I'm not addicted, I can stop at anytime!

What a wonderful title for the music for this journal entry! The music itself is enchanting solo piano, the stuff usually sold under "New Age" but hardly so treacly as, say, Hearts of Space. Liz Story has always been one of my more favored composers.

Okay, so I had my date this Friday. I must say that I was unprepared for it. I haven't dated anyone new in six years, not since the disintegration of my last long-term poly relationship.

The woman I had invited out was an acquaintance from a long way back, a friend of my wife's but not someone I had had a lot of time with. She has her own family, husband and two young girls (twins even, quite the handful), and she desperately needed adult time just as much as I did. A time when we could go out and be not parents, but adult friends. Some guys go hang out with "the guys," but I'm an intimacy person-- casual mates don't quite do it for me, but getting to spend time with one person, being close even if not sexual, that's my idea of a good time.

We ate at a lovely Greek restaurant where I made the mistake of ordering something terribly messy and considered it something of a miracle that I managed to get through the entire meal without dribbling some of the delicious, olive-and-pine nut laden sauce, very dark, onto my shirt. She looked quite yummy in her casual 'going out' clothes although, to be sadly honest, five days later I can't remember much of what she was wearing other than that it looked good on her. On the other hand, she has quite a beautiful face with bright, happy eyes, and those I do remember clearly.

Afterward, we wandered up to the Seattle Erotic Arts Festival. This little shindig was being put on by The Wetspot, a local "sex positive community center" (make of that what you will... others have). Apparently the size of the crowd overwhelmed the event organizers, as the line went out the door, up the block and around the corner. A room meant for maybe four hundred was trying to fit two thousand, but, y'know, security folks equipped with riding crops and whips make for excellent crowd control.

But I had a peculiar moment of disconnect. When I socialize, I tend to socialize almost strictly within the leather community. All of my friends, even the geeky ones, are mostly kinky folk, and most of them know one another. Despite my terrible socialization, I know how to introduce people, but I kept forgetting. I felt as if I were peering into a somewhat fractured universe-- I'm on a poly date and nobody in "my" community knows who she is?-- but eventually I got around to remembering to introduce her after she pointedly introduced herself a couple of times.

Afterward, I walked her back to her car, where we said goodnight. Nothing particularly kinky about that. I'm so glad I'm an adult now, and both of us know that it's long past the time where we have to struggle looking for something to say. There are worlds enough, and time, and both of us were mature enough to appreciate it. Both of us were there to figure out how to get into each other's pants, not each other's life, although no matter how much of the former we try, being friends will cause the latter to happen at least a little bit, but there was no sense in pushing it. Intimacy comes on its own terms.

We kissed goodnight. It was a great kiss. The kind that reminds you that there is life beyond work and household chores.

---

And Elf succumbs to the darkness, or at the very least, on-line quiz culture, with this tasty mortal, er, morsel:


Which Sailor Scout are you?

John Derbyshire loses it

I never promised I wouldn't get political, and this one has me annoyed. In today's National Review, the unofficial organ of Catholic Republican conservatism, Derbyshire's column is, well, here's a taste:

Look at the gross vulgar overflowing fat wealth we live amongst! Look at the great cars that 20-year-old kids drive 400 yards to the mall, to buy things they don't need, gadgets to pack into houses already overflowing with gadgets, clothes to cram into closets stuffed with clothes. Look at the work we do, sitting in humming cubicles scrolling through screens full of numbers, numbers that measure our wealth. Look at the bright, airy schools our kids attend, to be taught that their ancestors were moral criminals, their parents are liars, their culture is a sham.

If you really want the rest, it's at The Last Days. It's really quite sad to see. When I was done reading it, I desperately needed a fix of Virginia Postrel optimism, which she's frequently good for.

In the paragraph before the one I excerpted, John relates overhearing a man at the checkout line in a convenience store telling his own sad story about someone stealing his daughter's car, and apparently John just lost it. Worrying about such petty, banal concerns when "they" (whoever "they" might be) are planning on sneaking suitcase nukes into our cities was more than John could bear.

