there is a business in new york city that sells kidnapping packages to people. i mean like you sign a form and give them the okay to abduct you, physically and publicly, and pay them to do it. and they do it. then they keep you for a while and let you go. they claim it is nothing sexual, but i am sure that is probably like an escort service is ONLY an escort service. money is a strong motivator.

when i heard about this i had a response which was unique among all my friends and neighbors: i contemplated doing it. i understand it, to a point, but not without the sexual element. i actually plotted once years ago with my boyfriend for him to physically abduct me from location and at time randomly selected by him. he would use a blindfold, because i like blindfolds. i would try not to wet myself from the anticipation, and what happened next would be up to him.

i love this idea still. but i know myself well enough to know that i would hate the responsibility of having a safeword and at the same time i would be too much of a control freak to be able to completely trust him to do it right.

so many times people try to do things for me that they think i will like and their hearts are in the right place and i am such a shit that all i can do is bitch about their execution. if a guy proposed to me i would probably complain about the cut of the diamond. if i ever have kids i will probably complain about the burned toast on my mother’s day breakfast in bed. if it isn’t precisely to my specs, i do not want it…

perfectionism? trust issues? anal retention? selfishness?

i cut my hair. four inches, with a straight razor. it was not behaving well and i taught it a good lesson. it sleeps with the fishes (i flushed it).

boy does not like it. for fuck’s sake he has never liked it? except when i wore it in a style that was completely unmanageable. like long and, um, long. he does not like ponytails or buns or twists or anything. wait. i did this pigtail thing once with a cheerleader skirt. he dug that i guess. possibly it was the skirt though…

am so bored that i want to scream. am so swamped that i want to cry. am so horny that i want to…

um.

get him to make me scream and cry? did i mention i love to wrestle?

mostly it’s just that i really really miss her…

i have swamp lip, a yeast infection, a broken toe, a bitchy client, and four feet of snow in my driveway. i could run over everything, including the snow, but the bitchy client.

client: i want a website.
me: okay, what kind of site?
client: i emailed you the website for a company we work with.
me: um…
client: can you just change their logo to ours?
me: that’s called copyright infringement…
client: well you can use the same colors and copy the graphics, right?
me: that’s called copyright infringement…
client: well make it different, of course.
me: what kind of colors and graphics are you looking for?
client: the ones on the site i emailed you.
me: that’s called copyright infringement…

argh! even better.

me: i’ll need some copy.
client: i thought you couldn’t copy…?
me: copy is content. what content do you want on the site?
client: can’t you use the navigation on the site i sent you?
me: that’s called copyright infringement…

so she gives me their address and enough info for an “about” page. no product photos, only a list of manufacturers. no selling products. no promotions. no photos even of the stupid store.

what does she want from me?

she did not jump at my first two mock-ups. said they were “too brown”. did not understand that the color she likes is not from web-safe palette, did not know that 256 colors really isn’t all that much to work with. i changed it to blue and have not yet sent it. it is entirely different than the first ones though. also she does not know what a web host is and refuses to understand when i tell her that the domain name ownership is not a hosting account. does not get the idea that there are files which need to be stored.

sent polite e-mail telling her that if she does not like my design there will be no hard feelings (we are coworkers) and that if another designer (hint hint) gives her a better design she should jump at it without guilt (oh please god).

feel awful, inside and out.

i was shopping for an all-inclusive caribbean vacation because i am sick to hell of winter. and i was thinking about inviting the new girl with me and maybe something good would happen…

so i clicked on “couples only” and lo, i set eyes on the most horrific phrase ever posted on a travel site:

mixed (male/female) couples only.

this means i cannot attend with my lesbian lover, my best friend, my sister, or my mother. i actually have to be fucking a man, or pretending to, in order to gain admission.

colleague pointed out caribbean is not subject to united states constitution. i retorted that civil rights is not the issue. colleague asked why it is okay to exclude children. i explained that children are noisy and distracting and can easily ruin a romantic and/or relaxing getaway, and that people who don’t have children shouldn’t have to tolerate other people’s on their vacation if they are willing to pay the extra money. colleague said that clearly straight couples are willing to pay more for a place where gay couples are not allowed. i asked what’s to stop white people from paying more for a place with no black people? colleague said that is a different thing. i said no and left for lunch.

