Inappropriate

As I have mentioned here before as well as in Scattershots, I look significantly younger than I actually am. This has always been the case with me, and indeed for most of my family members. My mom honestly looks like she had me in high school or shortly after and my dad doesn't look like a guy who personally knew Moses. (In fact, my dad's youngest brother once punched him in the back at a baseball game because my dad, the oldest brother, had been carded when purchasing beer while his six-years-younger brother wasn't.) I'm getting on to thirty these days so I don't look quite as aggressively young as I once did, but I definitely don't look my age either. Depending on what I wear and how I fix my hair and makeup, some days I really don't look like I could be out of high school.

When I actually was young, I used to really hate being mistaken for someone three or four years younger, but the further from my teen years I get, the better I feel about looking as young as I do. It has certain advantages and disadvantages. People feel the need to explain things to me that they think were before my time when they were a staple of my childhood, like video rentals and floppy discs (incidentally, I remember real floppy discs--the five-inch ones with the cardboard cover that actually were floppy and flexible and to this day refer to the hard plastic 'floppies' as 'hard discs). Looking so fresh-faced and sweetly innocent is quite an attractive trait to most people so I never have any shortage of people with whom I can shamelessly flirt.

This is, again, a true story of something that happened some years ago. Some days I think I should write a memoir or something, except I would probably end up accused of making shit up like the guy who wrote 'A Million Little Pieces'.

One thing I use my youthful appearance for is to fend off pickup artists when I just don't really want to deal with them. You can't do this in bars, obviously, but you can do it pretty much anywhere else there are people making unwelcome, inappropriate, obnoxious sexual advances. The words 'I'm sixteen' work wonders to make a man suddenly lose interest. Like most women, I used to try and discourage these guys by saying I was in a relationship or a lesbian, but I find men of this particular breed aren't put off by such claims--after all, just because you're taken or not into guys doesn't mean he can't tempt you away from your mate or convert you to heterosexuality with a good deep dicking. No, in my experience the best way to discourage these assholes is to make them think that they could go to jail for sticking it in you. Regardless of your area's age of consent laws, most men over the age of twenty are extremely wary of pursuing any girl who is under the age of eighteen for fear of reverberating negative consequences. So for many years now, my primary method of saying 'fuck off!!' without actually using those exact words is to just say I'm sixteen. 90% of the time it works.

But this isn't a story about the 90% of the time when it works.

I was walking a dog one morning several years ago--it was summer and early morning, so all the weekday commuters had left for the day but none of the kids would be up for hours yet, meaning the neighbourhood was pretty well completely deserted. The only other person about was a gentlemen probably in his late 20s driving an advertising van for a lawn care/pest control company and hanging advertisements on doorknobs. He'd drive eight or ten houses down the road, get out of the van, leave his shit at the eight or ten houses, and then go back to the van and repeat the process again with the next eight or ten, so we were pretty much going the same speed on opposite sides of the road. He tried to chat me up and since I don't really feel like an actual human being that early in the morning, I didn't want to deal with it. So I didn't.

"Uhm, I'm sixteen," I told him.

"Oh, shiiii--! Sorry, I didn't know!"

And I thought that was the end of it, and he didn't try talking to me again. For about three minutes. Then he started back up, trying to chat me up and asking me whether I lived there and where my house was and where I went to school and what my name was--really asking a lot of personal questions that aren't really appropriate to ask a complete stranger.

When he teasingly asked, "What, you can't talk to me or anything? Come on, girl, where's the harm?", I began to get a little worried because of the sheer amount of confident comfort with which he was talking to someone he believed was an underage girl. The fact that he was still talking in the first place wasn't as worrisome as the fact that he was doing it so casually and with an evident amount of comfort. Clearly this was a man who felt right at home having a borderline-inappropriate conversation with a teenager, and that bothered me.

So I quick wrote down the number of his license plate on my hand.

I ducked into a friend's yard when he wasn't looking to hide from him until he left--then I went home and immediately got on my computer to look up the company website for their customer service number.

Now, I should explain something--at the time I definitely wasn't in any way underage. I was 21. People always seem to think that if it turns out later the person was lying about their age and turns out to be an undercover cop or someone like me trying to ditch a pickup artist, the actions are excusable because they weren't hitting on an underage kid at all. That's not how the law works. This man did not know me personally. He had no way of knowing anything about me that I didn't tell him, no way of knowing how old I really was. All he had to go on was what I said, and what I said was that I was sixteen years old. As far as he was aware, I was sixteen years old, full stop. This makes what he did potentially illegal--at the very least, it makes him skeevy. He had no reason to assume I was anything but sixteen years old. He persisted in talking to me in a personal manner, trying to learn where I lived or where I went to school.

Not. Freaking. Cool.

Anyway, I got the number for the company for which he worked. I expected I was just going to have to call and leave a message on a machine or something, but to my surprise a very perky customer service agent answered the phone to take my complaint. And, while I look extremely young, I actually have a rather 'mature' voice. I have a fairly deep voice, at least for a girl, and even sound so indistinguishable from my own mother that people have mistaken us for one another talking from one room to another in the house. So it was very easy for me to assume a new role--that of an upset mother.

I think the girl I talked to was named either Kelly or Jenny. I wish I remembered because she was awfully upset about the whole business--she genuinely seemed so distraught that I would really have liked a way to reach her again to tell her that there was never an underage child in any danger and she didn't have to panic.

Anyway. I adopted the worried but firm voice of a frightened and upset mother and explained to Kelly/Jenny that my sixteen-year-old daughter had been walking the dog that morning and encountered the driver of one of their company vans with an ABC-123 tag number. I described the driver to her, since I didn't get his name--I told Kelly/Jenny it was because my daughter had followed all the 'Don't Talk to Strangers' teaching and tried her best not to talk to a man she didn't know and was obviously trying to earn her trust. I emphasized that my 'daughter' had immediately and definitively told the man that she was sixteen years old and that his efforts to pick her up continued despite this until she hid in a friend's yard.

Kelly/Jenny was silent for a few minutes and I could hear her click-click-clacking away on her keyboard before she then began to apologize profusely on behalf of a company she answered phones for.

"Oh my gosh, ma'am, I am so sorry this happened to you! Is she okay? Is she scared? This is horrible, I don't know how to begin to apologize for what you and your child have been through today! I promise you, this report is being marked urgent and will be dealt with as soon as possible!"

I assured her my 'daughter' was a tough girl and we lived in an otherwise safe area, but that I felt I saw some red flags in the fact that the man had been so persistent and seemed not to have any qualms talking to an underage girl. Kelly/Jenny agreed. She offered to let me leave my name and number, but since I was being less than honest about the whole business I decided it was best if I just lodged the complain anonymously.

"Oh, I don't think so," I said. "I'm not really worried at all, but I still don't want to take any chances and risk some potential retaliatory backlash or something if he somehow finds through the complaint who we are."

"I understand completely. I apologize on behalf of [company]. I hope this incident hasn't soured your opinion of us."

I assured her it hadn't, that the actions of one minor employee didn't represent the habits of an entire business, and then we ended the call.

Because I couldn't reasonably leave contact info with the company, there was no way for me to get a follow-up of any kind. I couldn't call the company back and inquire about it, either, since no company in its right mind would share these kinds of complaints to anyone who couldn't prove they were directly involved. Kelly/Jenny's horror and guilt obviously don't represent the feelings of the company as a whole any more than the driver's did, but I this is the kind of thing a big name like that simply won't stand for in their ranks. If that man wasn't immediately fired from his job over the incident, he was most certainly severely reprimanded. Deep down, I kinda wish he was fired. His demeanor seriously rubbed me the wrong way.

Naturally, even if he was fired from the job that doesn't mean he learned his lesson (companies aren't required to give you any reasons for your termination, after all, so he might not even have been aware that a complaint had been lodged against him). And even if he is aware that his superiors knew what he'd done, that's no guarantee he was going to stop. Just that, if he's inclined to keep doing it, he'll be sneakier about it.

If there was someone after me, I hope she had the guts to speak up.

That's another perk of looking younger than I do--it means I am often faced with scenarios mostly associated with young people, treated like a teenager, but have the benefit of experience and the kind of 'not-standing-for-this-shit' attitude that comes with time. It means I have the ability to face a teenager's problem as an adult.

It means I know better.

More than that, it means I know other people should know better, too.

Unforgivable

I dislike children intensely. I can't stand spending time around them, I hate talking to them, nothing they do or the nonsense they spout amuses me in the slightest. Toddlers are the most obnoxious animals ever to develop from the primordial ooze--gnats are a close second, mostly because they can get up your nose and mouth and eyes and ears without your permission, but you're allowed to swat those and kill them. You can't do that to toddlers. You have to pretend you like them even when they are exhibiting behaviour you would not accept in a dog. And frankly most dogs I know are better trained and have nicer manners than any toddler I have ever come across.

Babies repulse me, school-age children annoy the piss out of me. They don't become tolerable until adolescence, at which time I start to think of them as actual people and like them a lot more because they're starting to resemble grownups more than noisy bald pink things with eyes that throw whatever is too big to fit in their disgusting drooling mouths.

I just really, really don't like children.

Having said that, I will unhesitatingly destroy anyone who abuses them. I just dislike children--I would never in my most infuriated moods think of hurting one. I am the first and angriest person who gets upset over stories of child abuse, mostly because I understand a little of what it's like and child abuse by and large represents someone to whom the welfare of a child or children has been entrusted completely violating that trust and being criminally cruel or neglectful. Sexual abuse in particular makes me spill over with rage because sexual assault of any kind against anybody of any age is one of the worst things you can do. To violate someone in such a personal, private way is repulsive in ways that defy even my attempts at describing it.

