Hm.

[dragonlady7]

[ETA: Posted about roller derby here. Good old Myspace.]

Looked back at a lot of quite old LJ entries today. (God, I've been doing this six years this July. That's an assload of LJ entries. If I am ever famous my damn biographers can have a motherfucking field day with all the crap I've written about myself on the Internet. In fact the main problem would be that everyone already knows every possible thing about me. Ha! A modern problem if ever there was one.)

One thing I've noticed is that even when I'm bitching about Z it's good. I bitch because other things are going wrong in my life and he doesn't help. Which is notable, because most of the time? He does. He doesn't really do anything about it, he just is, which is really enough to stave off the darkest stuff I'm capable of chucking myself into. I couldn't say why, really, not without sounding like an idiot anyway.

Isn't that horrible? That I've matured into the kind of woman who relies on a man like that? But it's not that he's a man, and it's not that I rely on him, it's just that he's there, and that's important, and I can't really explain it, and this sounds really sappy and stupid, and I have to stop now.

A teammate at roller derby practice tonight mentioned that she belonged to a writing group, and I said (ears pricking up), "writing group??" As I'm always looking for one. And she sort of hemmed and hawed. "It's, well, a poetry group," she said, "and, well," and she kind of looked shifty, "it's sort of, well, for women who, well, don't like men."

And I really didn't know what to say but some instinctive part of me leapt in and said, "NO! DO NOT attempt to sound cool and with-it by pointing out that you were, like, a lesbian for, like, more than two years, and stuff, because that DOES NOT MAKE YOU SOUND COOL and will only offend this person whose respect you would really prefer to have!"

And all I could do was think, "When did I get so lame?"

But then I realized I'd always been lame, so, nothing has really changed.
Also I never really didn't like men, I just sort of didn't know any, and also, you know, there's a whole lot more important things about a lover than what set of genitals that person possesses, and I protest that I still do not hold that as my primary selecting factor. (Want to know what my primary selecting factor is, or shall I leave that as a mystery for my biographers to solve when I'm famous?)

I do know that I still feel a little funny when I say the word "boyfriend". Is that the entire reason I recently have become enamored of the idea of getting married? No, I think "husband" would sound weird too. I need a better word but I think it's been thoroughly established in several venues I respect that such a word does not exist.

I might call him my Gentleman Friend, however, as it's more amusing to affect age-inappropriate manners of speech in that direction than the other.

Comments

[rootsnradicals.livejournal.com]

I think you don't actually "want" to get married so much as you want to be engaged, and engaged isn't nearly as fun to say as "betrothed". That's what you're looking for here - to be able to call Z your betrothed rather than boyfriend or husband. Just my 2 cents (since I like betrothed so much!!!)

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Bwahaha!
I've always liked the one Kurtz uses in Heart of Darkness-- his Intended-- and there's this great-horrible bit where the narrator has to go to break the news of how Kurtz died to the Intended, and he totally lies, and instead of telling her about The Horror, The Horror, he tells her Kurtz's last words were her name...


OK, maybe I don't actually want to really use the word Intended, but it's a thoroughly amusingly awful set of connotations, and I probably am just that much of an Eng-Lit dork that I'd think it was funny.

[rootsnradicals.livejournal.com]

Paul tells an amusing story about HoD. When he was in high school, it was a summer reading book. They always had quizzes in the first week of school on their summer reading, and one boy who hadn't read the books asked what was on the quiz. It was, of course, "what were Kurtz's last words". Someone told the boy that it was in fact, "The horror, the horror", but he heard it (and wrote it on his quiz) as "The whore, the whore".

At least, I found it amusing!

[scarlin.livejournal.com]

hahahahaha! Classic :)

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

That is pretty sweet.

Adds another layer to the whole thing...

[kkatowll.livejournal.com]

Eh, I know so many people here who hold fairly serious government position who have a girlfriend even though they're 40 or 50, so "boyfriend" doesn't sound too childist to me.

I, too, am always hesitant in those sorts of conversations. I mean, anything I say would sound like, "Oh, yeah, I did that too for awhile" rather than what I mean, which is, "I am totally with you...at least philosophically..." So instead I say nothing.
*sigh*

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

I know. It sounds so damn condescending. But neither of us were L.U.G.s!

