Success

Feb 282011
 

Upon receiving a message from someone so very unsuitable I would in most cases delete it and immediately turn my attention to more pressing matters — ie, what color to paint my nails, is there enough lunch meat to make sandwiches, if I put off vacuuming for one more day will bedbugs spontaneously generate in the carpeting — but this man’s profile had shocked and annoyed me to such a degree that I was compelled to answer back:

Me: Thank you for the kind message! However, considering what you’ve written in your profile I don’t think I’m the sort of woman you’re looking for. I wish you all the best in your search.

Him: Based on your note, you have got to be the sweetest women on this site! Good luck, I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for – you deserve it – but I have to know why you think you’re not the kind of woman I’m looking for. You sound perfect to me!

Me: I specifically indicate that I’m not a thin woman, and you specifically indicate that you’re not into women who “weigh a ton.” While I don’t technically tip the scales at two-thousand pounds, I feel fairly certain that you’re looking for someone far smaller than me.

Him: You’re right, that remark on my profile was uncalled for. I really should change the wording. It wasn’t meant to offend, it was frustration over a pervasive lack of honesty about one’s physical attributes. If you’re a few extra pounds I don’t mind that at all. There’s just so much bs on this site.

Me: It’s easy to get annoyed by the bs on the site. And yes, women (and men) can shade the truth about the characteristics they’re most insecure about. You’d be stunned by the number of single-but-not-really or long-and-thick-but-not-really men I’ve met.

Him: I never thought about men being deceptive. To married guys really pose as single? Do they end up confessing?

Me: Yes, men as well as women do lie. I’ve heard fibs about profession, number of former marriages, number of children, relationship with ex-spouse (ie, “I have no idea why she took out a restraining order against me!”), physical appearance, drug use and military service.

Him: Wow! I never thought that women would take so much crap. Seems that neglecting to mention a few pounds is rather innocent! (But I really am nine inches.)

Me: Your penis is seven inches, you say? That’s a very respectable length.

Him: You’re catching on! Anyhow, I re-wrote my profile. Tell me what you think? I’m a cabinetmaker – not a writer!

Me: Luckily for you I am a writer. How many cabinets can I get in exchange for editing your profile?

And then, dear reader, he sent it to me:

I’m a down-to-earth guy in good shape for my age . I’ve got a good job and a good eduction. I’m not looking for anything serious but I’m hoping to find someone who’s missing physical intimacy and would like to help me fulfill fantasies. I’d like to open up to someone sexually and hope they’d be comfortable enough to do the same with me. My ideal woman would be uninhibited, confident, patient, open-minded, likes to kiss and snuggle. Prefer height and weight proportionate (I don’t expect Barbie doll!) and a non-smoker.

This? This I count as a victory for reason, compassion and the benefit of all human kind.

Don’t you?

 AAG Entries, date  26 Responses »

An Uncanny Likeness

 An Uncanny Likeness  AAG Entries, family  12 Responses »
Feb 252011
 

Mismatched clothing? Check.

Eyes wide with horror? Check.

Nine things1 being juggled at once? Check.

Lightning bolts2 coming from the ears? Check.

Uncanny!

  1. which may be cookie dough or wee balls of poo [↩]
  2. or perhaps ARMS [↩]
 Posted by aag at 12:00 am

This Must Be Some Kind of a Record

Feb 242011
 

This, found in a dating site profile, must be some kind of a record:

I’ve been on this fucking site for less than a month and I’ve already come to some conclusions:

  • Hot women want women – not men.
  • Young women are too shallow to make an older guy’s fantasies cum true.
  • Single women who hit on me weigh a ton.
  • Couples don’t really want MFM with a str8 guy.
  • Gay men pretend to be women.
  • No one wants to share pix or cam.
  • Apparently 5’4″ and 240# is “a few extra pounds.”

In fewer than a hundred words this dude has managed to disparage “hot” women, lesbians, young women, single women, larger women, couples, gay men, technophobes (or HELLO the discreet) and — once again for good measure — fat women. Because one insult is just never enough.

Impressive!

Also? Complaining about young women being too shallow? That’s called irony.

