4048 Changing

Monday, June 1, 2015

"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished
unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."
 --Voltaire--

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Didja hear they caught a 3-D printer sneakily printing a 3-D printer?

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Why do they always give me cole slaw with my pastrami ruben? Can one overdose on cabbage?

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I watched the Diane Sawyer / Bruce Jenner interview the other day, on YouTube, and I'm glad I did.  A lot of my questions about what's going on with him were answered, and I'm left with a lot of respect for Bruce.

But (sigh) there's still so much I don't understand.  So many men (people assigned male, raised as male, whatever... I'm not sure what words to use) who want to transition to female seem to be obsessed with dresses, makeup, high heels, all the trappings.  I don't understand that.

I am 100% female, no question about it, and yet I can't remember the last time I wore a dress (caftans and mu'u-mu'us don't count), or the last time I wore a heel higher than 1.5 inches.  I did wear makeup to a Meetup dinner last Wednesday, but it felt strange (clownish) and I'm pretty sure that was the first time in at least a year. Clothes, shoes, lipstick and eyeliner don't make me feminine.  I'm not sure what does, but I guarantee everyone who sees me knows I'm 100% heterosexual female.

Seems to me these guys just need to get rid of the beard, change the voice, dump the muscles (hormones should fix all that), practice (slightly!) softer movements, and then just wear whatever's comfortable, like lifelong mature women do.  Don't go all girly, for pity's sake.  BE female!  Don't go all female impersonator.

But, like I said, I don't understand, so obviously I don't know what I'm talking about.

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This all reminds me of something that happened many decades ago, I don't remember when or where exactly, probably in the mid-70s.  Back then anyone contemplating a sex change had to endure major psychiatric counseling, and had to pretty much prove their seriousness through all kinds of sometimes humiliating exercises.

I was in a checkout line at a grocery store.  At the end of the checkouts, against the windows near the door, where everyone had to pass him? her? was a person. I'll use "him", because I'm pretty sure he was not very far into the process.

He was at least six feet tall, broad-shouldered, square-jawed, wearing high heels, a beautiful lavender dress with Victorian lace trim down the bodice, shoulder-length brown hair, matching earrings and bracelet set, perfect understated makeup, and holding one of those two-handled purses that, let's face it, no one runs errands with.  It was obvious he'd put a lot of care into his appearance.  He was dressed like for Easter Sunday services at a southern Baptist church, minus the enormous flowered hat.

It was also obvious he was supremely uncomfortable.  This was obviously an "exercise", a test.  Just standing there, being judged by every person leaving the store.

All the people in front of me in the checkout lane were whispering, pointing, rolling their eyes, and making no effort to hide it.  As they walked past him to the exit, they avoided looking at him.

Me?  I thought that dress was the most beautiful color I'd ever seen.  On my way out I stopped in front of him, looked at the lace front of the dress, and looked up (way up) at his eyes.  They were so sad, like he was begging me not to say anything nasty.

I smiled, and said, "That dress is the most beautiful color I've ever seen.  It looks good on you."

I have never forgotten the smile I got.   The light in his eyes.  I hope he made it.
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3538 I'm actually a MAN! Apparently a gay man....

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Female spiders eat the males after mating because collecting

life insurance is easier than collecting child support.

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The kids left for Pennsylvania this morning, to visit Hercules' folks.  Returning late tomorrow.

The temperature was 75 F at 9:30 this morning, but it's very sunny and humid, so it feels hotter.  Supposed to get into the 80s.  I've finally turned the A/C on.

I've got a van to unload, bookcases to assemble, acres of laundry piles, and a drift of paper and photographs to sort and file, so I'll appreciate the uninterrupted alone time.  Naturally, I've brought papers down from the country house, but but not yet the file cabinets. I'm using those brown accordion folders.

