New Friends

I went to an unusual party Friday night. Some relatively new friends, Steamy Cynthia and Grogalingus, invited me to what they called a "new friends party." They also invited five other people they didn't know well and who didn't know each other. OK, a threesome came together and a twosome came together; and one of the guests is a colleague of mine, but we don't really know each other. As it turned out, I was the only one who didn't know anybody there well, but I can handle that. As my mom has always said, I don't know a stranger.

Mixing a group of relative strangers seemed a courageous gambit into the diminishing art of face-to-face socializing that could fall flat on its fucking face, or, as it was intended, make new friends of people who might not otherwise have met. I was delighted to be invited and met.

We started the evening with a little social lubricant. Grogalingus mixed up a tasty cocktail of amaretto, Southern Comfort, sweet/sour mix, and pineapple juice called Leah's piece of ass.* I recommend drinking it by the pitcher.

And there was food: cheese and crackers, hummus, and fresh fruit! One of the guests brought a yummy apple crumb pie. And because Steamy Cynthia reads this here blog, she baked chocolate chocolate chip and lemon cookies just for me--but of course I shared with the other guests.

Really, what more do you need at a party besides a piece of ass and cookies? I was perfectly satisfied. But besides the food, here are a few observations from the night.

1. I'm going to have to break down and watch Dr. Who. Probably I should also make a cheat sheet just for parties or get relevant details tattooed on the inside of my arm. Evidently just nodding like I know what the fuck people are talking about is not enough for the Whoish crowd. I need to know the characters. And I suspect I could at least appear smarter than a brain-damaged turkey if I knew why this outhouse is so important.

I'm the only one on the planet who doesn't know, aren't I?

2. Going to a party where you don't know anybody well means every story will be a new one. That's some cool shit right there.

 3. I can't go one single night without talking about boobs and how much I love them. I haven't written about that here yet, but I will soon. Not that it's a secret, but don't worry. I didn't lead with boobs at the new friends party. We'd all had at least 2 drinks before the topic came up. And before we listened to this song.

4. I will probably be writing about some steampunk adventures here in the near future. As of this writing, I know very little other than that it started as a literary movement and within the past few years has morphed into a costume movement as well. And there should be goggles.

For the past few months Grogalingus and Steamy Cynthia have been encouraging me to ride on their airship to some steampunk functions, but so far I've encountered scheduling conflicts. Three of the guests Friday are instigators of steampunk in a nearby city, so having made more new steampunk friends, I think I'd better don a costume and see what it's all about.

I realized as I was looking at costumes online that I already have a dress I can trick out with some accessories. I've always said I won't wear a corset in public because it's one item  of clothing I'd rather save for a special someone to see in private. Or maybe it's a matter of class that I wouldn't wear one out to a club, for example. But as I looked at photos of some of the local events, I noticed lots of the women's costumes are topped by corsets, so .... maybe as a costume? I'm still not persuaded yet. Although I think I could handle this costume in black, without the weapon. I already have the jacket.

This costume needs a redhead.

5. People who read my blog know me better than I realize they do. Everybody seems to be rooting for me to get more cookies.

I think I rambled away from the party. It was fun. One of my intentions for the new year is to get out of my comfort zone ..... OK, I do that anyway. Find new ways to get out of my comfort zone. I'm grateful that Steamy Cynthia and Grogalingus opened their home to an experimental party. It was a great idea and a generous risk. Or at least I thought it was risky.

Would you consider it risky to either go to a party where all the other guests were strangers or even intentionally throw a party like that yourself?

I leave you with another Tim Minchin offering that one of the party guests posted on my Facebook wall after we became friends yesterday. Listen through, because you'll probably be surprised by the word he's ..... nevermind. I'm not going to give away the surprise. (Thanks, Charlie.)

*The recipe is delicious as is, but I would add a spritz of black cherry fizzy water to the mix to lighten it a bit and give a touch of effervescence. That's just my preference though.

WWJD

I know. I haven't posted the past two nights. I'm not doing NaBloPoMo this month, and end-of-the-quarter grading vision loss has set in, so I slacked off a couple of nights. I'm humbled by those of you who wrote or told me in person that you missed reading here. Thank you. I write here at night like that late-night DJ who spins his tunes in the lonely dark while everyone else is sleeping. Thank you for reading.

I was reminded tonight of something I need to think more about and it's this: When we set out to intentionally hurt one person, we will inevitably hurt others too. Maybe the collateral damage is worth it, but maybe we don't notice or care that we've let off emotional tear gas in the building as we're leaving. Maybe we should notice. (Or maybe hurting people on purpose sucks big green donkey balls, but some people seem compelled. That's 'nother post.)

