Out of sorts

[wolven7]

Mentally, I'm not feeling that great, and I don't know if its stress or what, but I don't feel all here, these past few days

Pixies - [Gigantic]--- Everything's been lining up more and more-- music at sjust the right time, just the right internet post to illuminate a thing, a particular reference on TV-- but that's not... It's reference. It's funny. It's cute. I need a little more, just now, you know? Point me toward something, resonate with something. Not just the random ephermera, but something sharper, more defined, out of the static and the hum.

I started using a filter on this thing, and then I promptly stopped posting anything of real substance. Questions. Snippets. Not whole pictures, anymore. Nothing that means much, out of context.

Peter Gabriel - [Signal To Noise (Instrumental)]--- I always tell people to ask me anything because I always hope they'll ask me what I really want to say but don't think anyone wants to hear. So I ask you to ask me and I place it under filters and under screened replies, and I wait, because I honestly don't think I know how to frame what it is I want to say without a question to focus it down.

It's something to do with intimacy and honesty and sharing and truth and sex but the sex part is more of a consequent than an antecedant-- it's an effect and not the cause... Symptom. Not disease...

Sex means a lot but doesn't really mean much at all. It's a culmination of a set of ways of thinking about intimacy and desire, indicative of what people think it means to really know someone, to really (romantically) love someone, and, as such, I think it's something I've always struggled with because there is no clear line in my head between how to love a friend and how to love a... Friend Plus? (Mai Yamine & the SEATBELTS - [Green Bird]). It's always been a thing I think to have the person with whom you have a relationship be a friend first-- always a thing for me, I mean-- because-- and I've said this before-- when you are friends with someone you give them the so much of yourself, so much access, so little restriction.

The Clash - [Armagideon Time]--- Why does that go away for some people? Something happens where people start to tamp down the things that they used to share. Those things don't go away, do they? Just because you're in a monagamous relationship with someone doesn't mean you don't still find someone else attractive. But where you may once have talked to your best friend about this, if that same person is now your significant other, you might hold it back. (Jarboe & Justin K Broadrick - Romp). And yet most people claim that desire doesn't equal intent. That fantasy doesn't mean a desire to bring to fruition.

But what if deep down everyone dreads that that's exactly what it means? (the pAper chAse - Wait Until I Get My Hands on You). Wouldn't that explain why some don't talk to their lovers, their significant others, about attraction, or jokes, or porn, or that trip to the strip club the girls want to take? Because there is this fundamental frison in their minds when they think about the difference between desire and action. They think it doesn't ink up, but they fear that it does, and what if it does, does that mean they don't want me anymore, does that mean I'm not enough for them does that mean that I'm terrible, that I've done something wrong, that everything is going to shit, what about the one for me, what about the children, what about everything we've built together.

Fuck a friend without talking about what you both think that is. See if your relationship doesn't change. Tell your significant other everything.

I'm not trying to be cynical, here. I want to tell everyone everything, but that would mean breaking confidences, in some cases, which... Well you know me. Not mine to do. But I can tell you most things. I can leave out names to protect the ones who had the most fun. (Cindergarden - Something To Kill For). This is what I mean about the music, by the way. Since the Jarboe, this has been on random. Anyway. I can't tell you who--even if you can clearly infer-- but I can always tell you what.

All you have to do is ask.

But I'm not going to sit here and talk into the void, unless the void starts talking back again. I want to give everything I have to give, but I want to know that you'll want it, that you've asked for it, and that you mean it.

Sure, of course, some things are unknowable until the time of show. The spotlight doesn't come on cue, there's a random screech in the violin, whatever. (Blonde Redhead - [Melody]). But you can practice your lines and you can project your voice to the cheap seats. Practice and project. That's all I'm asking for. Say you'll be here until you can't be, anymore, and then say goodbye.

It's surprising how much you just want a goodbye, sometimes. Leave if you want, if you have to just... don't do it in silence.

The pAper chAse - [What's So Amazing About Grace]--- As I said, I'm out of sorts. This is a bit indulgent. But that's a journal for you, isn't it? Here are my thoughts, written for anyone to see, for "posterity." Hubris, at its best. Because someone wants to see what you wrote? Someone wants to read your thoughts?

