Just Ask. An Ugly Update.

This is my least sexy post, ever. You have been warned.

On Monday night, my stomach dragons smote me. Repeatedly. It started at 7pm as I was tucking my wee ones in bed.

I dropped all storytime activities and did battle valiantly(ish) (this is fancy talk for “I threw up”) while the little ones wailed in their bedrooms.

“I am so worried about Mommy,” sobbed my eldest.

“Mama’s sick, I’m so scared,” wept the youngest.

Torment. I couldn’t leave the bathroom yet my babies were distraught and needed me.

So I called them into my bedroom and told them to get into my bed. Then they’d be close to my new station.

That wasn’t close enough. They ended up making nests of towels and pillows on the ensuite floor and my five year old rubbed my back while my little one fell asleep at my feet. Eventually we were all sleeping/resting on the bathroom floor.

As I laid my head against the cool grey tile, my thoughts were as follows:

  • ohgodohgodohgodohgodnightmareohgodohgod
  • someone (me) could be doing a more enthusiastic, thorough, and frequent job of scrubbing this floor
  • My kids love me so much. I wish I could violently vomit in a way less traumatizing to them
  • I will never eat a turkey sandwich again. Food poisoning, you are my nemesis
  • I sincerely hope this is food poisoning (welcome, botulism) because if this is contagious, tomorrow is really, really going to suck
  • who has (not) been cleaning this floor? (me )
  • I still haven’t started or finished the Operation Secret Valentine postinto which I asked Amanda Farough to paste the Valentine badge she designed
  • this is why humans (usually) have to have sex to reproduce. Minimum sets of two big people are really useful for rearing little people
  • I wish I had some help. I need help

After a while, I gathered my wits, my moxy, and my balance, and carried my sleeping kids from the bathroom to their beds. I wrote the blog post that was haunting me. I curled up in bed and tried not to move or anger my stomach in any way.

My friend (aka my Gentleman Caller who keeps calling all superfriendlylike even though I’m on a man-diet and he is pretty much #1 on my list of restrictions) called at 10ish to say hi. I whimpered and whined. He said, “Why didn’t you call me? I’d be there in a flash. You should have asked me for help.”

I was shocked – not at his generous offer (and it is generous – he lives an hour away) because that’s just how he is – but at myself.

I hadn’t even considered asking for help. I wanted help, but it never even entered my mind that I should call someone and ask for help.

My friend Heather and my sister Julie live within blocks of me and I knowthat they would drop everything, any time, to come to my rescue, and in fact they both did, just last week.

(This is in fact why I moved to the suburbs almost three years ago – to be closer to my family and be able to lean on them – and be leaned on – when necessary.)

My other sister lives – get this - in my house AND was home at the time.

When I say “didn’t consider asking for help”, I don’t mean that I thought about asking for help and rejected the idea. I mean that although I wanted help, it never occurred to me to actually ask for help.

What does this have to do with sex, money and meaning?

Sex – not having any. Temporarily. I reserve the right to change my mind on this issue at any time without issuing updates. (Who am I kidding? I will totally issue updates.)

Money – I am going to hire someone to clean my house. It is an investment in my mental well-being. The less time I spend cleaning, the more time I can spend writing and making money. And the next time I attempt to merge with the bathroom floor, it will be marginally less distressing.

Meaning – Even though I have resolved to work out my askus requestus muscle, it seems that I have (mostly) trained myself not to ask for help. And that is phony and a power play. It is weak, but not in a “I don’t deserve help” kind of way. Instead, it is a weak in a “I’m going to pretend to be so superior and superwoman-y and got-it-together” way. Which is appalling. I’m going to get right on over that.

February 5, 2010 | filed under: Meaning

29 people have we need you too.

lovesexymoney

1.

touch me. touch my heart. poetry, baby cheeks, curls, smooth bald heads, ideals, principles, tears, pixie dust, deep women of experience, flowers, icy apple juice, smooching, John Cusack and a radio in the front garden. These things might me move. To the shepherd: this nymph would have said yes. I have said yes.