i go into gay bars. they can’t keep me out, and gay men never mind that i am there. in fact they usually do something special for all the “straight girls” (ha) in the house. i know going in that there will be boys picking each other up, what kind of atmosphere to expect, and i choose it, and i am welcome.

if i went on a gay cruise would i have to show my lesbian ID card upon making my reservation? if i had a cool boyfriend would the dykes freak out on me bringing him? or would the travel agent deny the booking if his name was a manly one?

i understand the idea of making a space that is friendly to things that some people find controversial. like the unitarian church, go there and get married even if you already had a baby together and that is okay with them. where is the line drawn though? is it okay to say “no gays” but not okay to say “white people only”? is it okay to say “no men” but not okay to say “swingers only”? argh! am so confused sometimes.

am very disturbed. know utterly with every fiber of my being that this is wrong and unfair. fail to understand completely how the gay traveling public (a huge market, btw) has not made a large and loud public stink about this and that said stink has not already resulted in at least three exclusively-gay caribbean resorts.

or has it? and if so, can i get into them?

media spin makes me absolutely nauseous. compare these two accounts.

radio news broadcast:
a 24 year-old woman assaulted a 50 year-old man with a baseball bat in a bizarre “road rage” incident. after their fender-bender, the woman produced a baseball bat, beat the man, then jumped into her car and left the scene. he managed to wrench the license plate from her car as she ran over his leg, and gave it to police who arrested her an hour later. she is charged with assault and leaving the scene of an accident.

newspaper article:
a 24 year-old schoolteacher got into an auto accident with a 50 year-old man. after beating him with a baseball bat and driving away, the 100-pound woman went home and told her uncle she was defending herself. she said that the man, twice her size, flung open her car door and spat on her after the accident. she called 911 and was told they would not send anyone “until you calm down”.

after the first report, i was on board with the woman being psycho. when i read the article later in the day, however, i answered my own question: in exactly what circumstances would a sane woman do what she did?

i confirmed this with female colleagues, who all responded the same way, having not heard any account of the story at all.

if you were a woman, driving alone, and got into an accident, and the man approached your car, appearing aggressive, what would you do? i would call 911, too.

and if 911 said they wouldn’t send someone, what would you do then? oh, look, a louisville slugger. you wanna dance, muthafucka?

i can’t say that i would actually assault him unless he had assaulted me first. but you can bet that i would use that bat to keep him at bay if i felt threatened.

i smell a lawsuit against the state’s emergency services for failing to respond to someone who claimed they were just in an auto accident or that they were in fear of being physically harmed by another person at the scene. if they take her to trial and there is a protest, i will support her. publicly and financially.

this all hinges on her telling the truth, of course. but given that everyone knows 911 calls are taped and can be produced at will, why would she lie about that? but unless they prove her a heroin junkie, i am more inclined to believe her. even if he did not physically touch her, i can wholly understand that she felt threatened and perceived a very real danger. i understand this because it is the same palpable fear i experience when in an elevator after business hours with any man i do not know personally and well. it is the anxiety i get when i am in the fast lane, doing 70, and a jackass man behind me tailgates me, flashing his brights at me repeatedly, even though there is a mack truck on my right and i cannot possibly change lanes without accelerating to an uncontrollable speed. it is the feeling in the pit of my stomach when i am stopped at a light and the guy in the car next to me wants me to roll down my window so he can ask directions or tell me i have a flat or try to lure me into an alley so he can rape and kill me.

i am not a current events person, or political, or newsworthy in any way. but this kind of thing scares me to death. because what if that was me?

the cure for “raving bitch syndrome” according to boy is a good orgasm or two. he is cutely annoying when he wants his way. or is it annoyingly cute? either.