Jarboe - The Body Lover--- Of course they do.

Comments

[mendori.livejournal.com]

This is a constant problem for me.

How do you draw a line between friend and lover? If you are a friend, I love you. It seems so simple in my head.

The issues of private and public, shared and unshared, seem so complicated out in the world.

[raoin.livejournal.com]

speaking of which: i miss you.
i'll be up your neck of the woods on saturdays starting on the 14th, we could maybe hang out after i get out of class? 5pm-ish?

[mendori.livejournal.com]

That would be awesome. <3

[wolven.livejournal.com]

The issues of private and public, shared and unshared, seem so complicated out in the world.

Precisely and exactly this. I feel like I want to ask everyone what they're okay with me sharing...

...Actually.

[thehobbit.livejournal.com]

I'm struggling with internal/external and the fight of the "nice guy" and how that's being fought against more and more and friends and lovers and...

...really I'm just struggling right now I think with everything.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

What's your definition of "Nice Guy?"

[mrvi.livejournal.com]

See, I never know what you want me to ask, and there is no real burning question except, a combination of the Vorlon/Shadow/Technomage questions:

Who are you, what do you want, and who do you serve, and in whom do you trust?

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Those are all good questions, great places to start.

I am Wolven, also Damien. I want intimacy, honesty, communication, understanding, wanting, having, making. I serve myself, my friends, my family, and those whom it is in my interests to serve.

I trust... Myself. unknownbinaries. And you and most everyone who reads this, at least to Some extent. Or I'd have locked all of these, wouldn't I?

[raoin.livejournal.com]

i'm with mrvi, i never have any burning questions... no i take that back... i have burning questions but they're all like "hey, are we still going to live together?" and other things that pertain to us living together and have nothing to do with philosophy or sex or most of the stuff you talk about here... although they do have a lot to do with real-world sociological applications of interpersonal theory.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Those are important questions and we should discuss those, soon.

[raidingparty.livejournal.com]

"The bell curve"

So at one end, we have the fantasies, some of which are projected onto real people. (Johnny Depp, Judy Dench, and Jessica Rabbit ask me to judge a kissing battle?) I want to have sex with them in theory. I have no idea what I would do if actually presented with such - either someone famous or just a random horny and hot person I don't know.
In the middle, we have people for whom I may have some level of physical attraction, but feel no intimacy with them. Despite on more than one occasion having "considered it" at the interested party's insistence, it really goes nowhere. Since having hurt a number of people by "considering it", I think the best policy is going to be to stop it before giving them any false hope, but I'm still figuring that part out; I have a recurring problem with people who are (as far as I can tell) incompatible with me becoming smitten with me.
At the other end, we have people with whom I feel intimate. "Blood relatives" excluded, of course. There are a number who, if skimming a dating site and I didn't already know them, I would probably otherwise skip because I'm not attracted to them visually, but because of our emotional connection I would be quite happy to play with.
And then around at the top of the circle are a combination of physical and emotional attraction, but that's apparently fairly rare.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Idealisations are almost always rare.

[nausved.livejournal.com]

That's interesting. For me—and I suspect I'm extremely rare this way—there is a very obvious, unmistakable delineation between platonic friendship and romantic/sexual attraction. I tend to view almost every person I encounter the same way I view a family member or a child; it doesn't even cross my mind that this might be someone I could potentially be physically attracted to, and the whole idea seems inappropriate to consider. (Strangely, it doesn't bother me to learn when a friend is attracted to me. I am a sexual being, even if I have a hard time seeing other people that way, so I don't feel awkward when other people see me as a sexual being.)

I *can* develop crushes on people I previously viewed entirely platonically, but crushes are extremely weak and short-lived for me. Most of my life, I have gone feeling asexual—in the sense of feeling absolutely no attraction to anyone. ("Asexual" is a bit of a misleading term in my case, because I'm still very sexual. I usually just lack desire to share that part of myself with anyone else.) The first time I got a crush, I was already well into my teens—and it was a totally bizarre and foreign experience that lasted a couple of days. It felt like a fluke. All my crushes feel like flukes. They don't lead to me actually *wanting* anything from my crush; I *certainly* don't want to date them or have sex with them or even spend more time than usual with them. I just feel a little fluttery in their company, and then it passes.