I found a large box of vacation photos in the country house den closet.  Not MY vacations - Jay and his ex-wife's vacations.  I started to throw them away, and then reconsidered.  I know where she lives.  So on my way back, I stopped at her house in the village and dropped them off with her boyfriend.  I'm glad she wasn't home, because I really didn't want to talk with her, but I do feel virtuous about giving her the photos. (Even though when she and Jay split, she took every photo she could find, and Jay had to beg for some of the negatives.  Yeah, residual bitterness.  She knew they were important to him and it did crush him.  He was a shutterbug.)

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Google "Steve Crecelius".  Stories all over the internet about him/her.  I guess there's a dearth of real news.  Or maybe it's just that sensationalism sells advertising.  When I read the first story (Yahoo front page), it annoyed me so much I searched around to find a REAL story that didn't appeal to the ignorant.  Doesn't exist.

He was in his forties, I think, father of six children, and discovered from a kidney ultrasound five years ago that he had ovaries, in addition to the usual male equipment.  The headlines say he discovered he's actually a woman!.

Um, no.  He's a man who also has ovaries and therefore estrogen, in addition to the testes and testosterone.  There's no uterus or vagina, although the estrogen did cause small breasts.  Otherwise he has all the usual secondary male sexual characteristics, like a beard, and he's attracted to women. 

But he has decided he's actually a woman!, since as a child he enjoyed playing with his mother's makeup (lots of little boys do), likes dresses, and he "walks like a girl".  Um, a girl walks like a girl because she has wider hips, and has been culturally conditioned to walk that way.  You, Steve/Stevie, do not have a girl's hips, you are still not a girl.  You just have some extraneous ovaries kicking out estrogen that confuses your head.  Let's not forget that the testes and everything that goes with them works just fine.  If you're confused, have the ovaries removed.  You obviously don't need them.

His wife took him shopping for his first bra.  (Another forehead dent in my desk.)  Steve, you've gone all your life without a bra.  You don't need one now.   Even REAL women don't need bras to be women.

The male/female classifications are not black and white.  100% male and 100% female are extreme ends of a spectrum.  There are many gradations, many combinations of accoutrements, and many physical and hormonal reasons for them.  Something like 1 in 10 babies are born somewhere on that scale other than the extremes (probably more, it's just not immediately obvious).  Wikipedia has a good article on it (intersex).  Most people fall somewhere close to one end or the other.  I for example, are high in androgens, and have what is medically termed clitoral hypertrophy (clitoromegaly), although not freakishly so, nothing to write home about.  I'm just well beyond the norms.   But there's never been any question that I'm completely female.

Until now!

Oh my God!  I mostly don't wear makeup, I've never liked makeup, wear it out socially only because it's expected and a sexual advantage in attracting male attention.  I don't especially like dresses and skirts, prefer pants, but wear "feminine" things, again because it's expected and a sexual lure.  I really do like attracting men.  But ... Holy Crap!  According to Steve/Stevie's logic, I'm actually a man!

So stop calling me Silk.  I'm really Sylvester.

(Heh.  I can't wait until Steve hits menopause and the estrogen wanes.  How silly is he going to feel then?)

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Yeah, I know that there are men who go through sexual reassignment surgery to become women, but are still attracted to women.  Yeah, I know it's all mixed up, both physical manifestations and psychological.  But Steve's case is different, in my opinion, in that he never "felt like a woman trapped in a man's body".  Never felt homosexual.  He just had a slightly feminizing influence from more estrogen than is usual in males. 
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3471 Dominion

Saturday, February 25, 2012

A ditch can't be filled with dirt from its sides.
-- Jewish Proverb --

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Regarding the horrible new Blogger word verification on comments, !those messes you can't read!, here's the relevant discussion from the Blogger help forum: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/blogger/thread?tid=540e2fdfc8c15474&hl=en

It amazes me that some folks claim to have taken WV off and subsequently saw very few spam comments, so they figure it isn't needed anyway. I took it off for two days recently and was immediately inundated with spam. I had to turn it back on.

The only other option is to moderate comments, but I HATE HATE HATE when people do that because you don't get to read the comments of others before commenting yourself, and you don't see your own comment for an indeterminate period of time. I had a period of a few weeks when my comments weren't showing up, and I assumed that for some reason the moderating blogger(s) were deciding not to allow my comments through, so it took me a while to discover I had a problem with Google login and the comments weren't being accepted at all on moderated blogs.