I might not like children myself, but I'll be damned if I stay silent in the face of abuse.

So it's against this backdrop that we go back in time a few years. I was twenty and in my last semester at school before I dropped out. I met a guy through mutual acquaintances called 'Tom'. Tom was a few years older than me (I believe 24 or 25 at the time?) and didn't go to my school. He lived in another part of Maryland. But he was kind of fun to talk to and was just in general a standard-issue nice, shy, geeky guy. (Mostly because, in my experience, geeks are some of the nicest guys--unlike jocks and popular guys, they don't take female attention for granted and are on their best behaviour. Mostly. Some I've known have turned out to be total skeevebuckets because they assume that because I had two X-chromosomes and was talking with them, I totally wanted their boy-parts in my girl-parts.) Since we lived hours away from each other and only saw each other I think once or twice after our initial meeting, mostly our friendship progressed over IMs and phone calls. There was something just ever so slightly 'off' about Tom but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. At the time I thought maybe he might have had some very slight, minor, easily-managed mental disability or illness--like maybe ADD or something from the lightest end of the autism spectrum--but nothing that really put me off at all. It was just something I noticed but didn't mind.

He and I kept trying to arrange a meeting in DC to go poke around the Smithsonian's many museums around the National Mall (the Natural History and American History Museums are full of the most impressive array of randomness and most of the AHM is dedicated to pop culture relics like movie props), but either he had to work or I did or I had an exam or class or something would come up and we'd have to cancel our plans last-minute. But it was pretty clear early on that Tom was into me, and since I'm a naturally extremely flirtatious person (and was just growing into that part of my personality around that time), I flirted back. Truth told, he was sort of on the cute side and I did like him, and wouldn't have been opposed to some casual dating, but something, again, seemed slightly 'off' and the answer was always infuriatingly juuuust out of my reach.

Now. This was about the time Facebook was usurping Myspace as the primary method of social networking for young adults--the main difference being that Myspace profiles were set up by a screen name of your choosing, and Facebook operated under your real name. I didn't have a FB at the time but Tom did. So I knew Tom's real first and last name. Abruptly about eight months or so after our friendship began, he dropped off the face of the earth. Our mutual acquaintances didn't really know where he was and the phone number I had was disconnected. So I got curious. And I never do this, I really don't care about what the internet has to say about people, but... I took his first and last name and the state we were living in (to narrow down the search) and plugged it into Google.

The first result was a page from the Maryland State Sex Offender Registry.

First let me say, up until recently the Sex Offender Registry was--and for the most part, remains--an imperfect thing. Ostensibly it's a good idea, if there is a person in the area convicted of a serious sex crime you want to fucking know about it so you don't, I dunno, let him (or her, women can do that shit as well) be your DD or your babysitter or give them a key to your place 'just in case'. But the SOR in most places makes very little distinction between the level of crime committed--in some states, such as New York where I currently live, there are various 'levels' of sex offender, but back then there were no 'levels'. You were equally a sex offender if you raped toddlers, and if you accidentally peed on a stranger's car after a night of heavy drinking. (For this reason I suspect they began, by this time, to put the charges and convictions levied against the various people inhabiting the Sex Offender Registry.) I was completely, totally, 100% aware of all of this at the time and I jumped to no hasty conclusions.

Except that the charges against him were 'Possession/Distribution of Child Pornography'.

I can forgive quite a lot. But this was heading straight for Shit I Cannot Get Past. Even so, again, the law makes no distinctions here: child porn is child porn if it features sexually suggestive pictures of any child under the age of eighteen. It could well be a misunderstanding, he could have had pictures of a girl sixteen or seventeen years old that he wasn't aware was underage. While a little on the weird side, that would have been understandable. Sometimes it's really hard to tell. I made no conclusions until I could speak to him again.

When I finally got back in touch with Tom a couple of weeks later, I confronted him directly with what I had learned. He admitted--quite candidly, actually, thinking about it--that he was indeed in trouble. I told him I wasn't angry, not yet (the SOR page indicated he'd been arrested/charged at the time he completely disappeared so it's not like this was something he was keeping secret from me), but I had some questions. In his favour, he did answer them.

He was in trouble for purchasing/downloading child pornography in video and still formats and passing the material on to other 'fans' as part of I guess a kiddie porn community or something. He wasn't in jail because he'd agreed to witness for the prosecution against other more dangerous members of the wider community--in particular he referenced one man that he must have known through his 'porn community' that was making pornographic material starring his own grandchildren. He mentioned this guy specifically as a way to emphasize to me that he wasn't really a bad guy, not when there were guys doing shit like that.

Tom also tried to stress to me that his 'collection' wasn't 'that bad'--his words, not mine--and that it wasn't like he was looking at posed pictures of infants or something. Again I was kind of holding out hope that this person I had grown to think of as a friend wasn't some kind of scary horrifying beast and maybe he'd just been into older teens. I was still at the time myself into older teens, sixteen and up, and I still think some are quite attractive even now--although I would never in a million years have any kind of sexual encounter with any, nor would I knowingly view pornographic material featuring anybody I couldn't assure was over eighteen--so I asked him if that's what the situation was about. No, he said, it wasn't.

I really had no idea what to think. I was shocked and appalled and confused. I didn't know what I wanted to do about our friendship and told him I needed a little time to think about it. Then he did something that came as a shock at the time.

He tried to defend himself.

He was getting therapy, he told me, and he was dealing with his issues. He never touched a real child and never participated in the manufacture of any of the material. He simply enjoyed collecting it. He was not a bad person. He hadn't done anything really aggressively wrong, even though I pointed out to him that, even if he never touched a child, the fact that he contributed to the demand for child pornography at all was still extraordinarily bad--the fact is that people would not be, say, abusing their grandchildren in the production of such material were there not a demand for it in the first place.

Again, he kept defending himself--telling me that all his friends had forgiven him and accepted his apologies (which were really nothing more than excuses) and tried to move on. He wasn't in jail, he reminded me--if he was truly dangerous, a bad person, would the police and the FBI have let him remain free? Tom really had extraordinary powers of self-delusion. Better even than mine. He honestly, genuinely seemed to think that he was somehow not the bad guy just because he never touched a child--overlooking the fact that what he'd done was clearly disturbing to me and obviously a crime enough to have gotten the FBI involved. (For the record, it's the FBI's jurisdiction to investigate cyber-crime like online identity theft and child exploitation by prostitution or pornographers because such crimes generally involve many, many perpetrators in many, many areas and any crime committed or carried over state lines becomes their jurisdiction.) What Tom had done was bad enough, but the fact that he was trying to rationalize what he'd done and turn me into the bad guy and himself into the victim was what seriously struck the killing blow to our friendship.

What was my problem, he wanted to know--why couldn't I just move past this? I was making a bigger deal out of it than it really was. As if he'd been caught shoplifting or running a red light or vandalizing billboards. He defended himself and villainized me for quite some time over the course of the day I pretty much sacrificed to try and sort this entire business out to my own satisfaction--it all went in circles and what it came down to was him just rewording his insistence that he wasn't that bad a guy and other people make porn and he just watched it and that I was making a big deal out of nothing. He even mentioned his therapist helping him not blame himself, which I don't to this day know how true it was--if it was true, I really hope he started seeing a different one and if the shrink was court-appointed as I suspected he or she was, I hope they lost that position.

The relationship's death knell came in the form of Tom--clearly under some kind of incredible, mind-bogglingly effective delusion of hopeful optimism--told me that he still wanted a chance with me. That he hoped this wouldn't stop me from wanting to go out with him.

I told him point-blank that I no longer felt comfortable with him. I wasn't afraid of him or worried he might harm me in some way, but that didn't make what he'd done somehow okay. I don't want to be friends with Neo Nazis, either, or Klansmen, even though as a white chick of Christian descent I would not be the target of either group's hate. I just cannot justify friendly discourse with people who do or say or think horrible, horrible things.

After that I never heard from Tom again. Interestingly, he refused to tell me just what age group his 'not so bad collection' of child porn featured. I was curious, again, because it's slightly, marginally defensible if he were attracted to older teens who might be physically close to adulthood. There's actually a separate term for this to distinguish it from pedophilia, which is a sexual attraction to young children who are still unmistakably and visibly still children--the term is 'ephebophilia' and refers to an attraction to, well, older teens. But Tom never told me and danced around the subject. I know it's hardly a case, but his evasiveness doesn't really do much to dispel the suspicion that his 'collection' featured children who were immediately apparent as children. Since he was grasping at any straws he could to defend himself, it seems unlikely he'd let a fact like that slip through his fingers. I have no proof, of course, but I think he was into very young children indeed.

It put me off of dating for a while and struck a bit of a blow to my already shitty self-esteem. I know realistically it was a silly thing to worry about, but I was very concerned with the fact that something about me, some trait or other I had, was appealing to a man who enjoyed child pornography. Obviously the fact that he was into it at all doesn't automatically mean that he was attracted to similar traits in me--though I always have appeared considerably younger than I really am and, at twenty, didn't look like I could be out of high school yet. I still don't look like I could be more than about eighteen or so.