 AAG Entries, date  17 Responses »

Shut in a Tower of Brass

Feb 232011
 

This is how I feel about dating:

Each one of us is alone in the world. He is shut in a tower of brass, and can communicate with his fellows only by signs, and the signs have no common value, so that their sense is vague and uncertain. We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them. We are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that, with all manner of beautiful and profound things to say, they are condemned to the banalities of the conversation manual. Their brain is seething with ideas, and they can only tell you that the umbrella of the gardener’s aunt is in the house.

- w. somerset maugham (via fuckyeahexistentialism)

 AAG Entries, date  Comments Off

The Ever-Tightening Asshole Filter

Feb 232011
 

Whereas in the past my needs in a dating partner consisted primarily of respiration1, juxtaposition and discretion there is now a whole checklist complete with annotations, footnotes and an extensive bibilography. This means that getting to know me is exponentially harder than once it was and that my poor vagina is unfucked more often than not but it’s better — far better — to have a lonely vagina than to have one that’s stuffed with anger, manipulation and lies.

Er, right?

A few years ago disagreements in the political arena would not have bothered me. I’d hardly have noticed. I never asked! But after spending some naked time with members of the religious-right anti-choice set I realized that no matter how well they might cause the blood to flow panty-ward they also made it flow to my temple — to that vein, the one that twitches and swells when right bullshit is spread out beneath my nose. And that is just no fun.

I’d like to think I could find some common ground with that crowd. I’m open minded, right? I want them to be accepting toward people whose orientations, gender presentations and reproductive decisions are different from their own, so why do I fail at accepting them? I feel like a failure of openmindedness until I remember that while they love only those who by choice or accident of birth are straight, cisgendered, and reproducing-under-all-circumstances, I will hear you out no matter how you came from the womb or what you will allow to grow in it. I fully support your right to be married in a church to someone who will reproduce with you ’til you’re both spent. I don’t support your right to make this essentially religious belief the law of the land — and it’s just too uncomfortable for me to be with someone who if he could would make his decisions MY decisions.

So I try to discern from profiles, emails and IMs if the man at the other end is likely to make my temple twitch and my legs snap shut. It’s harder than it looks. I don’t want to be bitchy but I also don’t want to spend valuable coffee-datin’ time with someone I couldn’t bear to be naked with, and who, were he to look past the raging nature of his hard-on, would no doubt feel the same toward me.

My successes (if they can be called that) in this quest have come when I’ve brought up current news items. How do you feel about conscience clauses, I ask a man who I’ve just learned works in the medical field, and his answer determines whether it’s worth it to ask on. What do you think about the bill to defund Planned Parenthood that passed the House, I ask another, and when he tells me that “those women” should just “stop having sex” if they can’t get birth control there, and that even pregnancies begun in assault have “the right not to be murdered,” then I know it’s time to cut him loose.

It boils down to this: If you do not support my right to control my own reproduction then I cannot risk engaging in reproductive activities with you. Not condensed enough? Here it is again, short enough for a bumper sticker: No Choice? No Cunt.

Is this reasonable that anti-choice or any other hard-right belief is a boner-killer for me? Is it logical to make it a litmus test? I don’t know.

Perhaps you can advise?

——————-

Please take a moment to use this handy tool which will tell you in an instant how your representative voted on the Planned Parenthood issue, then WRITE WRITE WRITE to express your feelings. Please.

  1. Yes please!! [↩]
 AAG Entries, date  33 Responses »

World Domination in Nine Hundred Easy Steps

Feb 222011
 

A million years ago I spent my days helping children between the ages of twelve and eighteen learn to write; a million minus five years ago I helped them perform physical and chemical experiments without blowing up their damn fool selves. Can you believe it? Foul-mouthed, tattooed, ass-sex-loving me entrusted with the delicate minds of tomorrow’s youth?

Yeah, I have a hard time believing it too.

When my first child was born I found that I could not detach her from my breast long enough even to shower in a timely fashion much less don un-puked-on clothes and drive to work. Adjustments were made (to wit, we stopped eating out three nights a week and going to movies in favor of attempting to soothe this squawking-angry new person) and hey presto my job changed from minding other folks’ kids to minding my own. The plan always was that once that ravenous infant was old enough to go to school (without, we fervently hoped, a tit in her mouth) I would go back to school and pick up my career as a red-pen-and-safety-goggle-wielding pedant so as to start really pulling my weight in bringing money into the house. But then another child arrived and then another and how could I work during their infancies when I’d not worked during the first’s?