If you are having difficulty figuring out the WVs for comments, there are some symbols next to the entry blank, one of which, the left-most one I think, resolves to "cycle through, give me another". You can keep clicking that until one crops up that you can actually figure out. You won't have to retype your whole comment, or take a wild guess that's rejected.

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The world uses 89 BILLION barrels of crude oil PER DAY. It's pulled out of the earth and burned. Every day. We know of the effect on the atmosphere, but what about earthquakes? I mean, we're removing a lot of lubricant. Has anyone with any knowledge expressed an opinion?

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Here's an article about a child in St. Louis, and what can happen when employers can pick and choose what to cover in health policies: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/columns/bill-mcclellan/article_35b5796c-7cc2-52e3-88c6-cc0050751f1d.html

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When I read this article - http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/21/georgia-democrats-to-propose-limitations-on-vasectomies-for-men/?iref=obnetwork - I thought it was a joke. You know, one of those "news" sites that spoof real news. But it's real!

Rep. Yasmin Neal, a Democrat from the Atlanta suburb of Jonesboro, planned on Wednesday to introduce HB 1116, which would prevent men from vasectomies unless needed to avert serious injury or death.

The bill reads: "It is patently unfair that men avoid the rewards of unwanted fatherhood by presuming that their judgment over such matters is more valid than the judgment of the General Assembly. ... It is the purpose of the General Assembly to assert an invasive state interest in the reproductive habits of men in this state and substitute the will of the government over the will of adult men."

“If we legislate women’s bodies, it’s only fair that we legislate men’s,” said Neal, who said she wanted to write bill that would generate emotion and conversation the way anti-abortion bills do. “There are too many problems in the state. Why are you under the skirts of women? I’m sure there are other places to be."

Personally, Neal said, she has no qualms with vasectomies.

“But even if it were proposed as a serious issue,” she said, “it’s still not my place as a woman to tell a man what to do with his body."

...

Earlier this month, Democratic Oklahoma Sen. Constance Johnson added then withdrew a provision to an anti-abortion bill that read "any action in which a man ejaculates or otherwise deposits semen anywhere but in a woman's vagina shall be interpreted and construed as an action against an unborn child." [Silk - Italics are mine. Um, doesn't the Old Testament say that, too? Onan's sin?]

In January, as the Virginia state Senate debated a bill that required women to have an ultrasound before an abortion, Democrat Janet Howell attached an amendment that required men to have rectal exams and cardiac stress tests before they could receive prescriptions for erectile dysfunction medication like Viagra. The amendment was rejected in the Senate, 21-19.

You go, girls! But do you think men are smart enough to understand what you're trying to tell them?

Perhaps women need to simply say to male legislators, you vote the way you have to, Dear, but understand that since I don't want a[nother] baby, and I seem to have no final say over that, there will simply be no more sex, of any kind. And, uh, remember you'll be up for reelection, so, uh, you'd better not get it anywhere else, either.

Sometimes I think that the next action will be to take away our shoes.
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3451 Jasper wonders where the bird is.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
-- Steven Wright --

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It's now 7:30 AM, and it's 47 F and raining. This is a very strange winter.

I was awakened at 2:30 am. I had been dreaming that I was masturbating (I wasn't, and that's a very strange dream for me) and a massive orgasm woke me up at the same time I heard a smoke alarm chirp. It's since been chirping every 30 seconds (hence Jasper wandering around wondering where the bird is). I don't want to climb a ladder until I've had breakfast and caffeine, so it's still chirping.

The orgasm thing is worrying me a bit, although it's also very nice. That's never happened in my sleep before, not that I know of, anyway, until this past week. This was the second in a week. Maybe like an adolescent boy, my androgens are out of whack? Pituitary problem? Where's House when you need him. (Wasn't there a House show, or Scrubs, or maybe a Grey's Anatomy episode, long ago about a woman who was having spontaneous orgasms all day?)