This all happened some years ago. I remembered Tom's name, just because the whole business was something that you don't forget easily, and today out of nowhere and for no real reason other than my own curiosity, I went to the Maryland SOR page and looked him up. I was surprisingly, well, surprised to discover that his residence status showed him currently in prison. It doesn't say when he was arrested so I don't know whether his incarceration was due to those charges, new ones, or something else all together--maybe he violated his SOR obligations or something. I also noticed that the list of charges had changed. Instead of simply saying 'Possession/Distribution of Child Pornography', it also included 'Manufacture Of'. Again, I know no details so I can't say if this reflects a change in Maryland's child pornography laws, putting all three crimes under the same heading, or represents a separate charge. Either way, it sends chills up the neck.

I can't honestly say I'm sorry for Tom. Prison is notoriously hostile to people who commit crimes against children, particularly those who commit sexual crimes against children. Other prisoners in a maximum-security prison are so disgusted by these actions that such perpetrators are sometimes kept in solitary confinement as a way to protect them from being attacked or killed by other inmates.

I don't know, and will probably never learn, the extent to which Tom was involved in the seedy world of child pornography. But whatever he did, and however 'harmless' he may feel he is, he is still dangerous. Because he can rationalize it. In his mind, he can turn it into a defensible act. Anybody who can delude themselves into believing themselves to be the victims when they're caught contributing to the abuse of children...

...is dangerous.

UNNECESSARY STRESS

I'm not good at coping with problems. My usual plan of action is just to ignore it until it goes away by itself, which isn't really helpful or effective in any way and usually just makes the situation worse. I also have no intermediate moods. Either I'm okay, or I'm melting the fuck down. There is very little between the two. Most of the time I manage to stay calm when I'm stressed out but when that fails, I degenerate more or less immediately into a complete psychological clusterfuck--consequently, I have pretty much the same level of frustrated anxiety and emotional tumult whether a problem is a minor one or a really serious one. Getting stuck at red lights when I'm late for work causes me to go utterly apeshit in the same way losing $500 to a dummy card-reader that stole my checking account information does.

Obviously this presents some problems. It means, chiefly, that I completely lose control of myself from trivial problems and it doesn't matter where I am or what I'm supposed to be doing at the time. I can usually sense one of these episodes coming on and can forestall it or curtail it completely by removing myself from the situation, but sometimes I can't do that.

Like today at work.

Old Navy likes to pretend to be all hip and fun and is known for terrible puns and cheesy alliterations in their ad campaigns. Sometimes we have to wear stupid t-shirts supplied by the company but since I've worked there it hasn't been any worse than that. The most aggressively stressful time I've had there was during the weeks leading up to Giftmas, during which the store was open until midnight and we had to spend an hour after closing up putting everything to rights again after seemingly every single solitary person on the eastern seaboard came in and messed shit up. Those weeks I wasn't getting home until 1.30 or two in the morning. But even that I could deal with.

I could not deal with the DJ.

There's a big jeans sale going on right now but not any more than any other sale they've done, but for some reason this one was a Big Fucking Deal because they thought it would be awesome and fun to hire a fucking DJ to play music in the front of the store. Don't ask me why, it makes no sense to me and frankly it made me completely lose my shit.

Now, I can deal with background noise. I'm good at filtering out noise I don't want to hear. I don't have a problem with the store's normal background soundtrack playing. But the DJ was playing music I hated at such a high volume with such enhanced bass that I'm pretty sure it rearranged most of my internal organs. I hate this. I hate loud music. I seriously fucking hate it. Mostly I hate it because I see it as extremely rude--not everyone likes it, and a lot of people are like me and really intensely dislike it, and it's a real asshole move to force other people to endure something that drives them to violent homicidal urges.

There wasn't a corner of the store safe from the din and it was played so loudly, and right near all the tills, that you had to shout to have a conversation with someone two feet away. Customers didn't complain to the management but expressed annoyance with it and I felt the need to apologize even though it wasn't anything to do with me--I just felt so incredibly embarrassed at the actions of an ostensibly sensible business. It just... wasn't fun. It wasn't cute. It wasn't hip. It was annoying, uncomfortable, extremely disruptive, and made me so frustrated that I was trapped in an enclosed space with it that I started getting physically achy. I don't know that this happens to other people but when I get really intense negative emotions, after a certain level there's no more discomfort my brain can produce psychologically or emotionally, so it moves on to making me physically in pain.

Also important here is that I am fairly profoundly deaf. I haven't passed a hearing test in years. I suffered constant ear infections as a kid that scarred my eardrums and damaged my hearing. I think I'm about as deaf as you legally can be without being required to have a hearing aid. On a normal day I still miss about a third of everything said around me, which is embarrassing and frustrating at the same time. When I'm listening to two things at once--say, someone is talking while the TV is on or I'm trying to listen to two conversations at the same time--my hearing loss gets worse. I only hear half of anything and I don't hear it very well. I hate it so much but there really isn't much I can do about it. I just try and make sure I don't have my sense of hearing multitasking often.

Today's DJ and his horrible, awful loud music rendered me essentially completely deaf. I couldn't hear myself think or panic or pick out a damn word anyone said to me that was spoken in anything less than a very loud yell. I couldn't hear the phone ring or my walkie-talkie.

Being trapped in an uncomfortable environment full of noise I hated and couldn't filter out that was aggravating a disability that I'm embarrassed to have and struggle to cope with anyway kind of set me on a straight track to a total emotional meltdown.

I could. Not. Stand it.

Worse still, for a while it looked like all the employees were going to be forced to get up and fucking dance or something. They were talking about the 'Macarena', which I had to do (along with the 'Electric Slide') about a zillion times a year every year in gym class until I could finally stop fucking taking gym in tenth grade. I hate dancing, mostly because I can't do it and when I can't do something being forced to attempt it is abjectly humiliating. And humiliation is something I fear worse than death. I would seriously rather be dead than embarrassed and that is absolutely not an exaggeration. So, yeah, I thought we might have to dance and I was prepared to be forced to leave my job over it because there was no way in hell I was going to do that.

(It bears mentioning that a digital camera was going to be involved and the pictures/videos were going on Facebook. Fuck no, don't even...)

Fortunately, there was no dancing, but I was sneered and scoffed at for being a killjoy because I was so completely miserable the entire time the DJ was there. I was on the verge of tears anyway and could barely contain myself while my withered little grey husk of a brain began to deflate on me like a punctured balloon. After about two hours of this I was getting ready to go to my manager and tell her that either the DJ was going to have to go home or I was going home because I couldn't work with all that horrible din and I was getting dangerously close to cracking the fuck up.

But he finally left a little after 4pm.

Blessed silence descended.

Everyone else who is working tomorrow is super happy about the DJ being back. I seem to be the only person alive who doesn't see this as anything but obnoxious.

Movie Magic

Sometimes I will amuse myself looking for very old silent movies available online. I do this partly out of an interest in the early days of cinema and how movies have changed in their century and some of dominance in Western culture, and partly because really early movies have mostly outlived their copyrights by now and are legally public domain and I won't get into any trouble for downloading or viewing them online without paying. I'm unreasonably fucking paranoid when it comes to this shit--statistically speaking, getting into any real legitimate trouble over my internet activities is a pretty remote chance, but I just know I'd be the one person who actually gets in shitton of trouble over illegal downloading. That's how my luck works--I'm really good at defying all the odds in the worst possible way. If there is even the slightest chance that something bizarre will go wrong, then it will fucking go wrong for me.


Anyway. Silent movies. I watch them. But I don't watch them often, and it's not for the reason you might think. I don't have any trouble reading the intertitles (the dialogue/descriptive writing on the screen that predated synchronized dialogue and sound) or anything. I don't find them strange, or hard to relate to because they were filmed in a time and place far  removed from my own experiences. I don't even have anything bad to say about what passed for 'high-tech special effects' in the early twentieth century since, considering all the massive limitations of technology in those days, they actually did astonishingly well.


It's none of that.


It's because silent movies are unreasonably fucking creepy.


Most silent movies have an accompanying score so they're not completely 'silent', but there is no sound from any actions, dialogue, or background activity and watching the characters move their lips and go about their business without making a single sound is incredibly unnerving. Because you expect these things to make a sound and they don't. It's eerie.

Also eerie is the exaggerated facial expressions, body language, and makeup necessary in early movies. Cameras didn't have very good resolution and weren't particularly good at capturing a lot of moving details (still photos were better quality due to being, well, still) so of necessity the actors had to wear a great deal of very bold, exaggerated makeup in order to appear well on camera--artificial enhanced contrast where film failed. The effect works but it also manages to be very creepy. Eyes were ringed with an emo-kid level of black eyeliner, lips were painted with what appears to be road tar, and everybody's face was caked in thick makeup that's noticeably a different colour from the rest of their bodies.

And everyone had their eyes opened really, really wide because fuck if I know. But it doesn't help the whole creepiness factor at all.

I just tried to sit through the 1927 German epic 'Metropolis' with English intertitles (that's a perk of silent film--no dubbing necessary, just translate the freaking intertitles) and couldn't get through it. I was just way too freaked out. Silent films are scary, and early sci-fi movies could be a little insane just because of the madness they tried to pull off and pass off to an audience as 'science fiction'. 'Metropolis' happens to be both of these and also features the first robot in film history. It's a bit telling that the robot is female and invented by a crazy mad scientist trying to re-create the lover who left him some thirty years before.

The robot fucking scares me.

But a lot of shit scares me so maybe I'm not a really great gauge of this sort of thing.

WHY GOD WHY??

Photos exist of my mother's senior prom--four girls, four dates, and eight getups preserved for posterity that I'm pretty sure today count as flagrant violations of the Geneva Convention.