For the most part — most days, most months — this arrangement has succeeded. It’s certainly not been easy to watch my friends advance their careers and many times I burned with envy over their ability to eat lunch with people who didn’t necessarily feel the need to smear it in their hair; not to mention that they could also, should they choose, curl themselves under their desks to indulge in the naps I so desperately craved. And while married it was always a struggle to assert my firm belief that even though I’d not technically earned half the money, I should receive an equal voice in how it was spent.

Even when the marriage ended I hoped to carry on with the plan of being home until the little ones began kindergarten. The work I’ve done through this site, through Jane’s Guide and through my other little business venture has made that possible, and not for the first (or last) time I must once again say thank you. Thank you for putting food on our table and a roof over our head. Sincerely. Thank you.

But in the fall youngest will be in school full-time, and while I certainly look forward to more structure in his life (and possibly slightly less mud stomped all over my floors) I must also accept that when that glorious day arrives I will have no child-centered responsibilities for seven full hours a day. Seven hours! A day! Not a month, or a week, but every. Single. Day.

Not even I can nap1 that much, and while I have absolutely no intention of abandoning this venture in favor of respectable employment I think there just might be enough time to squeeze in a little something more; for example, a class teaching real live pants-wearing human beings…well, something. Surely amongst all my various areas of expertise there is something2 which could be taught at one of the very many local colleges either as a class for credit3 or continuing education. I mean, right? Surely I can tone down the foul-mouthedness. Surely I can at least temporarily cover the tattoos. Surely I can express myself competently during an interview. Surely I can remember to put on pants.

Believe me, this is fucking terrifying. I am terrified that they’ll say no and I’m terrified that they’ll say yes, for if they say yes I must contemplate doing a portion of my work outside the house and consistently wearing pants.

Tell me not to be terrified, internet. Tell me I can do it. Tell me I’ll remember the pants! Tell me.

  1. or wank [↩]
  2. not blowjobs [↩]
  3. I do have an M.A., yo [↩]
 AAG Entries, werk  12 Responses »

This Is Not The Kind of World I Want For My Children

Feb 212011
 

Nothing in the world is the way it ought to be.
It’s harsh, and cruel. But that’s why there’s us. Champions.
It doesn’t matter where we come from, what we’ve done or suffered, or
even if we make a difference. We live as though the world were as it
should be, to show it what it can be. You’re not a part of that yet.
I hope you will be.

It is no exaggeration to say that I am terrified for the kind of future my children will grow up in if even some of these things come to pass:

1) Republicans not only want to reduce women’s access to abortion care, they’re actually trying to redefine rape. After a major backlash, they promised to stop. But they haven’t yet. Shocker.

2) A state legislator in Georgia wants to change the legal term for victims of rape, stalking, and domestic violence to “accuser.” But victims of other less gendered crimes, like burglary, would remain “victims.”

3) In South Dakota, Republicans proposed a bill that could make it legal to murder a doctor who provides abortion care. (Yep, for real.)

4) Republicans want to cut nearly a billion dollars of food and other aid to low-income pregnant women, mothers, babies, and kids.

5) In Congress, Republicans have a bill that would let hospitals allow a woman to die rather than perform an abortion necessary to save her life.

6) Maryland Republicans ended all county money for a low-income kids’ preschool program. Why? No need, they said. Women should really be home with the kids, not out working.

7) And at the federal level, Republicans want to cut that same program, Head Start, by $1 billion. That means over 200,000 kids could lose their spots in preschool.

8) Two-thirds of the elderly poor are women, and Republicans are taking aim at them too. A spending bill would cut funding for employment services, meals, and housing for senior citizens.

9) Congress just voted for a Republican amendment to cut all federal funding from Planned Parenthood health centers, one of the most trusted providers of basic health care and family planning in our country.

10) And if that wasn’t enough, Republicans are pushing to eliminate all funds for the only federal family planning program. (For humans. But Republican Dan Burton has a bill to provide contraception for wild horses. You can’t make this stuff up).

Each item above is cited here; click to read more details then please find your legislators’ contact information and contact them today.

And tomorrow.

And the next day.

Then put your money where your mouth is and donate to Planned Parenthood today. I did.1

  1. Just a few dollars, nothing really. But a bunch of people donating just a few dollars adds up, so please do. [↩]
 AAG Entries, Feminism  16 Responses »

This Confuses Me So Hard

Feb 192011
 

This confuses me so hard I just…

I just…

I just don’t even know what to say.