It's weird that since menopause I've become much more responsive, not less. And it's definitely not the "lack of fear of pregnancy" that so many people want to attribute it to. It's real sensitivity, like nerve connections that had been dulled before. Throughout my youth I'd had to tell guys to quit fiddling with my breasts. It was more annoying than stimulating. Last year I had my first orgasm from nipple stimulation alone. Blew my mind! (Yeah, The Man is GOOD!)

I suspect a lot of older women experience that awakening. I suspect it goes either up or down, maybe in equal numbers. For those of us that go up, it's unfortunate that men of our age are slowing down. We want more than they can provide. Maybe that's why so many older women are interested in younger men.
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3225 Local urologist visit

Thursday, April 21, 2011

The past belongs to those who control the present.
-- George Orwell --

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Good news: He says we can probably blast the stone to break it up, and the stent can be removed in his office with local anesthesia.

Middlin' news: He wants another urine culture, CT scan, blood panel, and abdominal x-ray, then I'll see him again in two weeks. (Two weeks?)

Middlin' to bad news: It might be a few weeks, perhaps three or four, before I get the stent out.

Horrendous news: No sex until the stent is out!

ACK!

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As I was leaving, the receptionist was giving me the scripts for the tests, and advice on where to have the tests done, and she asked if I had any questions. I said yes, uh, can I have sex with the stent in? She seemed startled, said she didn't know, and said she'd ask the nurse. She whispered to the nurse, who looked startled, and said she didn't know, but she'd ask the doctor.

The nurse came back and said, "In answer to your question, no", and at that moment the doctor came out to give some stuff to the receptionist. He was standing next to me at the counter when the nurse said no. He didn't look at me when I turned to him, but he was grinning. I said to him, "No?! This thing has got to come out pretty darn quick, then!", and hit him on the arm with my Readers' Digest.

He cracked up.

(I'm just a wee tad insulted that the nurses looked startled at my question.)
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2628 Sex in the 60s, and the relief of death

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

There are no stupid questions, just stupid people.
-- South Park --

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On Hoda & Kathie Lee this morning, a woman was talking about menopause, what happens and why. She mentioned that women in their 60s and 70s report that sex is better, that they're having the best sex in their lives.

My immediate thought was "Hmmm. Yes. But I thought it was him, The Man, that he was doing it so well. Hey, maybe it's me!"

My second thought was that again, this is a self-selected sample.  The only ones who would report are those who are having sex, and they would be the ones who always liked it anyway.  Women in their 60s and 70s who don't like sex have long ago figured out how to avoid it, and menopause is the perfect excuse. 

My third thought was that women get shafted again.  For those of us who like and want it, it's better, it's wonderful, our libido is ramped up, but where are the capable men?  How does one go about finding a compatible man who can keep up with us and not leave us hanging?

Younger men, and their staying power.  That's the solution.  I lucked out in finding The Man, but (those red flags again**) I don't think he'll be good for the next decade and a half, and what do I do after I lose patience with him? 

Sigh.

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** In The Man's defense, the red flags don't involve sexual infidelity, believe it or not.  That's the one thing I am not at all worried about.  The flags have more to do with attention, interests, propinquity, intimacy, keeping secrets, differing values, a resistance to sharing lives, and on and on.  Things that at my age perhaps shouldn't matter so much, but I guess they still do.

On the other hand, if I were involved with a man who lived close, whom I saw a few times a week, who wanted me involved in his life and wanted to be involved in mine, who dragged me to family functions, who shared his problems with me, who wanted to advise and direct me, who MEDDLED!, I probably wouldn't be happy either.  I'd feel trapped and smothered.  I'd want some distance, some independence.

So.  Damn.

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I observed to a relative recently, when her daughter's diabetic cat died while in her care, that sometimes when someone we love, or a pet, is old and ill and caring for them has become a burden, when they die we may mourn them, but we are also relieved.

I didn't realize how much that was a part of my crash after Jay died.