My mom's dress didn't look too bad considering it was the 1970s, but since it was the 1970s the colour peach was very much in vogue so her dress was a peach chiffon--which wouldn't be as bad as it actually was if my mother was not of Italian descent and therefore very olive-skinned. The same cannot be said for her date standing behind her, who is sporting--and take notes because this is so perfectly 70s it should be a fucking stock photo--a powder-blue tuxedo with brown trim, an oversize bow-tie, and ruffled cravat. And horn-rimmed Buddy Holly glasses (this was before they were 'ironic' and cool and to be perfectly honest I don't think they're cool now and weren't even cool on Buddy Holly) and a mop-top hairdo that nicely showcased his early case of male-pattern baldness. He was also Irish and head to toe freckles which were all brought out in stunning detail by the baby blue tuxedo.

Another girl at the table with my mom and her date is wearing a light blue dress with long sheer sleeves and a big floppy hat. Another one of the guys was wearing a mint green tux with white trim.

This photo is ridiculous to the point of being a self-parody. And here's the thing: they are all immortalized in this photo looking like they feel like a zillion bucks. They thought they were STYLIN' and by the standards of the 70s they totally were.

Now is a good time to bring up that there was a girl in my year at high school known colloquially as 'Barbie' because she was blonde and wore pink all the time. Naturally her prom dress was pink. She also managed to bag a date willing to wear--and able to FIND--a baby pink tuxedo. This was unbelievably stupid back then, I can't imagine what this guy thinks of what he wore years down the line. I imagine he's entered the Federal Witness Protection program.

All this comes down to is a belief on my part that prom photos and homecoming photos exist for no other reason than to make you ashamed and embarrassed of how you used to dress. If you ever want to kill a couple of hours laughing, go look up 80s and 90s prom photos. It'd be time well spent.

There are no pictures that exist of my prom, mostly because I didn't even want to go at all and my mom MADE ME go. I hated it and got in trouble for hating it. (Don't ask me how that works because I have no fucking idea.) I was also at the tail end of my 'NO GIRLY SHIT' phase so I was awkwardly partially celebrating the fact that I was a girl and could wear girl clothes, and violently opposed to all things feminine. It was not a good look. It still isn't.

But hey, if pictures surface there's always Witness Protection.

Status Quo

One of the rather less well-known facts about having a shitty upbringing is that you get so used to being treated poorly that you have no fucking idea how to deal with people who don't. It's like a regular old-fashioned culture shock, like the one I had today about people celebrating Ash Wednesday by smearing schmutz on their faces. (Greatest comic ever written about this phenom: Sex, Drugs and June Cleaver. Even my Catholic mother likes this one.) Simply put, when you get used to being treated a certain way, anything else seems completely alien and even when the way you were treated is really crappy and the way someone is treating you is normal or quite nice, you suffer a complete system failure because WHAT IS THIS MADNESS.

I got used to being treated really shittily. You know how, if you get angry with some people, they put their arms up in a 'DON'T HIT ME!!' pose? That's me. I'm so reflexively expectant of violent negative backlash that it's a reflex to guard against it. I tended to get blamed so much for shit I didn't do that I apologize now for everything--and I mean everything--that goes wrong, and got used to being forgotten in favour of everyone else on holidays. (Nobody remembered my birthday--including my parents--for about ten years. It doesn't even say my real one on my driver's license. It says August 13th because it happens to be National Lefty Day and close to my actual birthday.) If I didn't absolutely need something for my continued survival, I was made to feel selfish and greedy if I asked for anything. I really have no fucking idea how to accept gifts. My knee-jerk reaction to someone wanting to be generous is to go, "PLEASE DON'T!" and do everything in my power to talk them out of it.

I mention this because over the weekend I had a two-day nonstop argument with the boything over whether or not to buy me a kilt.

Now, I'm a bit odd for a girl because I love, LOVE kilts and wear them all the time. Technically it's crossdressing and I am quite proud that I have found a way to crossdress and still wear a skirt. Part of the reason is that I adore all things tartan. I have no particular affinity for 'family' tartans (which are, incidentally, a nineteenth-century invention to aid tourism in Scotland, a place otherwise completely lacking in tourist appeal unless you like rain and sheep), I just love plaid in general. Especially unusual colours, like purple. Anyway, I got a kilt ages ago and I wear it (sometimes even with a sporran--yes I am odd) but the site where I bought it recently introduced a line of royal purple tartans and make them in shorter miniskirt lengths. I don't like shoing off my legs but I wanted a mini kilt because a) it's purple, b) I want one, and c) it's shorter and harder to mistake for being a school uniform kilt. The one I have is knee-length and thus looks like it complies with strict private school dress codes, which, coupled with the fact that I look like I'm about sixteen, leads people to assume I'm much younger than I really am and treat me accordingly. I'm closer to thirty than I am to high school. Being explained to very slowly what a VHS tape is is kind of offensive. I was renting VHS tapes when VCRs were still the size of cars.

I mentioned this to Max, who finally got his workman's comp and backpay sorted out (he's out of work over two and a half years now), and he immediately wanted to get me one. He said he'd be on the lookout for ages for a kilt because he knows it's something I'll like. He actually begged to let him get it for me.

We argued for two days because I thought it was too expensive a gift.

On the one hand, my reality is tragically warped against my own favour.

On the other, it's kinda nice that this is the only thing we have to argue over.

Cheese and Quackers

I just had a bit of a moan over in Scattershots about the goddamn fucking duckface plague. You know what duckface is, right? It's that lips-out-smelling-my-own-upper-lip-pseudo-sexy-kissy-face-pout-FAIL face girls between the ages of fetus and DEAD are sporting all over the fucking internet in the finest quality photos an iPhone can offer.

I hate the fucking duckface.

I found my young teenage cousin's Facebook page completely by accident the other day. I wasn't looking for it because I make a strict policy AGAINST adding family members on Facebook. (I don't like dealing with them in the real world, I don't want to deal with their nonstop streams of status updates. Especially considering my family members are the kinds of people who overshare in real life--I don't even want to THINK about the level of personal detail that ends up on their freaking Facebook walls.) Now, I am the oldest cousin on every branch of my family by a considerable margin so with just one exception (my cousin David who lives in the Midwest and is only four years younger than I am) I have very clear memories of all of my cousins as babies. I understand they're growing up and they aren't going to be babies any longer--after all, I demand that recognition from the adults around me so that would make me a complete fucking hypocrite--but it's very jarring to see duckface bikini photos of someone you used to read bedtime stories to on their Snow White sheets.

Look, the duckface looks shitty on everyone. I get it, you want to look like Angelina Jolie and her sausage lips. You want to look like you have that fabulous chiselled jaw. You want to look like you have cheekbones you could put books on. You want a pout that will fucking stop TRAFFIC.

But face it, girls. You don't look like Angelina and you need only look as far as the tragic victims of collagen injections to see what happens when you go too far extreme in trying to become something you quite patently are not. You want pouty lips because pouty lips are sexy. But you aren't built for pouty lips. Not everyone is. I'm not. I've been modelling off and on since high school and I am quite proud to say I have never once appeared on camera with a duckface. I don't have very big lips. My mouth is not full. I'm pretty average in the lip department. I didn't have discernible cheekbones until the last year when I lost forty pounds through a combination of leaving my mom's house and not eating regular meals because I'm skint ass broke.

You wanna look nice in your Facebook photo?

Do what I do.

Make the best of what you have.

I don't have cheekbones. I don't have nice legs. I have a belly pudge that allows me to comfortably pass for being pregnant if I'm feeling lazy and want to take advantage of the not-legally-enforceable 'Stork Parking' spaces outside certain businesses. I do not have a Tyra Banks jawline or Katy Perry's cheekbones. Kiera Knightly and Angelina's luscious pouts are as unattainable to me as are their skinny thighs and their heights.

But I look damn good in photos.

Because, dammit, I make the best of what I have.

Instead of trying to make my lips look like sausages, I just make my eyes go big. I have fairly large eyes and they're a striking colour. And I have long eyelashes as well. Add that together and this:

Is what you can make of what you've got.

A Failure to Communicate

By now it should be about as obvious as an elephant in your bathtub, but I fucking love words. I have a fairly larger-than-average vocabulary--more than the average person's but perhaps not quite as mind-bogglingly vast as Shakespeare's--and words are probably the most important feature of my life. I'll even go as far as to say that spoken language ranks up with mankind's most important developments. Without language and its ability to communicate complex ideas in a way that makes them accessible and understandable to anyone who hears them, human beings would never have been able to take part in the large and cooperative endeavours that basically lay the groundwork for what we call 'civilization'. You are never going to form a complex and sustainable society or a society of any kind at all if everybody involved can't effectively share ideas with one another. You can't do an activity as simple as bringing down large game without having a way of telling the other members of your hunting party, "Okay, you guys chase the wildebeest herd and cut off the slow one, then herd it over the edge of this ravine and I'll wait at the bottom with a club to bash its head in."

So, yeah, I freaking love language. I love its limitless possibilities, what it has the power to do. It can evoke any emotion, inspire any kind of thoughts, entertain, teach lessons, and provide guidelines for every conceivable circumstance. I love being able to use language as I do. I love its flexibility--knowing ten words for one thing or one word for ten things.

Language is my bosom buddy.

And I think I know when and why my love of words began.

While I have a very clear memory of this event, I don't actually remember when it happened or how old I was at the time. Suffice to say it happened after I was a toddler but I was absolutely definitely no more than five or six years old--probably closer to five. It was a flash of realization for me, the moment in which I realized for the first time just how crucial words are, after which time I was determined to learn all the ones I could.