Books and babies and broads and boomboxes. Be still my butterfly heart. But you know what is melting my beeswax these days?

Numbers.

2.

My Gentleman Caller - oh, we go back and forth about the romance thing, but the friendly, loverly calls continue, always, every night, because they’re just so good - suggested something that he thought would rock my business. I was silent. He backpedalled and apologized as if he had stepped over some invisible boundary. You know, by talking about money. My money.

I said, actually that turned me on.

3.

Betty Dodson knows about sex and women and desire and the liberating thereof. She’s the author of “Sex for One” and famous for leading clit-finding group expeditions. I mean workshops. She’s not just a revolutionary, she’s the fucking revolution. Viva la Betty.

Betty Dodson systematically scraped away social, sexual expectations of women and even some feminist conventions to embrace her own desire and stroke her own fire. She talks about sex. She talks about porn. She talks about vibrators. She believe that she deserves pleasure and so do you.

Viva la Betty.

And until recently, Betty Dodson – sexual revolutionary and midwife of female masturbation – was all uptight about money.

4.

She worried. She scraped by. She stayed broke.

She tackled sexual repression and left financial repression right the fuck alone.

5.

So that’s what I’m thinking about this week, because I’m right there with Betty.

Sex: I walk that dog unleashed. Money: errrrrr, how awkward.

6.

This is interesting, because we’re pretty brazen in the blogosphere about why we’re here. To share, to love, to learn, to make some money. Uh huh.

So, good. Excellent. Let’s talk about it. We are and we do. Over and over and over again.

Kinda like sex, yes? Porn is everywhere, our pop stars skirt the porn thing, and sex sex sex sex sex. It is everywhere except in reasonable discussions. No wonder our kids are learning about sex from porn.

We should be really worried that our kids are learning about sex from porn.

It is, Alan Moore put it in his long and gratifying essay about the history of porn and art, titillate and condemn, titillate and condemn, titillate and condemn. Getcha all aroused and then make you feel ashamed. Again and again.

We do that, culturally speaking, with sex, and with money.

Money is everywhere. Money is status. Money gets you laid. You should get some more of that so you can get some more of that.

We’re soaked to the skin with messages about money, and challenges to get more of it. It is okay to talk about getting more of it, because that’s just industrious.

What’s a little less acceptable: to talk about the actual sums involved.

Even less acceptable, it seems: to talk about giving it away. We’re supposed to do our charity work under the cover of dark and never mention it in polite company. Never mind online.

Just like something else.

7.

There is no reason to be shamefaced about giving.

Charity: do it however you need to do it. In private. In public. With the lights on or off and with as many people as necessary. Or not. Solo is okay, too.

8.

Because it is a joy to give.

Sometimes there is clarity in generosity. Sometimes, when I don’t know what to do, when my own inner sanctum is a whirring hamster wheel - and that little rodent can run, I assure you – I take a breath and get out of myself. I give. I offer. I support. I compliment. I love.

9.

I am not going to be shamefaced and shuffling about my joy. any of it.

10.

And so, back to women and money and power and pleasure and Betty Dodson and the lovesexymoney revolution.

Sex and money can be avenues to empowerment. Own your liberation, then share it.

dowhatchalike.

do what feels right.

get hot ‘n bothered – about giving and receiving, money and sex. the numbers. the love. the self. the share.

January 25, 2010 | filed under: Meaning, Money, People, Sex

13 people have we need you too.

Psssst…It is Not All Copywriting, All The Time

This might be a little frou-frou academic but let’s get polemic and creative and re-interpret The Blog. Add jazz hands as necessary.