But, on very rare occasions, a crush isn't just a crush. It becomes what I assume is love. Suddenly, I *want* that person in every way. I want to spend every moment with him. I want to have constant sex with him. I want to read his mind and have him read mine. This experience is so dramatically unlike anything else I've ever experienced. It's the *only* time I feel physical desire for another person. And it eliminates my ability to have crushes on other people—although, to be fair, when I have a minor crush on someone, I've never been able to have a crush on someone else at the same time, either.

I've been in an open relationship and I tried very, very hard to develop even a tickle of a crush on another guy, to see if I was capable. Apparently I wasn't. As far as I can tell, I am legitimately monogamous by nature—and sometimes I feel like the only person in the entire world who is (or, at least, I've never met a monogamous person—only people who who aren't strictly monogamous by nature, but nevertheless prefer monogamy). Whether my monogamy is just a side effect of being exceptionally picky, I can't say.

Another thing I've noticed is that, for whatever reason, I can't seem to disentangle love and sex; one is the expression of the other. The idea of sex with someone I don't love is repulsive. But, likewise, loving someone without having very frequent sex makes me feel absurdly lonely and unloved—no matter how sweet and romantic and attentive my lover otherwise is. Intellectually, I can understand this is not the case for everyone but, deep down, I can't quite wrap my head around it. To me, loving someone without wanting to have sex with them (regardless of my state of arousal!) is like loving someone without wanting to hang out with them. It does not compute.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

I don't know how rare you are, in the scheme of things. I think you're probably-- like most of us-- a point on graph. We're all very different, but we all have elements of each other's preferences reflected in our own. Works out, sometimes.

"Asexual" is a bit of a misleading term in my case, because I'm still very sexual. I usually just lack desire to share that part of myself with anyone else.)

This is a very interesting and revealing perspective, and I thank you for sharing it with me.

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

I also develop crushes on almost every new person I meet. Its pretty de rigeur for me and I don't attach any importance to my crush other than "here's someone I can really like" because I know if I develop a relationship with the person -platonic, romantic - the crush will morph into basic interest, affection and respect. Anything else is bonus.

But I can disentangle love and sex. loveless sex is fine by me but only when I'm uninvolved with anyone else. I accept that I am a monogamous person by nature. I simply lose interest in other people when I love someone as a partner.

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

however, my "weirdness" is that pure sexual attraction is extremely rare for me outside of being in love. most of my life i've engaged in sexual behavior because i merely liked the person and thought sex with them would be fun. the times ive felt that magic pull of being "turned on" by the mere sight of someone was when i was in love with said person.for me, "attractive" really means "nice to look at" it doesn't mean "revs my motor"

[raidingparty.livejournal.com]

"attractive" really means "nice to look at" it doesn't mean "revs my motor"

---

Oh, right, I forgot to mention that aspect.
I like looking at naked women (or pictures thereof), but unless there's something specifically sexual about the picture, it's not too far removed from seeing a galaxy or cool car, or even an attractive (and potentially naked man).
Whereas particular discussions and closeness, even fully clothed, get my full (and sometimes unexpected) attention.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Thank you, very much.

[sillylilly-bird.livejournal.com]

"It's surprising how much you just want a goodbye, sometimes. Leave if you want, if you have to just... don't do it in silence."

This. I've recently had someone just... drop me. No goodbye, no "I'm too busy," no "we were just work-friends," no nothin'. Anger, disappointment, hurt. Mostly hurt. Because, really, how hard is it to click "reply" and type a sentence or two. The lack of communication baffles me.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

It is never a pleasant thing. I still don't know anything that fills that silence, especially trying to reconnect with that person, having found them again... And then... Well. When the silence happens again?

You can't be surprised, right? But it still sucks

[sinvokasha.livejournal.com]

My experience has been that there are two kinds of people who do "friends plus."

There are the ones for whom "friend" actually means what I traditionally take as "friend," i.e. respect, intimacy, concern for one another's problems, etc.