Just to keep this real .... look, I'm easy to hurt. I lead with my heart. I make no secret of my vulnerability, and I take most blows head on because I don't live life behind a shield. But a direct strike at me can hurt others who don't even know to duck. I watched it happen tonight.

I can't do anything about other people's behavior. The lesson for me is that the next time I feel like striking out at someone -- and that's a rare occurrence except on the highway -- I'm going to think a little harder about who else I might be hurting at the same time.

I'm not an expert on Jesus, and I don't play an expert on TV. As far as I can tell, he was a cool, liberal young rabbi of his time, and I don't claim to know his heart or even his words. But I believe he said something like whatever you do to the least of these, you also do to me. Don't worry. Jesus wasn't hurt tonight, but I understood what he meant. When you hurt someone, you don't just hurt one person. There are innocents all around. 

Have you ever hurt someone out of anger or meanness or fear of losing something, and then realized you unintentionally hurt someone else, caught someone in the cross-fire? Is it possible you've done it without knowing it?

I'm going to consider this question myself. I may write more about it.
 
I had a dream last night, and in it I guess I received a message. I don't believe in dreams, but sometimes it happens. In the dream somebody stood beside me and said, "It never could have worked. He's not allowed to talk. He's not allowed to touch her. He's not allowed to be himself. You have to know that's more compelling than anything you have to offer." In the dream I walked out of the room ... and then I woke up. I woke up months ago.

I rarely strike out, because more often than not, I understand. Even without dreams, I understand.

Facebook snippet: My boss can stay out of my vagina too.

I found myself dragged into a conversation on Facebook tonight with someone who obviously took a master course in logical or argument fallacies. I got out fairly early, but it still left me with a bad taste in my mouth. My FB friend, who is not the guy in this snip, posted that Rush Limbaugh had apologized for calling Sandra Fluke a slut. After I flippantly remarked that Rush Limbaugh is a whore, the conversation with one of his friends went something like this, :

Photoshopped. Duh.

Here, in case you haven't actually listened to Sandra Fluke's testimony, is the video I posted above. I don't get "slut" from this, but I didn't expect to agree with a fat, loud, attention-whore junkie like Limbaugh.

I was satisfied ending the conversation there, and I did post the video on my wall. Back to the real issue of keeping my employer out of my vagina.

Ooops. I was wrong. There was a little bit more to come.

Still Photoshopped.

And I am fucking speechless. All these many years after women fought for the right to vote and burned their bras and pounded their heads against the fucking glass ceiling --oh, wait. We've never stopped doing that -- men are still telling us we are either sluts or children when we want to control our own bodies .... no, our own vaginas and ovaries and uteruses? What the fucking fuck?

I stopped. I did. I said I was out of the conversation and I didn't take the bait. No more stinky fish or slippery slopes or ad hominem attacks for me. Nope, not worth it. He wouldn't pass my freshman composition class. But I do have a response to make here.
**Disclaimer: This isn't really for this one guy. It's really for the guys who started this rhetoric and made it stick with some people like this guy. It's for the people who purposefully spread ignorance. It's for Rush Limbaugh.

Dear Random Guy on a FB thread: First, go ahead and make the health insurance companies pay for your porn if you can't get off any other way. How fucking pathetic is that? About as pathetic as that faulty analogy you just farted. Wanking to porn is not the same as taking prescription birth control pills. You don't need a prescription to whack off to porn, which is free anyway.

But since you're going down that lubed-up slope, let's talk about orgasmic equality. Orgasms cause all kinds of lovely, muscle-building contractions in a woman's lady parts too. Yep. Cookies are good for all of us. Problem is, porn doesn't really do it for lots of us women. We need connection, foreplay, skin against our skin ....  If you get your porn, I want my health insurance plan to pay for a man who will give me healthy, beneficial cookies. And if I can't have a man, I want a Sybian. And no, you don't get a prostitute to jerk you off because you already offered to do it yourself with porn. Want to keep sliding down that slope? No? Good.

Now that the orgasms are under control, maybe just a few words about the Constitutional errors you committed in your tiny rant. You seriously think the Constitution guarantees you the right to religion? What the fuck does that even mean? The Constitution says the following: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Your "right to religion" stops where my vagina begins, buddy, and don't you forget it.

Look, it doesn't matter what religion my employer practices, he doesn't have the right to make medical decisions for me. Period. It's between my doctor and me. Period. It doesn't have to be spelled out in the Constitution for it to be a right.