Yes. I’m for real. I’d kinda like to encourage you to mangle language, stream consciously (or un), make wild analogies, mix and unmatch metaphors, make up words (plurk), get taxidermical with George Orwell, run fast and loose with slutty punctuation, wax lyrical, write 12,000 word essays (on porn – please – at least keep us interested), create loopy titles that are paragraphs and induce migraines and embrace that as a personal objective, take on personal titles as pronouncements and dub yourself Queen of the Gays/non-sequiturs, and toggle between play-dough and Plato.

Read poetry and if you must, write it, but for the love of ye gods and all that is holy DO NOT INFLICT ANY OF IT ON US.

Instead, channel Hemingway and write anorexic prose. Or embellish. Amplicate. Invest in curlicues and adverbs, make adjectives your bitch, and swear a mofo lot in cynical cartoons because that’s just funny.

Be funny. Insist on detailing the amoebic nuances of daily, boring, beautiful life. Tell us about the time your little brother glued his G.I. Joe’s to the kitchen wall and declared war against all things legume. But stay away from clown sex. (Probably NSFW. Google The Bloggess and clowns – and squids, while you’re at it.)

Mess around with fonts and characters and spacing to make your point. Sidle up to your point and kiss it on the shoulder. Parse. Write some unscannable pieces (whaaaaa? No lists? No bullets? No headers? Fetch the stake and the matches!). Please. Thank you.

Use vivid, physical, metaphorical language (mad, insane, crazy-making, blinded, deafened, crippled, disabled, epileptic, schizophrenic, idiot, fat, MILF- what?! because usually, not so much?? – bitch, pimp). Despair at the politically nefarious connotations of that language. Talk about it. Write through it. Invent a new language.

Link to everything. Link to Jonathan Swift (thanks, Seth). Link to nothing, at all, ever. Let your copy stand on its own.

Promise never, ever to use the word copy again. Liar.

Indulge in the dash. Be parenthetical. Be self-referential. Pretend you’re an expert. Admit you don’t know a thing except how to be wildly intellectually mastubatory while using your blog as therapy. It is all a writing prompt, after all, and we’re all in it together. Create characters (The Farmer. The Gentleman Caller. You), address your readers directly,  imagine you’re Samuel Richardson and your blog is your Clarissa and in fact blogs are the new epistolary novel because that’s not pretentious at all. It’s still true.

Go dirty. Go highbrow. Result in raised eyebrows.

Decide that you can’t decide between your two beloved babies, fragment or run-on sentences, and just out and out dare people to call the grammar police. (Because what is grammar for? Writing clearly and conveying your point effectively. Use it. Abuse it. Bend it like Beckham. Do whatever you need to do.)

Be homey. Invite us in. Strip textually naked. Surprise!

November 23, 2009 | filed under: Language, Purpose, Work

10 people have we need you too.

Sensual Massage and The Art of RSS

Do you know what I think about sex? Do you want to?

I think that sex is healing and restorative. The power and pull of sex goes beyond gonzo porn sex. That’s for amateurs.

There have been times in my life when the physical connections and experiences created between me and a partner have been so profound that I have felt healed. Transformed. Lightened. Nourished. Inspired. Like my muse came to visit – and stayed.

It is not just sex that can do that. So can massage. Sexual Touch. Communion.

Sensual massage, say hey!

I’m not the only one who thinks so. There is a whole sector of healers who do this kind of work. I googled it. I love Google, but not in a sexual way.

Okay, maybe a little. But it is complicated because Google is only my virtual lover.

Turns out there are people who are sexologists and others who give sensual massage

- just massage, no actual penetrative sex, and the happy ending is not the point. Apparently. But I can tell you if I was spending hundreds of dollars for a massage, I EXPECT some sort of guarantee –

who operate under exactly this theoretical umbrella. That sex can be healing. That sometimes people need sexual healing. Marvin Gaye, say hey!

My gentleman caller is a masseuse. (Not that kind, but yes, I am a very happy/lucky/healed woman.) I thought he would be interested in this information. It is his field, after all. Sort of. Massage is. Not the other part.

So I called him to share my googled adventures and insights into his profession.

Kelly: Baby, do you do sensual massage?