People have asked me, if he were still alive, would we still be together, and I've always answered yes.  That's true whether he were healthy, or left ravaged by the brain cancer.  At the time he died, he was hemiparalyzed, unable to stand, sit, move himself or feed himself, incontinent, blind, sleeping no more than an hour at a time, and with absolutely no short-term memory.  But I still loved him, and if we had been able to stop the brain cancer and control all the other potentially fatal conditions he was prone to, even if he was left in that condition for decades, I'd have stayed with him and cared for him.

When he died, I was relieved.  I realize and accept that now. 

I didn't realize it then, because I mourned the loss of him in my life and all of what could have and should have been.  That was on top.  Underneath was the relief, and I think the inability to accept that feeling contributed to the multi-year depression that followed.

I think he was relieved, too.  So it's ok.
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2295 Sexting (I hate that word!)

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

The plumber came by. He's going to put a new silt filter in on Friday, in a more accessible spot. Another $300.

Why do people feel like they have to make up new words? "Sexting" = sending text messages with sexual content. It's not just sending text, though. It includes emailing and posting on the internet.

The Massachusetts Berkshire County DA has decided to get tough with teens (and anyone else) who sends, receives, or forwards photos or messages with sexual content involving minors. The kids are taking explicit photos of themselves or others and passing them around, or posting them on social sites like Facebook, and he's threatening to charge them with kiddy porn. Very good story here, the official DA site, with (what I find to be) shocking statistics.

A lot of people are blaming the technology for the rash of topless teens out there.

It's not the technology to be blamed. It's worse. It's a whole social atmosphere of "anything goes", and "why not". It's ordinary street clothes that look like lingerie. Office attire that flashes parts of the body normally kept private. It's expectations out of control, expectations expecting to be met.

It's not the technology. Victorians sketched. It's what one did. And it was not unusual for a young man finding himself alone with a woman and a sketch pad and a pencil to ask her if she'd be willing to take off her top for art. And the young lady would raise her eyebrows, laugh at him, and keep her top on. Hey, it didn't hurt to ask.

When I was in high school and college, every so often a guy would get hold of a Polaroid camera, and he'd ask, beg, hopping from one foot to another in anxiety, and the girl would raise her eyebrows, laugh at him, and keep her top on. Hey, it didn't hurt to ask.

Now the girls often are taking the photos themselves. Nobody has to ask.

There's something very wrong with their thinking.

I blame Madonna, and all those who followed in her footsteps.
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1833 Sex and the Country Girl

Sunday, June 1, 2008

The post about Rape and Stuff has generated a few comments and a few private confessional emails, enough to convince me even further that 1 in 4 is too low. And I wasn't even counting simple physical harassment.

When I married Ex#1, and again when I married Ex#2, they each had a best friend, a buddy they'd known for years, best man at the wedding.

Ex#1 and I had a week together before he left for military duty in Germany, and then I was alone. One day, about a month after Ex#1 left, there was a knock on the door, and I found the buddy standing there. He said he'd had a fight with his wife, and wanted to talk. Naturally, I let him in, and within seconds he was all over me. At one point he grabbed me from behind, and I jumped up and came down with a high heel on his sneakered foot. I broke two toes. That convinced him I was serious, and he left, and as soon as he was out the door I called his wife, told her he'd been there, and that I was sending him home with a broken foot. She said "Thank you." I never told Ex#1, but he was angry with me after that because I never wanted to visit them.

Ex#2 and I had been married about two weeks when he had some second shift testing slots, and sure enough, one evening the best buddy came to visit. Again, he came on strong immediately, and couldn't seem to understand when I told him to get out. I literally had to swing a lamp to get him out. I called Ex#2 at work and told him what had happened. I don't know what was said between them, but the two remained friends. I just didn't have to see him ever again.

What really got me was the attitude of both buddies. They really truly seemed to feel that their friendship with my husband conferred a right to my sexual favors. They acted like it was some kind of social contract that I didn't seem to understand, that they had permission. That my husband would be willing to share, and I had no say in the matter.