And finally, you said Ms. Fluke "never got any negative press for saying what she did." I'm stuck for words. She was called a slut. Weren't you listening? Rush Limbaugh, supposedly a representative of the media, called her a slut. Surely you don't think he meant it as a compliment?

Sorry I had to leave the conversation so abruptly. I'm a little tense about having to vote next to people who want to control the medical choices I make with my doctor because of their religion or because they think they're protecting somebody's right to religion. I'm scared that people say the things you did and believe them. And I could also really use a few of those prescription cookies I was talking about up there. You understand, right? About the cookies?

Sincerely,

Reticula

-------------------

I told my son Drake the guys who drafted the Constitution would throw themselves off buildings if they could hear this nonsense. He sent me a funny, appropriate video. So let's end this post with a laugh, because shit is getting strange out there. We really are further down that slippery slope than I ever thought we'd go.

Night Owls

I'm a night owl. Readers on the west coast aren't surprised to hear that. Most readers who share my time zone don't see new posts until they get up in the morning. I'm not sure if everybody is born with a particular clock for sleeping and waking, but I was, and it hasn't changed since I was born no matter how hard people tried to change me.

My mom and my grandma tried to feed it out of me. When I was two weeks old they started spooning mashed potatoes and gravy into my mouth and pouring whole milk and dark Karo syrup in my bottles so I would sleep at night. I didn't. Typically babies don't sleep all night at two weeks anyway, but no matter what they tried, I didn't go to sleep when they wanted me to. They thought I was being stubborn. My mom said I was afraid I was going to miss something, but that wasn't it.

Later my parents tried to beat it out of me. That didn't work. They would put me to bed at a "reasonable" hour--9:00 or so. I would lie awake for hours, daydreaming about sex, singing under my breath, trying to be as quiet as I could so nobody would know I was still awake while the entire house slept--except for the mice in the walls. When I was 8, I got a little white transistor radio. I would turn it all the way down and put it against my ear. I could barely hear it, but it was enough to keep me company. Sometimes I could even pick up a station in Kansas City, my favorite, and I would listen to it for hours. I thought someday I would be that sultry late night voice on the radio, awake and playing music while most people slept. Eventually about 2:00, I would give up and fall asleep. It didn't matter what time I had to get up for school, I couldn't go to sleep until long after everybody else had.

When I got married, I still couldn't go to sleep until 2:00 or later. That was fine as long as I was tending bar and supporting us. But once I was in college and LtColEx was working, my sleep schedule became a problem. He tried guilt: "I have to work to support us and you can get up whenever you want. I can't go to sleep if you're not here sleeping, so you have to go to bed at a reasonable hour." I would read a book until he couldn't take it any longer, and then I would lie awake for hours, listening to him breathe, waiting for him to twitch (restless leg syndrome), daydreaming.....

When Drake and Elvira were babies getting up with them in the night was no problem at all. I loved being up with them in the middle of the quiet, milky night, when everything was still and the windows were dark. It was mornings I had to drag my ass through. But babies take naps in the morning. So did I.

For the most part now, I'm able to arrange my schedule so I go to bed about 4 hours later than most people and sleep 2-3 hours later. I can force myself to get up early, but I can't force myself to go to sleep before 2:00 am. Most of my colleagues would rather teach morning classes, so I'm happy to take the afternoon shift. I'm often grading papers into the early hours of the morning, before I go to bed.

If I do have to attend a morning function for some reason, people who think they know me are surprised that I'm not the same person at 8:00 or 9:00 am as I am at 11:30 or later. I'm a zombie. I can't focus, and I can't engage. I'm no longer an E on the Meyers Briggs. I'm no letter at all. I don't function.

I think sometimes about getting a day job, a normal job which would require me to work from 9-5 and then leave my work at the office. I've done it before when I had to, for a few months at a time. I just can't take the leap though.

It sounds lazy, but I do the same amount of work as everyone else. I just don't do it at the same time. Something about morning feels harsh and abrasive to me. My brain feels stuffed with pillows. But at night, I feel energized, ready, charged. I have to be careful not to start cleaning house after midnight or I'm up for hours having fun. There are other activities I could do all night too.....

I'm always the last one standing after a party or a night out, and I can't understand why people want to go to sleep when it's dark and cozy and there are stars shining (not just that one we call the sun) and there's a hummmm coming from the earth that I can't hear during the day. Are you still up? Do you hear it?

Do you remember when your clock was set? Were you born with it, or did you learn to adapt so you could get along?

Maybe I'm normal though, in a way. Maybe some of us are born to keep watch through the night. Somebody has to witness the dark, right?

I don't understand why would anybody want to sleep during this?