Gentleman Caller: Do you want me to come over?

Kelly: Not me. Well yes, me, go get in the car, but I mean have you ever? Is that a service you offer? Putting your fingers in orifices that don’t belong to me, for pay? Have you ever considered it?

Gentleman Caller: No.  One time a guy grabbed my hand but that’s not what I do.

Kelly: He grabbed your hand? That’s it? I think you don’t understand the concept of sensual massage.

Gentleman Caller: I understand. I don’t do that.

Kelly: Would you get paid more if you did?

Gentleman Caller: I should fucking hope so.

Kelly: Like how much?

Gentleman Caller: I don’t know. I’ve never looked into it because I DON’T DO THAT.

Kelly: Oh I’m great at market research. Hold on, I’ll google it.

Kelly: (Shrieks out loud) HOLY SHIT baby you should totally do this! You could be a six figure masseuse! I’ll write you a testimonial!

Gentleman Caller: Are you recording this? Again? Is this going to end up on your blog? Because my mother might read your blog and I’m not up for that phone call. This stuff is private.

Kelly: You might want to talk to her about that. My mother stopped reading after I wrote that you and I have OUTRAGEOUS SEX so by the time I got to the PORN shirt, she was out.

And just so you know, your mom’s not on my email list and that’s how I feel good about myself so if she cares about you and you care about me then you should ask her to sign up so that I can feel good about myself.

Maybe she’s on my RSS feed.  Can you ask her what RSS reader she uses?

And that sounds like water running, not a car engine. Are you in the bathroom?  Whatever goes on in the bathroom does not make appropriate background noises for phone calls. Have you no sense of privacy or propriety?

And don’t be so persnickety about my blog. I’m promoting you!

Gentleman Caller: You’re pimping me.

Kelly: Well, that too.

___________________________________

Note to The Bloggess: I’m copping your style. I love you so much.

Note to Gentleman Caller’s clients: He does give sensual massage, but only to me. So he says.

Note to Gentleman Caller’s mom: Your son is not a sex worker. Your son is a virgin. I don’t know how his son got here. Magic?

Note to YOU, my dearest reader:  I ain’t too proud to beg. One of the ways I measure my self-image, which is notoriously wobbly and externally-based, is by how many people sign up to receive my posts by email.

So if you like my work or pity me or are in any way worried about my fragile flowerishness, then please sign up. Thank you. I’ll love you long time.

Or, my Gentleman Caller will. I’m working on his new business model and I’ll be sure to send email updates about that.

See? You should totally sign up. There might be coupons.


November 10, 2009 | filed under: Bodies, Love, Money, Sex, Work

10 people have we need you too.

Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems Mo’ Babies. Yes Please.

I have three not-so-tawdry secrets:

  1. I love hip-hop.  Good hip hop, bad hip hop, hip hop that used to be called rap, highbrow, lowbrow, gangsta, spoken word, hip hop appropriated by suburban white boys with chips on their shoulders (shout out to Beastie Boys and Eminem, and I swear you haven’t lived until you’ve heard the BareNaked Ladies perform NWA’s Fight the Power), inspirational, political, even the stuff that is hand-wringingly misogynist (hi fiddy) – all of it. Almost. Apparently not everyone knows this. I told my gentleman caller this, recently, and he was surprised.  He said “That’s something I didn’t know about you.” Really? The gratuitous Tupac references and dogged defense of Kanye’s jackassery didn’t give it away? Don’t even get me started on Jay Z or Missy Elliot and the force and methods with which I love them (obscenely, preferably naked). And Common? Mos Def? Desdamona? The Roots? I die. D.I.E.
  2. I paint. My gentleman caller did not know this, either. Really? My paintings are EVERYWHERE in my house.  How could you miss it?  He said “I think it was because I was looking at your ass.” That makes sense. All is forgiven.
  3. I like money. I’m not terribly materialistic, except that I am.

I admit it. I like money. This is a bit of a surprise to me. I like to think that I don’t like money.