I remember it was a dinner occasion, probably at a restaurant, and for some unknown reason my parents decided it would be okay for me to have a cup of tea. (My parents were kind of weird about letting me have caffeine. They didn't want me to have it at all and I was actually completely forbidden to drink soda except at restaurants until I was about twelve or thirteen years old.) For some reason their momentary lapse in judgment also compelled them to let me decide how much sugar I wanted in it. I emptied a sugar packet into the cup and stirred it and was dismayed to look into the cup to see there were still granules of sugar floating around in it.

Since I'm pretty sure this happened while we were living in England, it makes sense that I'd at least be aware that sugar in tea is supposed to dissolve and not be drunk as whole grains of sugar. But the sugar wasn't dissolving and I didn't know why and because I came out of the fucking womb with complete and total neurosis, this bothered me.

My parents noticed I was somehow frustrated with my tea and asked me what was wrong, at which time I tried to explain that the sugar wasn't dissolving and it was supposed to and I didn't want to drink defective tea. But being five years old, I didn't know the word 'dissolve' and so had to utilize my existing vocabulary to communicate this problem to my parents.

And I couldn't do it.

I remember exactly what I told them to try and get my point across--I told them the sugar wasn't 'going in' or 'going away', which they interpreted as me being reluctant to drink the tea because it had too much sugar in it. Or that I'd spilled the sugar outside the cup. They didn't know what I meant when I was frustratedly telling them the sugar wasn't going into the tea and it was supposed to and it was driving me bonkers that it wasn't.

Mostly I remember the sheer, tear-inducing frustration that crept into my stomach at the fact that I did not possess the necessary skills required to make my parents understand what it was I was trying to say. I was trying to explain something I didn't know a word for with words I did know but that couldn't accurately describe what my problem was. Even now, as an adult, I have no idea how I would describe sugar dissolving without actually using the word 'dissolving'.

I don't remember how the matter was sorted out and I'm pretty certain I didn't learn the word 'dissolve' that day. I'm not sure my parents ever really understood what I was trying to tell them, a fact that bothered me because I didn't like this feeling of helplessness, that I couldn't make myself understood.

From that day on I've devoured words like a crazy cat lady on an episode of 'Hoarders'. I want words for everything. I want everything to be called something. When I find something that has no name and I feel needs one, I make one up. I think we take it for granted that we can get our ideas across to others in a satisfactory manner. I've never talked to anyone else about this particular memory, but I'm not sure many people have had--or at least remember having--an experience in which they were rendered helpless to explain something by not knowing the proper words to describe it. I do remember, and I never wanted to feel like that again.

So I decided to start learning the names and words for everything.

And I did.

And I still am.

Treasured

I'll kick off tonight with a story about something that happened in my family that ISN'T completely fucked up. It's kind of interesting, I guess? But mostly just a bit weird because I really don't think anyone else does this except for a few very specific kinds of people. It's just something my parents decided to do and it became a fixture in our house and it occurs to me thinking about it that it's just one of those details I actually have to explain.

Unless you read a lot about European nobility--or gemology--you're probably not aware of this particular habit among the upper classes and royalty and other sorts of people whose heirlooms include sparkly, colourful hunks of translucent minerals set in precious metal. You've probably heard of the famous 'Hope Diamond', right? (Which is, incidentally, very disappointing and quite boring--if you're going to hang out in the 'minerals' section of the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, go down the hall and take a look at the room full of all the meteorites that have fallen into people's houses. Yes this room exists!! And there are pictures.) Well, the aristocracy would name the largest and most prized of their ancestral bling. Queen Victoria had the Koo-i-Nor diamond, Marie Antoinette had the French Blue (which some people believe may have been the Hope Diamond, before it was cut down), and the Empress of Austria-Hungary had the Star Sapphire pendant. Even early silent film star Mary Pickford had an heirloom gem with a name, in her case a giant sapphire called the Star of Bombay.

If you have a big enough gemstone, you name that fucker.


But most people don't have gemstones this big, or if they do they tend not to even be aware that a tradition exists of giving a name to your jewellery. (Also I think now some of the novelty has been lost when it comes to large gemstones--they used to be noteworthy because they were so rare, gems of a sufficient size that they could be cut and still be enormous. We have better synthetic materials and better techniques for cutting so these days a gigantic diamond is infinitely more likely to be a big ol' fake 'bling' than it is an actual hunk of carbon crystal.) But my parents not only own a gem big enough to name, they actually named it. And not as a joke, either. They actually seriously genuinely call it this in casual conversation.


As I've mentioned before, my dad worked for international aerospace companies as a software engineer and programmer and his work would often require him to spend months at a time in other countries. One of the common assignments was in Alice Springs, Australia. Alice Springs is absolutely the most remote place on the entire planet. Until the 1970s the only contact it had with the outside world was a weekly supply train that came from Adelaide and other than that it was surrounded on all sides by thousands and thousands of miles of desert. It isn't like that anymore now. It has an airstrip and a thriving tourism business based on two things: first, Alice Springs is literally smack in the middle of nowhere; second, it's near Uluru (formerly Ayers Rock). Alice Springs also rakes in obscene amounts of money based on the fact that there are extremely productive mines in the area yielding opals and topaz. They're so easy to find that Alice Springs is one of the few places where such gems can be purchased for insanely small prices. My dad was always really good about bringing stuff back from his trips and unset gems were among them.


My mom especially liked this because her birthstone happens to be a topaz. She prefers the standard golden-orange topaz, but Alice Springs is actually one of the few places in the world where naturally occurring blue topaz is mined and she wanted a blue topaz from there. So on his second (or maybe third) trip, my dad indeed did buy her a blue topaz.


A fucking enormous blue topaz.


Unless you're a rapper or an ostentatious movie star or a member of a current reigning family somewhere, you don't own gems this big. It's not big enough to cause back problems from wearing it, but it's big enough that most people immediately think it's a fake because nobody seriously owns genuine gemstones that size. How big is it?


It's about the size of a very plump almond. And that's cut to pretty sparkly facets. It's twelve carats in weight. (To put it in perspective, the Hope Diamond is slightly over 45.5.) My dad bought it raw and brought it back to the States so my mom could pick out whatever settings she wanted for it. And she actually wears this thing, too--not as a casual thing, but an event needn't be more prestigious than a friend's dinner party for her to break out that bad boy and show it off.


I don't actually really know when they named the topaz, but at some point they did and have referred to it by this name ever since. It's quite a pretty name, to be honest, and sounds much more regal and important than it actually is. It isn't some treasure heirloom from a lost monarchy or ruling dynasty. It has never belonged to anyone more interesting than an overweight middle-aged American schoolteacher.


But the name they gave it makes it somehow more impressive than a massive gemstone is on its own.


It's called 'The Star of Alice'.


Pretty neato, huh??


It's just another one of those things that occasionally strikes me as being extremely strange. I wouldn't be able to refer to this thing as the 'Star of Alice' without having to explain things as I did here. Nobody else does it.


Just my parents, I guess.

if you keep feeding it like that, it'll never leave

All right, people, you know what we seriously need to start doing now?

We need to stop paying attention to our current crop of television attention whores.

Admittedly I don't know what the situation is overseas or even in Canada because I follow their 'reality' television programs even less than American ones and there is no circumstance, including gunpoint, under which I could be persuaded to give a fuck about American reality shows. (Also, I seriously fucking hate 'reality' shows. They're not reality. They're completely motherfucking insane. The only reason people keep making them is because they save a massive amount of money not having to hire screenwriters and rent rehearsal space.) So, yeah, we just need to stop paying attention to these lunatics so they'll go away and allow the nation's collective IQ to recover from the total culturally pervasive infusion of stupid that's been going on for the last ten or fifteen years. Can we do that? Please?

People complain about 'Jersey Shore's' Snooki or whatever the fuck she calls herself. By the way, Snooki? If your nickname is something most people would probably bestow upon a very stupid fluffy purse-dog? That is a nickname that has been given to you with pure malicious intent. You know what my nickname was in my parent's house? 'Schmoopie'. I'm probably unusually lucky in my ability to recognize this name as an unflattering and stupid nickname that would be better suited to a really dumb dog--in large part because it also happens to be what my mom calls her dog. I lived in the same house as that dog for ten fucking years and she called us the same thing. Of course my mom also couldn't reliably remember what my name actually was and she would often have to cycle through every female name in her mental hard drive--her sisters, her nieces, the dog, her co-workers--until she finally called out the right one. This could take some time. As far as I know she's still standing at the bottom of the stairs to this day calling out names in hopes of remembering what mine is. Bonus fucked up points: my mother only has one daughter and it's me.

Anyway. Snooki is an attention whore. So is Paris Hilton. So is pretty much everyone who got that first snort of the narcotic substance that is national notoriety. And now that they've had that first hit, my god, they're addicted as fuck and never going to stop until they finally snort themselves to death. I am seriously waiting anxiously for when the day finally comes that a 'reality star' actually manages to fucking die while the cameras are rolling. It's only a matter of time. Even I would watch that fucking show.

But seriously. They only do it because we give them attention and they just want the attention--regardless whether it's good or bad or ugly. You think those vapid dipfucks care that the only reason people watch them is because they're laughing and waiting to see what madness happens next? Of fucking course not! And why should they? They're laughing all the way to the bank as their shows get renewed year after year and spinoffs are spawned and book deals and product endorsements follow and....

It just needs to stop.


You know whose example we need to follow here?

Nadia Suleman.