Is there something I don't know? Some kind of male code?

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I saw the Sex and the City movie. I'm not going to say much about it, except that it was pretty much like the series, ties it all up neatly. If you liked the show, you'll like the movie, if you don't know the show, you probably won't "get" the movie.

I want to talk about the audience.

It's a small multiplex in the village, the kind with about 100 seats in each theater, and audio spillage from the movies on either side. Ironman and Indiana Jones happened to be showing on either side. Bleck. You have to practice selective hearing.

Anyway, with those two also showing, I couldn't understand why there were ANY men in S&tC. About 1/4 of the seats were filled for the 5 o'clock showing. It was mostly groups of women, but there were a few men with women. I guess there are still women out there who won't go to a movie alone, and men who will humor their women. (I know that The Man would absolutely refuse to escort me to something like S&tC!)

I was amused to see one man there alone, and more amused to see four all-male couples, couples who leaned into each other.

One man/woman couple behind me reminded me why there are several men in my history in whom I had lost interest immediately after attending a movie with them.

The guy had to comment constantly, in a normal volume voice, on what was going to happen. Obvious stuff. Like Big says he's going to build Carrie a larger closet. Later, he leads her to a closed door, and says, "Open it." The genius behind me says, "It's a closet." Carrie opens the closet door. Samantha sees a dog for sale, and looks at it with raised eyebrows. Genius says, "She's gonna buy the dog." Samantha buys the dog.

This was like every 30 seconds!

I have to wonder.
Does he always verbalize every thought that drifts through his pea brain?
Is he trying to illustrate how perceptive he is?
Does he really think his date is too stupid to interpret what she's seeing?

I was very tempted to turn around and ask the woman that last question - "Excuse me, but does he always assume you're too stupid to figure things out for yourself?"

Next time, I sit in the last row.
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1712 Aggression in Turkeys, and Others

Sunday, March 2, 2008

I have dinosaurs in my front yard. The wild turkey flock (I keep wanting to call it a herd) is getting big. I counted thirty yesterday, and some of those birds are huge - footprints seven inches long! I have several wild cherry trees, and every time it snows, the turkeys come and scratch away the snow under the trees, right down to bare ground. They look like a herd of velociraptors, and if they've found a lode of dried cherries, they're about as docile.

I briefly searched for an uncopyrighted turkey photo that had something for size reference, that I could stick in here. No luck. Just look at the chair you're sitting in. When they are bent over pecking at the ground, their back is higher than the chair seat.

Now put thirty of those monsters pecking cherries between you and your mailbox.

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A good point was made on a talk show this morning - that when a primary campaign gets negative, that gives fodder to the other party for the later campaign.

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Blogger spellcheck is back! Welcome. I missed you.

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I have a younger male friend who has had bad experiences with women. They tend to go a bit nuts on him, do crazy things when he tries to break up with them. One after another. Not just getting mad, but damaging property or even him. Police intervention on some. I think I know him well enough to know that he doesn't lead them on excessively or mistreat them, to where even sane women would want revenge - they just overreact and get vicious.

Well, maybe he does contribute. He tends to shut down, become impenetrable when he doesn't want to talk about something. That can drive a woman mad. But still, we don't all pick up bricks when we're angry.

So now he's woman-shy.

I told him that not all women are like that. Maybe he just selects for that type. Maybe one of the things that attracts him is passion, assertiveness to the point of aggression. Maybe he finds off-kilter intriguing. He's a bit of a nerd, so a woman would have to be a bit aggressive to get his attention. A sane less aggressive woman could flirt with him all day and he wouldn't notice.

So that got me thinking about my own selections.

Under "What I'm looking for" in my online dating profile (moribund for the past year, by the way), I said "bigger, smarter, and faster" than I am. (Which, by the way, I seem to have found, and not through the profile.) Anyway, in my dating history, I have always fallen for men whom I found very masculine. Someone who is strong and will take the lead, who can reason circles around me, but who is smart enough to appreciate my own smarts. I like men who are strong and definite and protective. I like to feel ultra feminine around my man. I need to smell the testosterone.

