Piano Playing Panty Peelers

I'm warning you right here, before your read a sentence further than you have to, that I'm on day 4 without my antidepressant medication.  Needless to say, I have no idea if what comes after this warning is worth your time, whether it makes sense or if, in a week, when I'm back on the meds and a little more evened out, I may come back here and go "What. The. Complete. Fuck?"  So, you know, if you feel like maybe you just want to wander away and look at pictures of disapproving rabbits, you go right ahead.  I promise not to track down readers by their IP address when I see that they clicked off my blog within a few seconds.  Or well...I'm sure that my meds will kick in before I have the chance to track you down, and I'll think better of it of planning extensive revenge.  Probably.

Anyway, there's this book out there called 50 Shades of Grey that is supposedly all the best things about sex and romance ever.  Or at least that's what people are saying.  I don't really know, because I had never heard of it before yesterday.  Because I live under a rock, apparently.

So, the way that I was introduced to this book was through this fabulous recap on a blog by writer Jennifer Armintrout, who I also had not heard of before yesterday, but who is ridiculously funny, and who writes really well, and whose books I now want to read in entirety.  I've already read one written under her pseudonym Abigail Barnette entitled Bride of the Wolf, which if you're looking for well written, incredible sexy erotica involving a werewolf, I highly recommend it, especially since I never once had the squicky, bestiality vibe I usually get from sexualized werewolves.  Also...I'd like to take a moment to appreciate the irony that Barnette is the pseudonym, while the unlikely sounding Armintrout appears to be her real last name.

Anyway...

Apparently, 50 Shades of Grey started out as Twilight fan fiction, which is abundantly obvious, despite furious claims by fans to the contrary.  It is Edward and Bella do BDSM...badly.  I'm not someone who is a heavily into the BDSM scene, but I have been curious about it, and as I do with anything that makes me curious, I researched the shit out of BDSM, something the author of 50 Shades apparently didn't feel the need to do, since she portrays BDSM as an outcome of childhood abuse and an inappropriate teenage relationship with a pedophile.  Now, I don't doubt there are people out there who have been damaged and can only experience pleasure through BDSM, but it's not the norm in the BDSM community.  And as an adult survivor of childhood physical and sexual abuse, I can tell you that it reliving what someone did to me as a child is not even a little bit sexy, and any BDSM activity I've ever been interested in would have stopped immediately if it even for a second reminded me of being abused as a child.

Okay...all that is interesting, and the sexual politics in the story are definitely something we should all be talking about.  Are we really wanting to encourage girls to read a book where the heroine feels she has to give in to things she doesn't want to do, just to keep her partner?

But, that is not the purpose of this post.  I don't want to have that conversation right now because, frankly it's too emotionally triggering for a woman with PTSD to have while off her meds.

Anyway, this book, 50 Shades of Grey, like Twilight, have women all over the country bemoaning the fact that their husbands and boyfriends are not as awesomely romantic as these fictional characters.  Women who are deeply disappointed not to be living with the men (Christian and Edward) in these books every day.

Now, I want to talk about something that Edward and Christian have in common...they are these dark and brooding characters who are so damn sexy that all females in their immediate vicinity want to drop their panties immediately upon seeing them.  (But, Christian is not not based on Edward...no...) They are, of course, perfect examples of the male physique, and they are dark and brooding.  And they both play the piano masterfully.  Wait...what?  Somehow, it's sexy for these guys to play the piano?  I don't know where that comes from, because I know when we were kids, we always pictured the boys who took piano lessons to look like this:

Now, don't get me wrong.  I have some amazing guy friends who are probably deeply embarrassed when their moms show people the pictures in which they look exactly like this boy.  And they grew up to be pretty cute guys.  But...paragons of all things that exemplify masculine beauty do not look like this.  They just don't.  Which is why, in the Twilight movies, Edward looks like this:

And it's rumored that Christian from 50 Shades of Grey is going to look like this:

With all due respect to my nerdy male friends, who are too fucking awesome for words, this:

Does not grow into this:

I'm sorry, but it just doesn't.  And, you know what?  I'm actually glad that's the way it is.  It would be really, really fucking unfair if you got to be that incredibly hot and also you were this cool, nerdy guy who played the piano.  The cool, nerdy guys who play the piano have a lot to offer.  Guys who look like that, usually, well...they don't.  They're asses.  Because they fucking know they are hot, so why do they have to be cool, interesting guys?  They don't.  They just have to sit there and smolder and half the women in the room will have to go and change their panties.  Cool, interesting guys are that way because they have interests outside of what hair gel makes their hair look just messy enough to be hot.  They have spent their lives learning that earning romantic attention means having something to bring to the table, something that's going to make women want to talk to them rather than the guy smoldering away at the end of the bar.

But then, tonight, as I was listening to my iPod and crying like a fucking idiot (I mentioned the part where I'm not on my meds, right?) it hit me.  There are two songs that are responsible for this whole piano playing, romantic, hot guy bullshit....

Fucking Brenda Russell with her Piano In The Dark:

And fucking Lauryn Hill with her Killing Me Softly:

Those. Fucking. Bitches.  Seriously, are they trying to make women feel like their men are not panty dropping material unless they are not only accomplished men, but accomplished men who are hot and can play the piano?  Between those women and Stephanie Meyer and E.L. James, they are ruining sex lives every where.  Brenda Russell and Lauryn Hill laid the groundwork, instilling these damn songs into our collective American female psyche, and then those bitches Stephanie Meyer and E.L. James come along and cement the bullshit idea that this hot, piano playing, brooding guy is the only kind of guy who can and should have access to our wet panties.

Look, ladies....I've dated musicians.  In fact, my only serious relationships of my adult life were with musicians, and this after my musician sperm donor biodad walked out on me at age four.  (I know, I know....my psychiatrist has a field day with that one, let me tell you...)  And, in dating musicians, I've also spent a lot of time with their musician friends and, you know what?  Musicians don't make good partners, because you will always, always come second to the music, ladies.  Yeah, they may do charming shit at first and play music for you and make it seem all romantic and shit...that doesn't last.  You end up resenting the flotsam and jetsam that musicians strew around your home.  You resent the nights that they don't come home and take out the trash because they're out playing music.  You resent the fact that you have to wear headphones to read because of the incessant practicing.  When you've heard a song five hundred times, it's not romantic anymore.  It's fucking annoying.

So, even if you manage to find your, hot, brooding piano player, he isn't going to give up the piano for you...anymore than an artist is going to stop painting for you, or a writer is going to stop writing for you.  And as a sometimes writer myself, I can tell you that no matter what, the art is the first and purest love in an artist's life.  Even if they aren't playing or painting or writing because life and family and all of that gets in the way, the art is still the deepest love.  And, if they do give up the music for you, they are going to resent your ass.  It's not going to be all romance and roses anymore.

So, okay...read these books, listen to these songs.  Enjoy them.  I sure as hell do.  But, understand that these books are fantasy.  Edward Cullen doesn't exist, and not because he's a vampire, but because that person, the perfect, sexy amazing man who never annoys you or resents you or makes you want to strangle him doesn't fucking exist.  And why would you want that guy, anyway?  Look at how Bella/Ana is always so filled with shattering angst about how these gods among men are just too good for them.  Yeah, that sounds like a fun and sexy way to go through life.

I'm Late, I'm Late...

For a very important date...

Okay, I'm not late.

But I do have a date this week. Me...a date...a real life date. With a person I haven't even actually met in person, yet. It's not a big deal...just lunch to get acquainted and see if the interest we're feeling online translates into the real world.

I'm excited and nervous and terrified all at the same time. Which is just silly, because I am not looking for anything serious, I'm just looking for fun, a fling...someone to make me laugh and, and someone to have a conversation with about politics and religion and life and the world.