For example, I am a bit of a minimalist. I have four dinner plates because if I have any more, they will end up dirty, in the sink, even though I have a dishwasher. It is probably full. Don’t judge.

All I really need is four dinner plates.  If more people come over for dinner, they will have to not come over for dinner. This is okay, even optimal, because I don’t do parties.

Yet somehow it has transpired that I am hosting a party in two weeks and someone has been assigned martini-making duties, and this is a problem. I own but two Martini glasses, mostly because that is as many as I can hold in my hands (I have two) at any given time.  This means I do not have enough martini glasses for my martini-making, martini-drinking guests, especially if they want to use both hands. I think we will have to take turns drinking martinis.  What would Leo Babauta do?

(I’m going to have a bracelet made to reference whenever I have a minimalist dilemma like this: “What would Leo Babauta do?”)

(I just posed the question to him via three-part tweet. If our guru sends word down the mountain/Guam, I will keep you informed.)

Back to my point. I don’t like to have lots of crap in my house. It makes my head explode. Sometimes I even take down all my paintings just to gaze upon uninterrupted swaths of wall. It gives me peace.

This minimalist philosophy coincides nicely with not having a lot of disposable income. I don’t want to buy a lot of stuff, which is great, because I don’t have a lot of money to buy a lot of stuff.

(I like what just happened there – it is all very theoretically and practically cohesive. No cognitive dissonance there, at all. This is rare, for me, so let’s take a moment to observe/celebrate.)

Thank you. Onward.

Yesterday I had an epiphany about money.

Two, actually.

Last night, driving home from work, I heard a song by K-Naan, who is a Canadian, sometimes hip-hop but mostly pop artist I really like. I’ve been following him FOREVA and he’s just starting to get some serious commercial traction.

(See what I did there: I just established a lil’ artistic snobbery/authenticity. I don’t like K-Naan just ‘cuz they’re playing him on The Beat. Noooooo, I liked him when he was unknown, unpopular, and starving! I can pick talent even before it is mass-sanctioned! I must know about music! But let’s be honest: I know nothing about music. I am a music mutt. Listen to it all. Like most of it. Indiscriminate. Will hump anyone’s leg. Are we still talking about music?)

The song is called Wavin’ Flag and the chorus landed with me:

When I get older

I will be stronger

They’ll call me Freedom

Just like a wavin’ flag

Those simple lyrics ear-wormed me and made me remember my hypothetical baby.

I once had a boyfriend (I know, you’re SHOCKED). We talked about getting married and having a baby. We would name our imaginary baby Justice.

Justice would probably be a girl, but she could be a boy, if she wants to be because Justice is a profound, beautiful, aspirational and gender-indeterminate name.

And then people started naming their kids Apple and Moses and Blanket and I decided that Arthur and Gertrude were the way to go.

(My children are so lucky they have a father who talked me out of that. Also, note to my father: Arthur is a beautiful, bad-ass name worn by only the chosen.)

And that boyfriend and I broke up, babyless, anyway. He is married now and has a new baby named Prince Magic My Dad is Hot but Not Very Nice To Women Zuma.

Back to my epiphany.

For the last 1-3 years, I have been trying, mightily, to make peace with a dream. I have been trying, more than mightily, to let that dream go. To breathe it into a balloon and release it into the sky. To let that dream fly away.

That dream is a baby.

Recently, a psychic friend (a real, in-person, unpaid psychic friend, not the 1-800 kind) told me that I have two unborn babies waiting for me. One is a dark-skinned, dark eyed, short little boy who is very energetic and mischievious. The other is a light-skinned, tall, skinny, quiet, shy girl.

Tears rushed my eyes and tracked my cheeks.