Then there are the ones for whom "friend" means what it means on Facebook. i.e. you are on their "contact list" but they don't really care about you or your life beyond their momentary caprice.

Most insidious are the ones who apparently expect you to treat them as a friend in the first sense, but treat you as a friend in the second sense in return.

Anyway, my experience has been that people can seem nice, or cool, or whatever, and still turn out to be operating on the second sense of "friend." Which, to me who holds fast to the first sense, is not really a "friend" and rather hurtful, especially when it turns out that they were fucking me whilst holding my spiritual worldview in contempt, resenting a woman who is more educated and/or successful than they are, acting as if the woman's orgasm is optional, or etc. But they still call that a "friend" because they want to keep the fucking happening.

At the same time, I also think that a lot of people who think that sex and intimacy are totally separable are lying to themselves. They rationalize on the basis that they want to have sex right now that sex has no consequences other than the ones that they want it to have. They think they are somehow accomplishing something in the game of life because they are racking up sexual experience, yet they are actually still lonely and sad and subtly-or-not-so-subtly complaining that their "friend plus" isn't actually dating them.

I think both kinds of "friends plus" practitioners are affected by this problem. Those who take friend in the first sense primarily hurt themselves by it, and those who take friend in the second sense primarily hurt others by it. But I think that in both cases, people are trying to fill some hole in their soul with sex, when intimacy or love is what they really need to fill that hole. It's an understandable mistake, inasmuch as there is a kind of intimacy that I think goes hand-in-hand with sex (unless the people involved are self-absorbed, sociopathic, socially incompetent or otherwise broken). If one has sex with someone, one comes to "know" that person as one does not know others. But that intimacy is not in-and-of-itself equal to a committed relationship.

I don't think that everyone being monogamous would automatically fix these problems. I do think though that treating sex as something value-free aggravates a lot of the self-awareness problems inherent in what I've said above.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Sex isn't value-free, but it doesn't have an inherent value. It's societal, and contextual, but no less important because of that. I think that thinking of it as this monolithic thing but not addressing the fact that it affects everyone differently is part of what screws us up about sex, in Western society...

[cailement.livejournal.com]

Yes, but this is a convo I'd prefer to have face to face.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

You going to be around, Sunday?

[cailement.livejournal.com]

Nah, I'm getting on a jet plane tomorrow morning (hopefully morning, we're trying to bump up our flight, fingers crossed, from the afternoon) and getting back sunday night. Next week, perhaps?

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Perhaps, yes :)

[prosewitch.livejournal.com]

I feel as though I'm terrible at asking people questions in a general conversational sense. I attribute this to my shyness and introversion, as well as how I only recently learned how to be comfortable in social situations like at parties and stuff. I never used to know what to say in a group setting, and as a result, my mind would freeze up and I'd have no idea what to say (which encompassed not being able to think of good questions to ask people).

However, I've since learned the fine art of ethnography, so I've gotten quite good at interviewing people if there's a topic that interests me. I'm also good at asking questions of a text, as in close readings of folktales or whatever. But it's never really occurred to me to apply my professional skill set to a personal interaction... possibly because I simply hadn't thought it would be useful, and possibly because I don't want to make people uncomfortable by making them objects of investigation. There's already enough risk of that in a fieldwork encounter; why would I want to do that to my friends? (unless, of course, they want to be investigated, as seems to be the case with you)

[wolven.livejournal.com]

(unless, of course, they want to be investigated, as seems to be the case with you)

This actually brings up something really interesting and strange for me... Do we always want done to us what we do to others? Do we actually do unto others as we would have them et cetera...

And then I think about how I'd like to see a study done on the correlation of psychoanalytic/-therapeutic professionals and whether they Dom or Sub when placed in BDSM situations. And then I want to see those broken down correlated to professional methodology...

[drgnsyr.livejournal.com]

I had two different acquaintances tell me they wanted to go into Physical Therapy. I asked them both the same question. "Are you okay with hurting people?" One of them said no, that she wanted to help people. I told her that physical therapy hurts. And you have to make your patient keep doing it even when it hurts and keep trying even when they don't think they can take it anymore. She immediately started brainstorming other career goals.

The other one just smiled and said, "Yes."