Remember her? Octopussy? The dumbshit who had octouplets a few years ago to add to her pre-existing brood of sextuplets, giving her fourteen children and no income and nowhere to live?

Yeah. That nut.

Know what she's doing now?

Me neither! Because after it became clear that she had this massive brood as some kind of fucking career move with the expectation of getting donations and paid interviews and her own TV show and all this shit that we as a culture are apt to give to the attention whores who manage to stand out in a nation of attention whores, we stopped giving a fuck. We stopped paying attention to her.

And now she's up shit creek without a paddle and last I heard she was recording 'adult baby' porn to pay the bills. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with fetish vids or any aspect of the well-regulated and legal parts of the adult industry (the shit where it's all safe and no one is being pimped out), just that you just know this was not what Octopussy had in mind when she crapped all those brats out at once.


When Nadia was at the height of her 'fame' three years ago, I remember wishing earnestly for the worst possible thing I could think of to happen to her: that eventually she would fade into obscurity and nobody would remember who she was or what she did or give half a rat's testicle about her. I cannot put into words just how much joy fills my cold, shrivelled little reptilian heart that this came true. Her plan didn't work, and now she can't attention whore for money. The only people I feel sorry for are her kids.

Why can we not learn from this? Seriously. If we all just stop giving a fuck they will go away. Once 'reality' TV stops being popular and 'Attention Whoring' is no longer a legitimate vocation, nobody will want to make a show and even if they did no one would want to be on it.

Come on, please? Pretty please?

Just... stop feeding them. They'll only just keep coming back.

Mono, Poly, and Me

Before I say anything at all I have to start right away with a tangent because this is a case of me totally failing for the majority of my life to notice something really obvious. I've understood and used the word 'monopoly' under its original definition since I was maybe eleven or twelve years old. As in the JP Morgan, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller sense, not as a board game that brings out the worst in people and makes it totally fun to screw everyone you know and love out of enormous amounts of money until they flip the board over and throw soft furnishings at you. I know exactly what it means, but it literally took me until just now, when I wrote that title up there, to realize that the word is from 'mono', for 'one', and 'poly', for 'many'. Of fucking course it is, why did that never occur to me until now?? A monopoly is when one company or sometimes just one specific person has control over all (or nearly all) of a particular commodity. This allows them to do whatever the fuck they want and make the prices of these goods and resources whatever they want since there isn't any competition to compel them to take anyone else into consideration. (Which is how John D Rockefeller could end up personally having 10% of all American circulated money in his name--he was so fucking rich he was himself, one guy, a tenth of the US economy. That's an insane amount of wealth.)

I feel sufficiently silly for having not realized this. Silly enough that I went ahead and made a meme out of it. Enjoy.

Okay. That's out of the way.

I was a late bloomer in a lot of ways--one of the last girls in my year to start growing breasts, didn't get my period until I was a teenager, and psychosexually took much longer to mature. And I'm not completely convinced I matured all the way, either, since there are still days when I'm pretty well convinced that boys are another species and also might potentially have cooties. So it wasn't until I was much older, a time at which most people have this knowledge and have for some time, that I really started to figure out where my sexuality was pointed and what I wanted out of it. I suspected I was something besides completely vanilla-white-bread heterosexual when I was about fourteen and even took three years of art classes in large part because I had a huge crush on the woman who taught it. (And when she found me on Facebook many years later and we got into an amiable chat over the message system about what we'd been up to, I had to really make a huge effort to stop myself from asking if she wanted to go out for drinks. I knew she was young but I didn't realize just how young she was until Facebook--she was only 28 when I graduated, making her only eleven years older than I am and to be honest I don't find that an unbridgable or inappropriate age gap.) But I didn't even privately identify as bisexual until I was a senior in high school and a few more years before I actually began openly identifying as such.

Thanks to the wondrous wide community that makes up the world wide web, I've learned that there's no actual reason to restrict or limit your preferences when your natural inclination doesn't always comply with whatever labels you've decided on applying. So my self-identification has changed quite a lot and I began to factor in my love of genderbending and androgyny and the fact that I have never been at all fussed when I find someone insatiably attractive without being able to confidently guess what kind of plumbing they might have. The word that most closely fits with what I know of myself right now is 'pansexuality', since I don't really have a strong preference one way or another and generally I just like what I like. Some identify as male and some identify as female, some match their genitals and others don't, and a few don't identify as either or switch back and forth. I'm totally cool with this, because in the end I like people, not body parts. (Well, body parts are nice too. Just not the whole picture.)

I'm fairly inexperienced sexually and with relationships. I never dated, mostly because no one was interested and because I tend to inadvertently give off an aura of 'KEEP THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME' when I'm not being bubbly and personable. I've fooled around with people before, I've had crushes, I've been in love, but as embarrassing as this is to admit, Max is my first real boyfriend. Despite this, before we got together I'd been coming to the realization that I am possibly not completely inclined to be monogamous. I like the thought of having more than one partner in a relationship. I like the idea of having more than one partner in bed. I like the idea of 'being with' someone and still sexually exploring other people. Sex can be a very emotional experience, but it doesn't have to be one every time, and that's something it took me years to figure out--and something that a good many people never consider.

So, I have polyamorous tendencies.

But my relationship is entirely monogamous.

Let me break briefly into another tangent. I do not make a secret of anything that defines me. Despite the depression, the anxiety, the poor self-esteem, the doubt, and constant self-loathing, I am for the most part quite comfortable in my own skin. I've spent most of my life being sorry for things that weren't my fault, and feeling ashamed of things that were neither inherently wrong nor under my control. I might be extraordinarily self-conscious of things I say and do, but I refuse to ever again apologize or feel guilty about the beliefs and inclinations that define me as a person. So I never pretend to be anything other than what I am. My sexuality, religious beliefs, and mental illnesses are all an open book--I discuss these things openly with anyone who feels the need to ask me about them. I don't even feel badly about the prescription drug addiction that is arguably the most self-destructive and worst habit I have. But I don't bring them up on my own and I will lie by omission. Not because I feel as though any of these traits are inappropriate, but for the same reason I model under a pseudonym and never tell superiors or co-workers about the work I do. People have been fired from better jobs over much less. I wish sincerely I did not have to hide these things from anyone, but I acknowledge what reality at the moment entails. In order to protect myself, I keep certain things a secret from anyone who has the power to make my life miserable because of it.

Now that I've said that, I'll go on.

I knew Max for a few years before we got together. In that time I was as candid and open with him as I am with other people to whom I feel close--he's completely aware of all of these things, and even though there are some he doesn't like and wishes weren't a part of me (like my drug habit and instabilities), he accepts me as I am. This means he knew that I wasn't completely monogamous when he first broached the subject with me. I, too, knew that he was monogamous and that being with him meant I would have to forgo certain other aspects of my sexuality that he can't fulfill. We were both aware of this, and when I agreed to go out with him I did so explicitly stating that I was doing so not knowing whether or not I could be entirely happy long term in a monogamous relationship with just one person.

He was fine with that. On the whole he was just unbelievably happy that I said yes.

People who know me as having polyamorous leanings have questioned me about this decision, wondering why I agreed to a monogamous partnership I might or might not always be happy to have. And I will admit, it does sound slightly unfair in his favour--he is, after all, not deprived of any aspect of his sexuality and won't ever be in a position where he wants something I'm not physically capable of providing, whereas I will most certainly encounter these problems. It isn't completely fair to me to confine myself to someone else's rules.

But that's life, isn't it? Life is all about compromise and I personally think it's less unfair for me to play by his rules than it would be if I went off with other people when doing so would absolutely destroy him. I'm quite happy with Max and so far don't usually feel like I'm missing out on anything. Every now and then it'll dawn on me that I'm not going to get a go at breasts anymore, or get to fool around with girls or anybody else I find insatiably attractive. But these feelings don't really bother me, at least nowhere near enough to make me reconsider my decision. Of course, part of this could be that, so far, I've had neither the desire nor opportunity to do it. I really honestly don't know how I'd handle it if I did find myself in this position, and he's aware of that as well. Really, if you think about it, it kind of presents an amusing reversal of stereotypes--how often does a guy lament that the girl he's with absolutely refuses to ever consider a threesome? Here it's reversed--I would love it, but he doesn't want to. Laughing about it is one way to help deal with the reality.

Another way I make it easier to deal with is by being extremely and openly flirtatious with anybody I want. This is something I do all the time, whether or not I actually fancy the person, and it isn't influenced by my relationship statuses. Max knew this before we got together, as well. I'm just very flirty with other people and do things--with consent!!--that other people might find extremely inappropriate. I grope, I pet, I kiss people. I make out with people I have only just met. This is just part of my personality. Asking me not to do it would be like asking me not to be sarcastic or make jokes--I wouldn't be able to do it even if I wanted to because it's just a part of who I am. I straight up told him that he didn't get to tell me who I could and couldn't hit on. I assured him that I would be going home with him at the end of the night and would take it no further, but that I didn't want to just stop being me because it involved doing things conventionally disallowed for women in monogamous relationships.

To be honest I didn't really know how well he'd take that, but I was relieved to find he didn't mind in the slightest. Well, kissing girls is pretty sexy to watch so he quite likes that, and if my target happens to be a man he feels neither territorial nor envious. In the end, he knows I'm with him because I want to be with him and that this was just one small facet of me as a whole.

He's cool with the traits he isn't fond of--my drug habit and wandering libido--just as I'm cool with his excessive furriness and monogamous nature.

In the end, it's just life. You accept the bad things because you want the good bits. You can't reasonably claim to love someone unless you're willing to take them, for better or worse, just as they are.