I try to mention that I self-identify as "queer", as in, Not Entirely Heterosexual But Really Dislikes The Implications Of "Bi", but nobody pays it any mind when you're standing there with your boyfriend. It just sounds stupid and empty, like all the people who, back in the day, tried to oppress your soul while assuring you that "many of my best friends are gay! I'm not a bigot! I just think you should be expelled for having a girlfriend!" and I'm quoting.
Ugh, I do NOT want to sound like those kinds of assholes.
So I just keep my mouth shut.
And get pigeonholed as straight.
And honestly it doesn't matter because I never cared about categories.
But it kind of bugs me that people assume I'm Not Cool With It. Yes, I have a boyfriend, yes I like the cock, but dude, if I were not monogamous I would be all about the muff-diving, I just have a prior commitment so I have to regretfully refrain from pursuing it. That's different than what people are assuming and unlike many of the theoretically queer persuasion, I do have actual experience to back that up.

Ah well. Not like I'm going to get that tattooed on my ass, but there should be a succinct way of summing that up.

Oh! When my cousin visited in December I somehow mentioned that I'd been a practicing lesbian when I'd last visited him and his jaw actually dropped. I'd sort of figured it was immaterial but it blew his mind. Go figure. You never know what's going to astonish people. Seriously-- jaw actually dropped. I almost peed my pants laughing. Also I thought I'd told him at the time but I'd forgotten how damn paranoid I was at that point in my life. Like it matters, people!

[And yes, it crosses my mind how damn pretentious this comment probably reads if you don't know me and didn't know me at the time. I wish this whole issue weren't so hard to talk about, but it is because when one does talk about it, one sounds like a complete prat.]

[kkatowll.livejournal.com]

But the funny thing is, it was a really difficult life -- you sort of forget how often one's current relationship comes into casual conversation everywhere and how tricky it is if you can't assume that most people will be cool with the gender of the person you're dating. I found myself thinking recently, upon question, whether I would "next" date a woman (this assuming Trevor were to break up with me or something). I gave my stock answer: I find myself much more attracted to women than men, but I'd choose to date someone based on their personality and compatibility and a lot of factors that are unrelated to their gender. But then I caught myself thinking, if I had a choice between a man and a woman, wouldn't it be so much easier to just date the man?
*sigh*
Then I remind myself that the lesbians I know don't even THINK that, and then I feel ashamed.

[tehta.livejournal.com]

I just wanted to mention that even though I do not comment very often, or even always read what you write (I tend not to scroll back through my flist very far, after a break) their amusement value is generally high.

Also, I am so totally with you on the genitals thing. I am intellectually aware that they matter terribly to most people, but on a gut level I will never get it. I don't even get the popular bisexual claim of "I date men and women for different reasons."

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

I so totally have a crush on your mind now.
;D

[tehta.livejournal.com]

Well, of course genitals matter, in that their *existence* matters in a sexual relationship. Also their hygiene, I suppose. And mens' seem more straightforward. But I think to me their form matters less that, say, the form of the person's sense of humour. I'd probably date a tentacle monster from Jupiter if they 1) could keep up a sexy-funny conversation (or at least /mindspeech/) with me 2) showered off their alien slime.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

But slime could probably be way hot.
If it smelled ok.

I dunno, men's aren't that much more straightforward. I mean, they stick out so there's a lot more obvious visual feedback, and their orgasmic responses are a lot better-studied, but with minimal study women's become pretty easy to deal with.
Well, depends on the woman. You're probably right. Mostly.

I don't actually think that the form-factor of someone's genitals is as important as people make it out to be, though. The presence of genitals is important, yes. Genitals and physical attraction are absolutely necessary for a sexual relationship. But, without going too much into TMI, the things that turn me on most about a person are usually related more to their erogenous zones (ie, the top of the curve of the hip, which exists in males and females alike; the soft skin of the inner thigh, which is more variable in individuals than between sexes; the nape of the neck which is, again, more individual than gender-specific; the ears, ditto; the hands-- a man's hands are different from a woman's, but not in a way typically linked to secondary sex characteristics), and to the way they pay attention to me, and neither of those things are particularly linked to either gender.
But no, I'm not going to decide that this time around I'm going to, say, date a man because I want a man. I'm going to decide (inasmuch as decisions get made-- *eyeroll*-- not so much with the thinking, me) that I'm going to date this person, and if I want the things one usually associates with "a man," it's not like they don't make accessories for that. (And honestly I have pretty much the same emotional issues with men as with women, just usually from different angles. And nobody can tell me they determine which relationships to pursue because of which arguments they anticipate having. Really. "I want a man who's going to balk at commitment! Then I think I'll date a woman with passive-aggressive issues!")