But in all the men I've chosen, there's always been one thing that ends up distressing me, and yes, I realize now that I initially chose that man precisely because of that. I reject men who don't have that quality, that characteristic. Pretty much the same way the young man above chooses women with a characteristic that ends up distressing him.

Wow. This is a stunning realization! Maybe I'm on my way to fixing it.

The problem? I tend to end up with men who are not sexually aggressive. Oh, they want it, and like it, and are very good at it, and hope all the time, and respond well, and all that - after all, I choose very sexy men who reek of testosterone blah blah blah. But the men I choose almost never initiate. I have to reach out and invite. And I hate that. I know that if I initiate, he will respond, so I feel like it's up to me to decide whether he may be too tired, or not in the mood, or needs his sleep for tomorrow, or ... whatever. And I can't ask, because - the men I choose - no matter what, if he thinks I want to, he'll accommodate me. I don't like having to make that decision all the time. I have to think about what's best for him.

I feel a little guilty now, because I let Jay sleep a lot in 2000, thinking he needed his sleep, what with all the chemotherapy and so on, not knowing that the surgery in January 2001 would end even the possibility. I suspect he may have wanted more. But he never would have made the first move. That decision was always mine, and I wonder now if I made the right one.

What I want is to be taken. To be "owned". Once we're intimate, I've always said "any time, anywhere, any way", and that torn clothing is just fine as long as they're willing to replace it. In fact, I'd rather like torn clothing. Sexual aggression, being passionately taken, is what I want, and I rarely get it from the men I choose.

Of course it's been obvious all along why this happens. I just never realized that I was actively rejecting sexually aggressive men, choosing more ... passive? no ... sensitive? no ... something-or-other men.

What happens is that early in the dating dance, I lose interest in a man as soon as he touches me without permission anywhere except my hands. Even just an arm around my shoulders will turn me off. He can't put an arm around me until I have snuggled into his shoulder to signal acceptance. Any man who touches me in any intimate way (and with me that's pretty much anywhere but the hands) before the first date will never get a first date. I never knew, until now, why I'd lose interest. Some guy would grab a quick hug, and I'd think "well, he's a nice guy, but I don't think we're compatible", without thinking about why we "weren't compatible". I guess because it's not reasonable for me to be turned off by a hug, I couldn't recognize that as the problem.

The men who passed the test were those men who were sensitive to and respected those signals. Gentlemen.

And then later, after we're intimate, I'm dissatisfied when he still waits for and respects the signals.

Hmmmmm. Where did that come from.

This probably goes back to my twenties, when I was emotionally fragile, and was taken advantage of by unscrupulous men. Many. It's like they can smell weakness. Wolves. Men who have no respect for any women in any way. Then in my mid-thirties, after several years of psychotherapy, I found me, and I got strong. I insist on respect now. And I guess one indicator of respect, in my mind, is that you don't touch me without permission.

So I select for men who demonstrate the proper respect. That turns out to be men who wait for me to initiate.

How do I fix that? I don't want to trade in the man I have now, but would it involve changing a basic part of his personality? I've already made it pretty clear verbally that he doesn't need specific permission, anywhere, any time, and I know he's capable of it. He surprised me once. I loved it! And I didn't even make him replace anything. How can I make that happen more often? Maybe I can suggest we take turns, and hey, it's your turn!
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1503 Some Amusement

The Top Ten Reasons Why Trick-or-Treating is Better Than Sex

10. You're guaranteed to get at least a little something in the sack.
9. If you get tired, you can wait 10 minutes and go at it again.
8. The uglier you look, the easier it is to get some.
7. You don't have to compliment the person who gives you some.
6. It's okay if the person you're with fantasizes you're someone else, because you actually are.
5. Forty years from now you'll still enjoy candy.
4. If you don't like what you get, you can always go next door.
3. It doesn't matter if the kids hear you moaning and groaning.
2. There's a lot less guilt the morning after.
1. You can do the whole neighborhood.