Would Anonymous please stand up?

I've been wresting with decisions about anonymity, both my own and yours. On the one hand, anonymity provides a certain amount of protection, gives a little more freedom  to write whatever the fuck I want. On the other, it's  kind of chickenshit to write without claiming the words, putting one's name on the byline. It dilutes the power of the words somehow when a name isn't attached.

One decision I make every once in a while is whether to allow Anonymous to comment here. With a click I can take that option off the comment page and force anyone who comments to own up with at least an alias. One advantage would be that each comment would have a different name. A couple of times posts have received an unusual number of comments -- like 10 -- and it's hard to tell if the anonymous ones are one person or several. And I suppose having to "sign" a comment might inspire some otherwise anonymous commenters to consider their words and punctuation more carefully, but it might also discourage them from commenting.

Eh, but I don't get that many comments here on the blog. I tend to get more on Facebook, where they can't be anonymous anyway, and most of those are on my personal page, not the blog page (which you should like if you haven't by clicking over there to the right). Drive-by anonymous posts aren't really a problem, and I have the option of deleting any that annoy or offend me. So far, none of them have, not even the fat troll who stopped by and left a calling card to her secret blog one night.

For now, I'm going to allow anonymous comments here. It's so much easier to mock someone who disagrees with me if I can't put a name with the comment.

I'll go that way.

The other question is one of my own anonymity. I'm working on a new design, and I'd like to make this interface more visually personal. I've been thinking about having some photos of myself taken -- even though I'm the most unphotogenic human living or dead. Professional photographers hate me. The only person who consistently takes a photo of me with my eyes open is The Diplomat, and he's had lots of practice. In fact, it's so embarrassing how unphotogenic I am, I'm a little phobic now, which is why I haven't pursued it yet. But I have a couple of other purposes for the photos: one is that some directors want head shots at auditions and the other is none of your business. So I thought if I were going break down and have some photos taken, I might as well try to get one that I could use here.

My quandary is that I've maintained a certain level of anonymity and posting a photo would blow some of that away. Yes, many readers know my real identity, and some even party at the bat cave. I've been posting links to my Facebook page for months, so it's no secret to my Facebook friends who Reticula is. Even my kids read and comment here.

Facebook friends aren't the readers I worry about though. Because I write about things like vaginas and dildos and even --giddyup! -- Sybians, I'd rather any particular current crop of students not find and read my blog. I sometimes read something I've written here aloud as an example, because they like to know I can write better than they can, but I don't direct my students to my blog. I also don't accept Facebook friend requests from students while they're enrolled in my class, and only a special few have become friends after. I'm flattered when one of those reads here, but they are rare students.

So students are one reason I'm careful about linking my realness to my blog. The other reason is less compelling. A friend brought up the possibility that a future, potential employer might find my blog and be offended by my posts about vaginas or by my language. I said I hoped any potential employer would be hiring me because I'm a writer, and my blog shows one genre of writing I can do. I'm not sure I'd like working for anyone who couldn't handle what I write here. That would be a pretty tight stick up the ass, and I predict we would clash in other ways too.

I've met this quandary before. A few years ago I sold a story to Bust magazine, a "one-handed read" story. After I signed the contract, the editor must have done some research on me, because she emailed and asked if I was sure I wanted to use my real name for the byline. At the time I was working for another magazine as an editor and columnist, and it was possible some of those readers might not appreciate my porn erotica.I thought about it for a few hours, and then I emailed her back and told her to use my real name. I wasn't ashamed of the story and I saw no reason to use a pseudonym as if I were.

So my past stance has been that anything I write in public I should be proud to own. I edit myself heavily so I don't cross certain self-imposed lines. For example, I try never to embarrass my kids or write anything that would hurt someone I love and respect. I'm not perfect, but that's my intention, but I've learned that I can neither predict nor control my audience. Sometimes people I never would have imagined read here, so I have to consider that unknown audience when I write. Being entirely anonymous would be freeing, like never having to wear a bra or panties, but all writers are accountable to their audience.

Granted, a photo isn't the same as using my name. But it's one step closer to outing myself publicly in a way that's irreversible. And I've learned the hard way a couple of times that the internet can be a cold companion when it comes to taking something I've written back. Some people don't forgive.

As I write it out here though, it doesn't seem like a big deal. This isn't my secret sex blog, after all. Maybe I'm just trying to avoid those photos ..... I know I'm trying to avoid the photos.

Do any of you have any thoughts on the subject of anonymity? If you're a blogger, do you use your real name? Am I just making life too damn difficult again?

My mother always said I think too much.