And I do.

And so does he.

Learned Behaviour

I am constantly bearing the blame--or blaming myself--and apologizing and feeling very badly over things that are not my responsibility, under my control, or even that involve me at all. If I'm in the vicinity of something that has gone even the slightest bit off-kilter, I immediately feel like it's my fault. Not just accidental dick moves, either, like trying to change lanes on the road and failing to notice the car in your blind spot until the driver leans on their horn at you. Or even stuff like writing someone's name or number or something incorrectly when they try and give it to you. (For this I do have some excuse--I'm partially deaf owing to years of chronic ear infections that scarred my inner ears and damaged my hearing.) But even when I'm not even in the room at the time, I still feel guilty and usually apologize even though people ask me what the hell I'm apologizing for.

It should surprise no one to know that this is yet another side-effect of having really shitty parents.

My parents blamed me for lots of things. Sometimes I really did do something wrong and it wasn't an accident, for which I absolutely deserved to be scolded, but my parents just blew shit out of all proportion like they were getting paid for the intensity of their fury at me. It really was completely excessive. The first time I brought home a C in school my parents were absolutely livid. Yes, a C is kind of a disappointing grade, but a child getting a mediocre grade is not grounds for yelling, screaming, hitting, and calling them horrible names and telling them they're stupid and going to go nowhere in life. My mom yelled for hours and hours before making me go to piano lessons where I seriously contemplated drowning myself in the reservoir across the street. I was ten years old.


I was ripped up and belittled and yelled at for accidents or errors made from ignorance and even for stuff I didn't even do at all. One day my parents came home from an outing somewhere and discovered the kitchen smelled vaguely sulfer-y like when someone burns a match. Admittedly I had a few times played with matches (yes yes, bad me, I know) but that hadn't happened for years. I hadn't struck a match at all. I didn't even know where my parents were hiding the matches they didn't want me playing with. But I was still blamed and punished for it.

The first time I really remember distinctly being blamed for a misfortune that befell me that I was in no way responsible for causing was when I was probably about five years old.

Before I tell this story, I have to provide a small piece of background information. My dad is notorious for wandering away without telling people where he's going, and not realizing that this is actually kind of a problem. He would be out with all of us somewhere large and public and crowded--like a museum or theme park--and since he's not a big talker no one notices when he hasn't said anything for a bit. And then we'd look to ask him something and he'd have completely vanished and it takes hours to find him. He'd come home from work, leave his car in the garage, and then wander off into the neighbourhood for an hours-long talk with someone without even bothering to reassure anyone he was alive and hadn't been abducted by aliens or dragged into the forest by the Blair Witch (we lived right near Black Hills territory) or something. The worst incidence of this was a few years ago when he went to meet a potential computer-programming-tutoring client he met over Craigslist (he would advertise there as a tutor for people who wanted to learn new programming techniques) that he'd never met before and whose identity no one else was aware of. He was supposed to be there until 2pm. By 9pm he wasn't home, hadn't called, and his cell phone was off. (It's always off. He's horrible about remembering to do that.) We were in complete panic because we had no idea where he was supposed to be or if he'd gotten there at all and we started worrying about the worst possible scenarios--that he'd been in some kind of horrible accident or, worse, the internet stranger he'd agreed to meet had turned out to be someone dangerous. We called the police and nearby hospitals. He only came home at 10pm and was genuinely surprised that anyone was upset at all. He'd just lost track of time chatting with the client, what was wrong with all of us? He really honestly didn't believe that completely fucking disappearing was not an acceptable practice. But since my mom was so angry and upset over it he at least started remembering to keep his phone charged and on him when he went out.


Okay, so my dad has a really bad habit of wandering off without bothering to inform anyone, and occasionally this is a huge problem.

When I was five years old, a huge problem happened.

My parents had taken my then-toddler brother and me to a children's science museum. Whenever my parents took us out anywhere, my mom was always in charge of my brother and my dad was always in charge of me. (I actually really hated this, because even though I didn't really get on well with my mom I still didn't like the fact that she kept consistently rejecting me in favour of my brother. It was just one of many little things that happened over the course of my life that made me think I was somehow just not good enough.) For some reason, on that particular day it was decided that we were going to split up and my dad was going to take me into another exhibit without my mom and brother. I remember what it was--it was a series of rooms and displays and tunnels and all about different kinds of bugs. I hadn't acquired my fear of insects yet (mostly because the really big, nasty, fear-inspiring ones don't exist in northern England), so I was fairly interested in it. I also distinctly remember looking into a display case full of vibrantly coloured butterflies. There was no warning, no words, no attempt at gaining my attention--I just looked up and my dad wasn't there anymore.

To a five-year-old child, it's probably one of the scariest things that could happen--you're in an unfamiliar place and surrounded by strangers and you have no fucking idea where your parents are, and all of this in an age where cell phones and other means of constant and instant contact didn't exist. In school they taught us that if we found ourselves lost somewhere to stay put. But I was in a high-traffic area and people kept pushing past me or bumping me, so I stepped to the side. And I waited. And waited. I called out for my dad but he didn't answer and no one seemed to notice or care. After a while I started trying to look for them. I backtracked through familiar exhibits with no luck. By then I was in Full Panic Mode and crying. What if they left me behind? What if they didn't want me anymore and this was just a way of abandoning me? What if someone else tried to take me home?

I wasn't a kid given to histrionics or powerful emotions, but I was pretty damn scared and sobbing.

Eventually I did find them, though I don't remember how. I think I just wandered by chance and luck over to where they were talking with a museum employee, possibly about having lost a child because my mom was crying as well.

The relief at having found my mom and dad again didn't last very long because I was immediately, loudly, and publicly reprimanded and scolded for having wandered away and not stayed close to my dad like I was supposed to. I hadn't moved and I know I hadn't. To this day I am completely certain that I didn't just accidentally wander off in distraction. I really hated--and still hate--being by myself so I was the kind of kid who takes great pains to assure their parents are around.

Yet here was my dad, one of the people responsible for pretty much every aspect of my well-being and, you know, an adult to boot and he was blaming his five-year-old child for getting lost when he had to have known that he was the one who wandered off and left me there. No matter how hard I insisted, still tearfully, that I hadn't done anything wrong and I'd just looked up and he was gone, my mother didn't believe me and my dad of course wasn't about to admit it was his own thoughtlessness and carelessness that had caused the whole situation. I was blamed completely for getting lost. It was my burden to bear--and mine alone.

Being blamed for shit I didn't actually do was a fairly common occurrence in my life, though it didn't happen nearly as often as those nuclear overreactions did. In the end I just learned to treat myself as some kind of scapegoat. Since everything was always somehow my fault at home, everything became my fault everywhere. It's a habit I don't think I will ever shake. Even if I do manage not to outwardly and vocally take the blame and apologize for things I'm not at all responsible for, I don't think I'll ever get rid of this persistent feeling and sense of guilt that creeps slowly into my chest every time something happens.

I might be able to stop apologizing for accidents and non-issues, but most likely I will spend the rest of my life bearing and adding to an immense burden of shame I shouldn't even have at all.

Fair Youth...

As I've mentioned a few times before, almost all the people who work with me at the store are girls and most of them are still in high school. It's not a terribly big area either (I'm unusual for commuting from two towns over), so some of them attend or used to attend the same schools. Teenage girls tend to stick together so they all chatter amiably with one another when they're working but there aren't any customers around. A few days ago after closing, we were instructed to try and clear up some of the chaos of discarded clothes in the women's clearance section so they were all in the same place at the same time and had no other responsibilities diverting their attention. They were chattering amiably about peers and teachers and events that had nothing to do with me, making me feel awkward and unwelcome, but I listened in anyway because I enjoy listening to other people's conversations.

Well, they were all talking about prom.

Since you have to be at least sixteen to work at the store, they're all at least juniors or seniors which are the students for whom proms are actually intended. (At my high school, sophomores and freshmen weren't allowed to go unless they were accompanying a junior or senior as a date. No idea if that's the way things are done around here but I expect it probably is.) They were all positively abuzz with excitement about it even though prom season isn't until May at the absolute earliest. But the kids at my old school usually started talking about prom and prom plans on the first day of eleventh grade and didn't shut the fuck up about it until the day after senior prom. So it's not unusual for them to be preoccupied and inexhaustibly enthusiastic about the whole business and the details involved.

They were talking about guys who asked their girlfriends or crushes to the big event in creative ways (one guy apparently wrote 'PROM?' on his belly in paint and then whipped his shirt off), about the venue it was to be held at, their dresses, their dates, who is taking whom and which couples are cute and which aren't getting along. Limos, dinner plans, post-prom plans. Hair, shoes, makeup. Finding a date versus just going with a group of girls.

I didn't even understand this mindset when I was that age. I only went to my prom because my mother made me. (Yes, MADE ME--I didn't even want to go at all but she wasn't having it and I hate my mom's emotionally manipulative passive-aggressive retaliatory tactics too much to have fought with her about it.) And also my good friend at the time who went to a different school really wanted to go because her tiny private school didn't have a prom. I had a miserable time and hated the dress and felt extremely awkward and uncomfortable. There are no pictures of me from my prom, for which I am very grateful, though my mother never quite forgave me for failing to enjoy myself or bring home cheerful happy memories of an event I hadn't even wanted to attend in the first place.

Anyway, the girls were chit-chattering all night (making women's clearance look less like a war-zone takes several hours), and I was listening in and inwardly shaking my head at the frivolity of the subject they were discussing with all the gushing earnest that teenage girls apply to things that will never be of any importance to them again.