Well, good. I'm much happier in a world where we actually have the freedom and wealth to be so banal, where our day-to-day cares are not taken up with whether or not raiders are going to come over the hills and steal our livestock, rape our children, and burn our villages. We cannot worry about what "they" might do twenty-four hours a day. Th human soul cannot stand that kind of constant worry. John's fears put us in the same place as the Poles or the Serbs circa 1965, when dark eyes darted here and there and everyone feared what his neighbor might be thinking. A nebulous "crisis" in which we are constantly at war with an unknowable "them" in the sort of thing fans of George Orwell understand.

Poor man, that his daughter's car got ripped off, when she worked for it, she earned it. Or, perhaps, her father did. Both of them paid their taxes, dammit, both of them deserve the comfort of knowing that those taxes are going to pay for their external safety and their internal security, John.

Thanks to the kind of banal worries that man has, we now successfully feed, house, supply clean water, medicine, and education, to more people worldwide, and more people per capita, than at any time in history. Yes, the world gets more dangerous as the power to kill thousands evolves into ever smaller packages portable by ever more desperate men. It is the professional's job to shepherd us through this time-- not yours, John, and not mine. Our job is to support them as best we know how-- be moral citizens, educate our children, pay our taxes, understand and participate is the process that is republican democracy.

Getting angry at human beings for being human is unworthy of anyone.

Darkness Falls

I am quite obviously going through a mild depressive phase. All of the standard signs are there: an inability to concentrate on tasks, an unwillingness to get into debates or discussions, a lack of initiative when contacting friends or family, a lack of interest in sex, and most telling of all a pronounced tendency to oversleep. My readers can tell which stories were written when I was like this: they're the ones with lots of conflict and few love scenes.

After living with this kind of nuisance brain, I've evolved a number of strategies for dealing with it, not the least of which is having my electronic day planners (I have two-- one for Life, one for Work, just so that I don't get the two confused) completely configured with the to-do lists and schedules ready all the time, with annoying reminders to set up more reminders.

I've also got my beloved wife, omahas, who is sole keeper of half my mind. Marriages have institutional memories: what one person knows the other need not expend brain cells remembering, only remember that the other person knows it. Omaha has much more than that, and the clear delineation describing what each of us knows and is responsible for relieves me of many burdens.

It doesn't hurt that she's sexier than anything...

Sigh. I'm so tired right now, despite eight hours of sleep, and I've got a KLOC's worth of work to do. Back to the coal mines.

The Friday Five

1. What did you have for breakfast this morning? If you didn't have breakfast, why not?

This morning? A grapefruit, a protein bar, and coffee. Just like every weekday morning. On the weekends it's usually one pastry breakfast (waffles or pancakes, home made from scratch) and one quickie breakfast (store bought doughnuts, cereal, or scrambled eggs). Order depending on whether or not I feel like cooking Saturday morning.

2. What's your favorite cereal?

Granola, I suspect. The commercial stuff made with too much sugar.

3. How often do you eat out? Do you want that to change?

Once a week or so. Usually just because I'm too tired to cook.

4. What do you plan on having for dinner tonight? Got a recipe for that?

Tonight? Honestly? A handmade burger on a grill pan, with extra lettuce, tomato, onion, Swiss cheese on a toasted bun, with a side of hand-shredded cole-slaw made with Napa cabbage, green onions, red bell peppers, real mayonnaise and a touch of honey mustard. Oh, and Guinness. Just one.

5. What's your favorite restaurant? Why?

Dunno. Miyabi's near Seattle's Southcenter Mall is probably high on the list. Good sushi.

The Other Friday Five

For those of you who even begin to care, I've got a story I'm particularly happy with. It's not as heavy with love scenes as some others, but the scenes are much more humane. I'm enjoying the dialogue, especially because it's realistic. And it involves AI Sex and Religion. It doesn't get much kinkier than that.

Anyway, on to the Friday Five, part two.

( The ones about, you know, sex... )