I've never been on an actual date. All of my previous romantic involvements were with people I'd known for a long time before we got involved, so I've never done the dating to get to know someone thing. And I'm not good at first time meetings...it makes me very anxious to talk to people in real life. This date will involve taking a xanax, I'm sure. And I'll be obsessing about what to wear. What does one wear to a lunch date, anyway?

Aargh! Don't mind me, I'll just be hanging out in my closet freaking out!

Poor, neglected blog...

I'm such a bad, bad blogger. I haven't been able to find a few moments to write more than a thought or two at a time, certainly nothing that would even vaguely resemble a blog post.

My life is so full these days. The midget, school, family, doctor's appointments...it's a whirlwind. I'm supposed to be doing homework right now and instead I'm hopping around the interwebs like a squirrel on crack and listening to music with my younger sis.

I'm posting this song because it popped up on my iPod and I was struck again with the message. It's so totally how I feel about love and relationships. It's unfortunate that being honest and saying I don't use words like "forever" and "only" in reference to love means that I have spent years defending my decisions to never get married, or promise monogamy.

One of the exgirlfriend's many complaints about me was that I refused to get married. I never promised her forever, and that was wrong to her. The irony? She promised forever, and then left. I always took her promises with a grain of salt, because I think everyone wants to believe in forever, and think it's going to happen. I don't think she made the promises knowing that someday we would not be together. The things I've been through have taught me that your entire universe can change with no notice whatsoever. Everything you know and believe is ever evolving and adaptable. It is easy to say that you will love forever, but the reality of loving forever means that you love when the shit hits the fan, and that's so much easier said than done. It takes guts to stick it out when life hands you a crap hand, as it often does. It takes more strength than I have to love someone when you find out your vision of that person is very different from who she really is inside.

So, if you can't promise forever, does that mean that there's no point to loving at all? If you're more cynical than I am, then I suppose the answer is yes, but for me love is always valuable, even love that has an expiration date. I am a better person for loving the people I have loved in my life. And, frankly, just because someone you love stops being who you thought she was, that doesn't mean the love goes away, it just becomes something else. If you throw away everything you've learned and been because the love turns out to be something different than you envisioned, you're robbing yourself of all the glorious beauty life offers.

Anyway, this song always makes me think of people I've loved in my life, makes me wish that my "love you today" philosophy was better understood, and shared by more people.

It's Not Just Me

I've been laboring under the mistaken impression that I am the lone woman on the planet who doesn't want a relationship and has no desire to find a "mate." I have gotten such strange looks for saying things like..."I love you today, I loved you yesterday and I'm pretty sure I'm going to love you tomorrow...please don't ask for more."

I also used to get the weirdest looks when I told people that the exgirlfriend was not my best friend, that I have an amazing best friend who gets me and to whom I can tell anything and know that she will not judge me. She's like another piece of my soul. Not that I didn't love the exgirlfriend. I did. People would always say that I was being unfair to my girlfriend by having a best friend. Or people would assume that because I'm bisexual, the love I have for my best friend must be somehow romantic in nature. Which is just ridiculous.

Anyway..I never knew other women that had the same feeling. Until tonight when I read a fantastic post on Fuck Yeah, Motherhood and went "Holy Fuck! I'm not the only one."

This is the best part...Each word is something that resonates, that I could have written. I fucking love it!!

But it’s not enough. People want things that baffle me. Like girlfriends. And wives. And forever. I am now. I am “I love you”, not “I will always love you”. I am “I like being with you”, not “I’ll never leave you”. I am “Let’s go to the park today”, not “Let’s go to the Caribbean in March”. I am not a picket fence. I’m not even a key to your apartment. I am just me. I have seen always, forever, and never go south and I believe in only making promises I can keep. I don’t know if anyone will ever be able to accept my tiny bit of today without asking for a whole lot of tomorrow. That’s okay, though. I’m still sensational.

