.  maybe i can feed some fungi anyway.  fertilize some plants.  at the very least.  and really...all my layers of regret, worry, mistakes repeating and repeating...don't matter in the long run.  my little synapses will eventually stop and decay with the rest of me.  a nice thought in my more negative head spaces. but then again.  all my inner nonsense.  perhaps avoiding another form of death.  the terror of misrepresentation, of others not really "getting" me or seeing me at all, eternal misinterpretation.  leaving, if anything, an inaccurate smudge of who i was or wanted to be.  perhaps better not to connect or leave any trace at all.  hmmm.

we also touched upon the curiosity of social psychology not daring to broach the topic of sexuality.  even though all this mate finding lustful pair up nonsense seems to drive so much behavior.  indeed.  kind of crazy.  especially as i find myself in post all girls school post college pseudo adult world suddenly way too concerned about finding a nice young lad...as evidenced by my repetitive boy-related blog entries.  yes indeed.  (puke) hopefully this is just a brief little thoughts stage.  driven by hormones.  subject to intermittent flarings up. 

but certainly my weirdheadedness at that party was enhanced by the mild sadness that inevitably follows spending time with an old college pal.  friendships now are of a totally different character.  to be in a loud room full of acquaintances after hours long old time conversation seemed like some cruel parody. 

yikes. 

enough enough.

the most idiotic thing i have done ever: i hit a car on my way to work on wednesday.  at a red light.  right in front of me.  inattentive little fuck.  yuck.