Not safe for anything:

Continue reading »

 AAG Entries, sex  22 Responses »

Ho-To-Go

Feb 182011
 

Closed, you’d never know what wonders nestle inside. I’ve carried this little number1 to play parties and assignations a’plenty lo these many years and while it’s not in use it sits quietly on the laundry room shelf — or stays in the minivan, ready to be carried off into the night at a moment’s notice.

The advantages to maintaining such a object are clear: Important sexytime props need not clutter up one’s purse or pockets; leaks can be contained; and the dildos don’t go tumbling out at in the grocery store2

What’s in it now?

Click to embiggen.

  1. Sex is messy, yo.
  2. Jesus H. Christ doesn’t coming ever muss my ‘do.
  3. No one seems to want this. I wonder why not.3
  4. I tried one with a friend and thought it felt just fine. He was less impressed.
  5. I love this stuff.4
  6. Courtesy of the lovely Garnet Joyce and MyPleasure.com. I’ve tried it with a friend and on my own and … well, I didn’t hate it. Full review to come.
  7. I don’t know what the fuck this is. Bondage rope for teeny tiny elves?
  8. Black gloves, for fisting.
  9. In case the elves have a bondage emergency? I don’t know how some of this stuff winds up in here.
  10. Too big for me, perfect for a friend.
  11. You never know when you’ll need to deal with cockbreath.
  12. My beloved red dildo.5

By the way, I certainly didn’t come up with the term Ho-To-Go. I’m pretty sure someone on Twitter suggested it but it was long ago and I have no idea who it was.

Was it you? Fess up.

  1. Made by Devine Toys but no longer in production, it seems. [↩]
  2. Which has actually happened to me. Checkers frown on this kind of tomfoolery, BELIEVE IT. [↩]
  3. Do you? [↩]
  4. Wow, that is a really good price. Get some. You will thank me. [↩]
  5. I do not think they make the red Daddy anymore but this one is very similar. [↩]
 AAG Entries, sex  8 Responses »

On Being Welcome

Feb 172011
 

“My house is a wreck,” he warned repeatedly, and given the magnitude of bachelor-managed decrepitude I’ve witnessed in the past I was expecting the worst: moldering piles of laundry, towers of paper looming above the bed, reeking catboxes, shoes flung willy-nilly. On the drive there my body didn’t know whether to get turned on or attempt a wholesale disabling of the olfactory nerves, and a text from him once again warning against any white-glove tests1 did nothing to help matters.

If he honestly thought it was that bad or if for some reason known only to him it seemed advantageous to wind me up I’ll never know but I was shocked and not a little relieved to walk through his door without an assault on any of my delicate sensibilities. Clearly Martha Stewart did not live there2 but other than a layer of dust on the shelves of books I could find nothing objectionable — and I looked! “I still have to take a shower,” he said after relieving me of my coat and Ho-To-Go bag. “Why don’t you join me in a few minutes?”

I most surely will, I said, sitting on his bed and admiring the books3 So emboldened was I by the relative order that I called after him So where is it that you keep the porn?

He reappeared, naked, and gestured toward a particularly well-tended shelf. “Oh, and this is the most recent thing I found,” he said, handing me one crisp periodical before heading back to the bathroom. Dear reader, what was placed in my hands was not your typical skin mag filled with silicone and airbrushing and wildly improbably glossiness. Instead it was devoted to images of women who looked not dissimilar to myself engaging in the kind of sex I sincerely hoped to be having in the very near future.

I’d known of course that magazines like this existed but until last night I wasn’t aware of being with anyone who’d actually purchased one. Why should I have been surprised that he had? “What’s between your ears is 80% of what makes you hot. The rest is just the carrier for who you are,” I read in his profile late last year and the boner those two sentences gave me has barely subsided since then.

I can’t think of anything that would have made me feel more welcome.

  1. He need not have feared; I brought only black gloves [↩]
  2. She would have disapproved of the activities that took place just an hour later I am sure [↩]
  3. Tell me I am not the only one who upon entering a house for the first time immediately searches out the books? This may be the only drawback to the inevitable rise of electronic readers: that we can no longer ascertain and demonstrate character by means of book jackets. [↩]
 AAG Entries, sex  19 Responses »
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