Here are my deets: I have two actual kids and one is only school age by minutes. If I had a third child, and, after a reasonable amount of maternity/parental leave

[We Interrupt This Sentence for a Digressive, Sarcastic Political Rant]

In Canada, maternity/parental leave is paid at 55% of your income for ONE YEAR. I love Canada, but not as much as Sweden, where it is 80% for sixteen months. In the US, I believe, maternity leave is 5 minutes and six seconds at 0% of your income – I could be wrong –  and then, after you leap out of the delivery room to rush back to your job,  you can get fired for expressing milk in the bathroom on an unauthorized break. But oh, don’t forget, breast is best, you bad working fired mommy you.

[We Now Return to Your Regularly Scheduled Sentence]

returned to work (because I have to AND I choose to), after paying for daycare for three  kids (two real and one imaginary) and our house, I would have negative five million dollars left for food and other discretionary expenses like heat and electricity.

So – setting aside all ethical dilemmas about being a single mama, raising a kid without a father, and having kids when you don’t intend to raise them because daycare is the devil but school, which is just institutionalized, government-funded daycare, is just fine – it is just not financially possible for me to have another baby. Dream or no dream.

Heart’s desire and soul’s yearning, please shuttie.

Doesn’t that suck? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all make our dearest, secret dreams come true?

I imagine this is a decision-point faced by many. It is not only me.  I imagine lots of women and families confront the finances/dream dilemma.

So I’m trying to let it go.  It is pressingly urgent that I let it go, because I’m thirty-sex. I mean thirty-six. If I don’t let it go, then I have to do something about it (like, say, find someone who loves me and wants to be a family with me and lure him into impregnating me, and I think my gentleman caller just un-called) pretty quick. Like in the next five minutes to three years quick.

So I was listening to K-naan and hearing how they call him Freedom, much like my imaginary baby would be called Justice, and thinking, for the millionth time, that it is really important for my sanity and my bank account and my career plans that I let that dream go.

Because it hangs me up.

  • It makes me worry about things not in my immediate control.
  • It is simply not up to me, only, if I find an appropriate partner and fall in love and get married and landscape imaginary back yards and structure my life to be conducive to pregnancy and babies and so on.
  • It forces me to date and be date-able.
  • It distracts me from the the things I can actually work at and have a “energy/talent in = success out” formula. Like writing. Like my career. Like vacuuming.

And then I was thinking: I should write about this. I should write my way through this. I should publicly let my third-baby-dream go.

Then I talked about it with my gentleman caller. I was thinking out loud. I was working my way to letting it go. I was claiming to let it go.

And as I was doing that, epiphany!

I am not letting it go.

I am holding on to this dream. The partner and the infrastructure may not be there. The finances certainly aren’t. But it is my dream and my imaginary baby and I am going to cradle it a little longer.

I betcha Madonna didn’t have this issue. She’s got loads of cash so she can just go around adopting un-0rphans willy nilly at any old age.

And as I thought this, epipany #2!

I am a good mama. My kids are happy and well-loved. I want to have another baby and that baby would be lucky to have me, and us. I simply need to have, and make, more money.

So I will.

Which is why I hereby admit I like money and want a whole lot more of it.

Because, let’s be honest, the point of money is ecstatic, meaningful survival and dream-realizing. The point of having lots of money isn’t so you can have loads of dinner plates or martini glasses.

Leo Babauta knows that intimately, personally, deeply, which is why Zen Habits is so popular, and, in a related development, Leo Babauta has SIX MILLION kids. I mean six.

The joy of money is that it allows you to live, happily, sufficiently, and well with the family of your heart and your choosing. That’s the gift of money.

And I’m going to go get some.

Justice, I’m coming.

November 7, 2009 | filed under: Bodies, Family, Love, Meaning, Money, People, Work

16 people have we need you too.

Ending a Good Thing for an Even Better Reason. Almost.

I’m ending a relationship because I’m fat.

We have passionate, easy, hours-long conversations, warmth, affection, respect, and outrageous sex. OUTRAGEOUS. Friendship, respect and hot sex: a pretty great foundation, right? What more can I ask for?

Everything.