I can't really even bring myself to be annoyed at them for it.

Oh, to be young again--to have so little to dominate my focus that I can spend so much time and effort on something like a prom. Let them have their princess fantasy. Let them believe it's as important as all the TV shows and teen movies make it seem. Eventually they'll have to step away from the comparatively sheltered existence that is high school and face the real world--even though I don't really get all the hype, in the end they're entitled to one last bout of childlike enthusiasm before they have to leave childhood behind for good.

Seeing the Real Me

I have a very strange relationship with my body image. But I have a very strange relationship with just about everything in my life. At some point my psyche decided that straightforward simplicity wasn't going to happen if there was any possibility of totally illogically complicated confusion. So while other people can just say they feel a certain way about something, I can't do it in fewer words than the 'Kubla Khan'. Which is bad enough already, without factoring in my tendency for long-windedness.

To be perfectly frank, my body image is shitty but I'm paradoxically comfortable doing things that would suggest a way more positive self-image and a lot of self-confidence.

As I mentioned before, when I can find gigs I work as a freelance model, which means I quite willingly and happily let someone I don't know very well spend several hours taking many hundreds of photos of me, photos that will eventually be posted on the internet for the world to see. And I enjoy doing it. It's fun, it's interesting, it gets me out of my apartment, and I always love the finished photos. I'm even proud of the work I do. And I do nudes. I hate my body, I think I'm fat and I have stretchmarks, I think my proportions are awkward. Other women with similar and even identical body types are beautiful, but for some reason (a predisposition for excessive self-loathing, I imagine) normally attractive features and traits become repulsive when they're on me.

I do have some pride in my appearance and I try to dress nicely and look cute all the time, but I do so in ways that hide or disguise 'problem areas' that make me self-conscious, which is pretty much everything. I never wear shorts because I think I have horrible legs--I'll wear short skirts, but not without leggings or tights that are thick enough to stop a bullet. I never used to wear fitted jeans, and even though I do it now it's more because I kind of have to than because I'm trying to show off my butt. (I hate my backside. I have a butt like that boulder that chased Indiana Jones out of the temple.) I have a narrow waist--proportionally narrow, of course, since I'm too fat to actually have what people would consider a 'narrow' waist--and very short legs, meaning I need a smaller size to accommodate them, and that means getting jeans that are snug on my backside.

In addition to that, I also happily attend Renaissance festivals and LARP events at which costumes are the norm and slinky costumes are pretty well a standard feature. The stuff I wear is pretty scandalously revealing sometimes--including a bodice that laces up the back and front but leaves a three-inch-wide strip of skin bare down my back and between my breasts that leaves me only one deep breath away from a wardrobe malfunction. And I own a leather brassiere. I'll wear that bad boy with nothing under it at all, even though I think I have a belly pudge that makes me look like I'm in the second trimester.

I have no problems, absolutely none at all, being topless in front of people. Including people I've never met. Were it at all legal to do so, I would go topless in public when the weather is warm. I just have zero self-conscience about being topless. I would probably be religiously careful with sucking my stomach in, but the thought of people seeing my flagrantly asymmetrical breasts doesn't faze me in the slightest.

But, I am extraordinarily self-critical. My dress size is a source of anxiety and depression. Almost without exception, all of my features are subject to ruthless criticism and self-loathing. (The only one I consistently like is my eyes--I think I have amazing eyes.) I constantly wonder how I look to others and whether or not people find me attractive.

My boyfriend adores me and likes everything about me and he's even seen me nude in pictures (the same nude pictures that are posted online, for fuck's sake) so he's well aware of what I look like without my clothes on. Despite this, I was extremely anxious about letting him see me naked. The first time we were together I didn't actually let him. Until a few weeks ago, I'd never be naked in the same room as him unless it was dark and he didn't have his glasses on, without which he is legally blind. Even though I was completely find sleeping half-naked or completely naked in the same bed, partially on the theory that he wouldn't see all those perceived faults if we were under the covers and he was sleeping like a dead animal.

None of this makes any sense. I realize that. It doesn't even make sense with me and it's an unquestioned and accepted feature of my reality that I never considered trying to change because that's just how things are with me.

But then, if there's one thing I'm consistent about, it's inconsistency.

Behind the Scenes

Japan and its culture are other things in which I have a fascination simply by virtue of the fact that it presents a reality that millions upon millions of people have lived every day for thousands of years but that is, to me, completely alien. I won't call myself well-read on the subject, but I know a little of it, enough to put even some of the strangest behaviours into context.

It started when a friend I had in school introduced me to Sailor Moon and from that day on I had a soft spot in my heart for the hyper-distorted, stylized, yet strangely appealing world of Japanese anime and manga cartoons. It was the artwork itself that drew me, but eventually I did become somewhat more immersed in western 'Japanophile' culture. I have never been good with languages so unfortunately for me learning the language wasn't an option--instead I satisfied myself simply emulating the style of drawing and was content with that until I was in high school. Since my high school was significantly bigger than any school I had ever been to before (when I graduated it had 2100 students in just four grades) so I found myself among a much broader spectrum of people and interests and being myself very quiet and shy, I fell in with the anime and manga crowd. I was perfectly happy simply watching or reading whatever anyone else had at the time but never had any particular series that I was known for enjoying--everyone in the group had their personal favourite--for a few years.

I guess I was probably fifteen or sixteen (probably sixteen) when I found Hisaya Nakajo's crossdressing shojou manga, 'Hanazakari no Kimitache e', meaning 'For You in Full Blossom' and usually familiarly abbreviated to 'Hana-Kimi'. Part of the draw for me was the crossdressing angle. I have no idea what it is, possibly my own personal enjoyment of blurring gender lines, but I have a weakness for any book or movie or show that incorporates crossdressing or genderbending. The plot of 'Hana-Kimi' involved, somewhat commonly I was later to discover, an American Japanese girl named Mizuki who plots to disguise herself as a boy and enroll in the all-boys private school attended by her track-and-field idol. Other series followed and I can actually remember most of them. I soon added Yuu Watase's 'Alice 19th' and 'Imadoki', Hiroyuki Nishimori's 'Cheeky Angel', Emura's 'W Juliet', Tokihiko Matsuura's 'Tuxedo Gin', CLAMP's 'Chobits', and maybe one or two others. ('Cheeky Angel' and 'W Juliet' were also had a theme of genderbending.) With the exception of 'Chobits', which takes place in a futuristic society, all of them took place in contemporary Japan and portrayed a world that would have been very familiar to the target audience but casually referenced common practices that were totally unknown to me.

I loved it. I loved seeing this world that I didn't understand at all. I know manga and anime are no more representative of Japanese culture than TV shows like 'Friends' or 'The Simpsons' are representative of American culture, but I'm willing to boldly suggest that, even when they didn't show a true-to-life representation of certain things, they led me to seek one out for myself. The whole thing was just so totally fascinating to me. It still is. I religiously bought books monthly for years, until I was about twenty, by which time the friends who had brought me into the world of Japanese media had largely moved on to college and left--the last series I bought was also the first series I bought, 'Hana-Kimi', which ended its 24-volume run in the US in 2006. After that I just sort of lost interest. Those books get expensive and I had other things I wanted to pursue more, but the stories and artwork I'd spent so many years enjoying stuck with me. I even got a little bit of a happy little fangirly 'SQUEE!' moment when, just now as I was looking up the authors of the various titles I read, I learned that Disney Pictures and Viz Media (who own the rights to the story) had begun adapting the series 'Tuxedo Gin' into a movie. If this happens, I will be among the first to see it.

There was one particular regular feature I found in a good many of the series I read--usually in the girly or 'shojou' genre--that came with every volume but had nothing at all to do with the story as a whole. The last handful of pages of every published book usually contained a small peek into the artist's everyday life. They spoke about their families and home lives, what they enjoyed doing, movies, music, books, the things that inspire them to write and the life and times of a comic, why they did this instead of that or why the characters evolved as they did--the kind of thing you usually get in the West in interviews published online or aired on television or radio. Instead they just plopped them in the books and it was just one more thing, one more keyhole through which I could take a peek into this utterly bizarre, completely alien, rivetingly fascinating world. Not only did I get to read a fictional account of life, I got to read a real one, as well.

And to be honest, ever since I've been immensely jealous that Japanese writers get to do this and their audiences get to read it, but in the west we don't do such a thing. I always loved, LOVED reading what went on behind the scenes. It made the stories more accessible to me, even though I lived in a completely different world. I read Tamora Pierce's books throughout my adolescence and teen years but in all that time I never felt I 'knew' her as well as I got to 'know' the manga artists in the relatively short span of time it took for their books to run their courses.

Since then I've sort of had the urge to do this myself. I really enjoy writing author notes and postscripts to my stories that provide a glimpse into MY world, and MY mind, and the reasons behind plot points and minor details that I so dearly loved reading about when I was the audience. I never really got the impression anyone cared to know these things but I always wanted to write them anyway. I just felt like this was a connection I really wanted to make. I'm not just someone who mindlessly grinds out stories--and I want to show that.

It never really caught on and I don't expect it ever will. Its natural progression led me here, to the land of personal blogs, where I write about the things that go on in my head and little else.

Still. It brings my world a little closer to anyone who might be interested in it. Maybe someone, somewhere, living in another place and a culture different from mine, has read what I've written and been thrilled at the details I willingly put forward that provide a little keyhole-peek into my 'normal' and a world completely alien to them, too.