i guess it’s a really bad sign when he offers to get you off, no strings attached, simply so that you will be in a better mood… and when you graciously decline he forcibly overpowers you in an effort to get his way, citing his technique as “medicinal”.

possibly a throwback to the days of “hysteria” when women paid doctors to give them orgasms which seemingly provided temporary relief from the affliction? he is indeed very old-fashioned guy.

he used those exact words, too: “raving bitch”.

i got there a little late. x. was drinking already, getting drunk with a girl who seems nice but whose face always looks like she is in a bad mood. x. made me taste her tequila cosmopolitan. i hate cranberry juice. i ordered something tropical with rum instead.

the bartender’s name was larry and i tipped him on the first drink so he would remember me. there is no name for the drink i like as far as i know, so i drained the first one and asked for another. that and the tip would help him remember me and my drink. while i waited for my third, i talked three more girls around me into ordering one of mine. we were standing so close they could have licked it off my lips instead of just sipping politely from the side of my glass like they did.

x. was two hours ahead of me, and it was time for the food already. i ate as much as i could. my buzz started to wear off ten minutes later so i went back to the bar and chatted with larry while he made me another one. then this one girl came scurrying over to me and told me so-and-so wanted a raspberry martini (?) and disappeared. i got one of those and wandered around the ballroom looking for her. she appeared pleasantly surprised. i hope she did not think i was trying to pick her up or anything.

x. and i politely golf-clapped and mst3k’d the ceo’s speech. sure, he loved us all. sure, we’d been through a hard couple of years, but we did it together! and we could keep on doing it because we were the best staff ever! and someone gave him a plaque or something to show we appreciate him right back. he is not asshole, just a little out of touch and too interested in his rosy glasses if you know what i mean.

the dj sucked balls. it turned out he was related to someone we work with and gave a good discount. he had nothing i wanted to hear. although he did play “it’s raining men” which got all the scary single girls on low-carb diets out on the dance floor, with exactly one gay man tearing it up right in the center of them. x. and i felt that warranted another drink.

i actually had about a dozen and managed not to fall down. x. accompanied me to the bathroom where she rubbed some of her body glitter into my hair with her fingers. i was wearing a high-necked shirt and she indicated that she would have rubbed it on my cleavage if only it would have shown. she winked at me.

alcohol almost always makes me feel funny and witty and friendly and generally well-liked. i could probably be an alcoholic if i weren’t such a control freak. nothing bad happened at all except that i had to hang out for an hour after the party and sober up. but i wasn’t the only one so it was okay.

monday morning everyone talked about their mad hangovers, but i didn’t have one. i never do. i think it’s what i drink, because when i vary from the fruity/sweet stuff i almost certainly get sick. but every time i drink i have an emotional hangover of sorts and spend an hour or so beating myself up for acting like a fucking teenager.

sweet sixteen…

as you know if you read me, i often say or do things during sex that i later have no memory of whatsoever – proof that having an orgasm is literally an altered state of consciousness. so big whoop. but this one is sort of disturbing.

it wasn’t what i did or said, it was more what i thought. mostly if i think of anything during sex, ie fantasizing, i think of it in words, not pictures, and i usually verbalize it because it gets me going even more. however the other day mid-climax a vision entered my mind with the force of a freight train. it was very odd, and very sudden, and very vivid. and i don’t know what it means at all.

it seemed that i was in a large room that was painted all red, except the floor, which was pale pink. i was blonde, and i was wearing a tutu-like pink dress, less like a ballerina and more like wedding barbie. several other girls were wearing dark red tulle dresses and in the center of the room there was the biggest white and pink cake i have ever seen – it went all the way up to the ceiling, at least thirty feet.

i blinked and it was gone.

i tried to describe it to him. i said that it felt like valentine’s day and that i could almost smell the sugar of the cake’s incredibly thick icing. there was no emotion except awe at the size of the cake – i didn’t feel panicked or pressured or ecstatic or weepy or anything.

he asked me “so you’re saying that cake turns you on?”