Full Disclosure?

Warning: This post definitely falls under the TMI category...

I keep coming back to the same question with this here blog thingy. Now, in my opinion, having a blog is a bit like having a memoir you publish whilst you are living it. You know, so you don't forget the good bits. (Unless, of course, you are like me and have and forget what you're doing in the time it takes to walk from one end of the house to the other, then you forget the good bits as you go, anyway.) There are problems with that theory, of course. Now, if you're like me and you have your very own anti-fan club, then anything you say will definitely be mangled and twisted into a weapon to use against you and those you love. Or there's the fact that while you may not have a problem with airing all your dirty laundry for the world to see, the people who are part of your daily life maybe don't want their lives exposed for all and sundry to see. And, of course, there are the readers who know you in the real world who maybe don't want to hear about your sexual exploits (hi, Mom) or see your naked pictures. But, dammit...You all (all two of my readers)have been warned many, many times...if you're still coming here, I refuse to be held responsible.

Why is this coming up again? Because for the first time in eight very long months, I've had sex. Glorious, uncomplicated, no strings sex. And it was awesome. It was exactly what I needed, without all the gory relationship crap that I really, really don't need. It reaffirms my belief that monogamous, committed relationships aren't for me. It was not awkward or weird and there are no expectations on either end. And you know what? I feel no guilt, no shame, no embarrassment. We both got exactly what we wanted out of the experience and said good night and went our separate ways.

I hesitated to say anything about it for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that I don't want to answer a lot of questions about this person, because while I genuinely care for this person, it's not the kind of caring that's going to lead to any kind of a relationship type thing. Even if I was in a place emotionally or logistically to have a relationship, this just wouldn't be going there. And hell, I really don't even know if it's going to happen again, well with this person, I mean...because sex will be happening again. Eight months was too long, I can't see hanging up my...erm...bits and pieces...at the very, very young age of 33.

It was healing, and refreshing and goddammit, life-affirming. I am still here, still someone besides a mom, besides a sister or a cousin or a friend. I'm a woman in my own right, and proud of it. And walking around with a bit of a cat who ate the canary smirk this week....

It Isn't the Entree

So, I made the mistake of clicking on one of those "recommended" stories on Yahoo. I won't link to it, because it was lame and I don't like to share lameness. But, basically it was yet another story telling women just what is wrong with them that they are still single.

Seriously...do straight girls actually believe this shit? That the reason they don't have fulfilling marriages with 2.1 childrena and picket fences and all of that crap is because they ordered a salad on their first date? Or because they didn't order a salad on a first date?

I'm single, for the first time since the summer after I graduated high school. And I'm actually beginning to really enjoy it. And realize why it was so damn necessary, but that's a whole other post. Now, I have no intention of being single for the rest of my life but I'll be damned if I'm going to try any of these "tricks" to find myself a decent partner.

First of all...finding someone isn't really all that hard. I know happily partnered people with all sorts of really big character flaws that would send me screaming in the other direction and I'm by no means the pickiest girl on the planet. (Honest self-observation or subtle dig at my exes? You decide.) The question isn't so much about finding "someone" as it seems to be about finding The One. You know, the one person in all the world that was created just for you, who will make up for the prom date that stood you up and the lover who stole your entire dvd collection.

The only problem with that little scenario...It just isn't that easy. You aren't going to find that person until you really know you. Because, while the drummer who broods mysteriously in the corner while laughing at your attempts to seduce them is exciting...exciting doesn't help when you are working out the details of a life together. If you're an intellectual who would rather spend an evening reading the latest issue of your favorite scientific journal while your partner would rather be watching a marathon of The Real World...it's not going to work.

There just isn't any magic rule for being lucky when it comes to love. But, if you're reading books that tell you the reason you're alone has anything to do with your choice of entree on your first date, you're looking in the wrong direction.