Neither of us have butterflies. We were intensely comfortable with each other, right away. We’re both romantics, so naturally this worries us. Where is the infatuation? What does the lack of infatuation mean? Where can this go if it doesn’t start with addiction-like chemical highs?

I asked around. Lots of people seem to think this is no big deal, maybe even healthy. Mature. Real.

But I have a gut instinct about The Issue and it is this: I am everything he wants except thin.

I think this way a lot. I’m pretty sure that if I was thin, men would be lining up even further around the corner to date me. I am pretty, have a pretty good career, possess a dazzling personality if I do say so myself, am smart, talented, funny, artistic, warm, magic with clothes and makeup and ridiculously high shoes, and a sexual GENIUS. If I was thin, any man I chose would think he hit the fucking jackpot.

This is not (just) insecurity. This is cold-eyed social reality. Our culture trains people to see fat as a problem, as a shorthand for all sorts of moral failings. We don’t associate fat with attractive. And what, a good feminist might ask (ahem), is the point of a woman if she’s not attractive?

My friend keeps saying that he is attracted to my mind. Well, that’s wonderful, but you can’t fuck my mind. You can’t hold hands with my mind at an office party. You’re not walking down the street with my mind. You’re not introducing my mind to your mother. This mind comes in a fat body with all the social messaging and meaning that swirls around that presence and that word.

He has not said anything directly but I feel it. He is hedging about what we are to each other. I know what that means and it means I have to be strong. I have to believe in myself enough to stay out of a dynamic that will make me feel like I am not beautiful enough or thin enough or good enough. Because I am enough.

He’s not weak because he can’t accept me as I am. We all have physical preferences and attraction is not a choice. You feel what you feel for who you feel it and that’s the end (or the beginning) of it.

So that’s it. This is the choice I’m making: to walk away from an amazing friendship and even more amazing sex to preserve my self-respect and my faith that I am lovable just as I am.

I am. But the journey to that love is an uphill and tedious climb. The dating odds are stacked against fat girls. It would be easier to just conform, to diet and endure the mental and physical deprivation necessary for losing weight, and then choose from the queue that would form for access to my thin self. I may do that, not out of self-hatred, but out of sheer practicality: I want love. And, I can tell you from direct personal experience, fat can be a barrier to romance.

Despite what the fat-haters say about the dangers of Fat Acceptance, no one sets out to become a body outlaw. The rewards are vastly smaller and sparser than the risks and the social penalties. It would be easier to just conform. And I may do that. Because although I deserve love just as I am, and am lovable just as I am, and won’t accept anything less just as I am, just as I am is just not getting me what I want.

I shouldn’t have to alter myself to find love, but that might be the reality of this little social construct called the world. I don’t live in a world all by myself where I make the rules by myself and life unfolds according to the principles and whims I decree all by myself. Sadly. Happily. Really.
___________________________

Sadly, happily, really, and almost.

This is an update. I wrote this post to fight-club my way to a decision and course of action that would not require a throw-down with cognitive dissonance every damn day.

Blogging is that process for me. I write to unwind my wooly thoughts, instincts and fears and arrive at a decision. Hopefully a good decision. A self-respecting decision. And I did. I chose not to join a relationship in which I would have to accept a ‘not good enough’ feeling. I chose not to trade my confidence for companionship. I decided to end things before they even got started. It felt honest, brave, and necessary. It felt fucking awful.

Even mixed with a triumph of the soul, the consequences of this decision were going to suck. Really suck.

The hard, unpleasant, unwelcome prospect of being without someone I like and respect forced me to do something even more honest, brave and necessary than walking away from him. I talked to him.

I checked to see if my ‘instinct’ was an intuition rooted in subtle signals (his, maybe) or fear and insecurity (mine, surely). I asked him about his feelings about weight and women and attractiveness and me.

We had an awkward, painful, inspiring and invigorating conversation. Turns out we’re good. Game on.

September 23, 2009 | filed under: Bodies, Love, Meaning, Sex

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