could have been worse, i suppose. possibly he could have interpreted it as some kind of ploy on my part to bring up marriage or try to have the commitment conversation. none of which i wanted. i mostly only wanted him to tell me that it had happened to him before too and that i wasn’t completely psycho. he didn’t but we smoked together and then fell asleep with our feet all twisted together.

foreshadowing? illusion? fantasy? dread? what?

i don’t get it.

i do not think i would like it. i do not really know. i am not adventurous enough to find out.

it’s fun to think about though.

that reincarnation is utterly possible? if i changed my name and my hair and the way that i dress would you still know me on the street? i mean it is kind of difficult to change my attitude or my feelings or who i have been before and who i would like to still be someday.

possibly i could stand on the corner with a painted cardboard sign? i could let you know which corner as long as you promise not to tell anyone who knows me…

it’s pretty much the most unimaginably horrible thing that could happen. and it had to happen now, after we are already sort of popular…

the question is what the hell to do about it?

and if i had the energy at all i would ask for input on why using italics, whether with ‘i’ tag or with ‘em’ tag makes the sidebar go way down on the page. wait. maybe i did just ask.

i guess it’s just that i don’t have the energy to do whatever it takes to fix it…

if i apply for a job at a place i might actually be happy and i get it will i still have any angst left to drive this site?

i wonder…

he is scarily romantic to the point of swashbuckling metaphors and he thoroughly enjoys being the white knight. however he feels that he is somehow always relegated to be the bell-ringing hunchback. he wants to exert control on his environment but somehow lacks the will to match the strength of its force on him. it infuriates me sometimes.

i think of myself as a realist but he calls me pessimist because i am quick to point out that while it would be nice to be filthy stinking rich there is the small matter of actually earning that money. i don’t like to float along in the bubble with him because there is only room for one person in there, somebody has to answer the phone and pay the bills and mail shit. that infuriates him most of the time.

i take a long time to get excited about something and when i do it is usually either for good reason or because i have been deceived. i filter what i bring to the table, because she truly is pessimist and rains on my parade every damn time. she always has.

she did it again today, when i needed someone to tell me what a great plan i had instead of promising i would shortly be jaded with said plan. she said something about socrates and hemlock but i don’t see how that is relevant at all.

better believe i took the time to point out to him that i am in fact not pessimist at all, that she is pessimist and that there is a huge difference between the two of us.

he did not seem to notice or care.

he would surely not respect me at all. possibly even cease to like me a bit.

dammit.

i did a dumb, dumb thing tonight.

there is a company function coming up soon and a girl i work with asked, begged, me to send an e-mail to her home address from a work account confirming that the event lasted longer than it really does and is located somewhere other than where it is to be held.

i need to go out and get fucked up

she said to me.

where are you going?

i asked, fearing to hear the answer. for then i would be fully accompliant.

what i just said, i am going to get good and fucked up. at exactly which bar or club, who the fuck cares?

she replied, irritated.

your husband won’t let you go out?

i said, hoping to guilt her into doing the right thing, or at least letting me out of doing the wrong thing.

when you’re not happy, you’re not happy

she replied, and gave me her e-mail address.

because she is mostly even bitchier than i am and i didn’t want to deal any more with her than i have to, i sent it and i felt horrible after. what if she is cheating on him? i helped. maybe is is not even asshole. am fairly certain he does not beat her or anything… clearly the relationship is already in trouble but what if this is the straw?

someone should open up growaspine.com. they would make cubic assloads of moolah on me alone.

i played nice.
i hid my tattoos.
i didn’t even smoke.
i eschewed porn and sex.
i bled, sweated, and cried.

what more do you people want from me?

i am back at work (ugh) and pmsing (ugh ugh). between that and the arizona-sized zit which is on my forehead (or possibly i am simply growing a horn, finally) i am sure i will have plenty to bitch and moan about.

it gets harder and harder to say what i mean without actually saying it though. anonymity is not as easy as you would think…

today it sunk in a little more. i am truly so unbelievably alone. you really have no idea.

you couldn’t possibly.

could be the end of the world as i know it? but i don’t feel fine…