A Weekend Well-Spent

For being a Monday, the morning is going alright. I've got me some tunes playing and work is slow which gives me the opportunity to take care of a few personal matters. My Madison Area Literacy council registration material is ready to mail. I replied to Miss Tomah who had e-mailed me Saturday. She was kind enough to include her phone number. So it seems as if I have passed the first test. I must be harmless enough, apparently. I'll ring her tonight or tomorrow.

My weekend was a lot of fun. It began with Miss Pamela's arrival early Saturday afternoon. When I opened the door and saw here there, I noticed she was clutching a 6-pack of Capital Autumnal Fire. Mmmm...Soon enough we headed out for State Street. Our first stop was Stillwaters where we ate lunch. I suspect it was the attraction of Long Island iced teas that lured into the joint. We ate, drank, and shot the shit. I sat facing a window and, at one point, a vaguely familiar gentleman stood out on the sidewalk looking at me and waving. He popped in and we traded pleasantries. I felt a bit bad as I didn't fully recollect who he was until after he'd left. While I can't remember his name (Doug?), he was one of the guys on the ADS team at American Family. He is a fairly typical geek and all-around nice person. I knew that he was my kinda guy when he boasted one day that he co-wrote the rules for a group here in town that does recreations of battles from The Lord of the Rings.

From Stillwaters, it was off to Mimosa so Miss Pamela could buy a singing bowl. A singing bowl is a bowl that you hold in your hand and rub the outside rim with a pestle-like hoolie. If you do it correctly, the bowl will resonate and emit a distinctive hum. It's pretty neat. I tried to make a few of the bowls hum but was able to only get one to actually sing. I hadn't been to Mimosa's new digs before and was unhappy because I didn't see any cats wandering around like at the old location. That and there seemed to be less books. The store is smaller now so I guess some sacrifices had to be made. After Pam blew lots of money, we headed to the Plaza for a beer. There was a small crowd there watching the Baders get their asses stomped. We drank and chatted some more before heading off to A Woman's Touch. Pam was like a kid in a candy store as she perused the lingerie and vibrators. I must admit, I got a bit randy looking over the various panties, garters, etc. She spent a lot of time carefully considering the selection of pleasure-inducing toys. It seemed unfair that womyn were given a vast array of toys from which to choose while I counted considerably less that were specifically designed for we men. Only two, in fact. Ah well, like Tiresias said about the enjoyment of sex, "Of ten parts a man enjoys one only, but a woman enjoys the full ten parts in her heart." We also spent some time looking over the various books there. I have a paucity of erotic fiction & photography books in my collection and I should really bolster it but I'm too picky. Pam really likes Eric Kroll but, after giving a couple of his books there a once-over, I found his stuff to be hit or miss. Still, I'll look into his work further.

After Pam had spent enough money there, we went down the street to Mickey's. We drank and talked more. Having just been at a sex-positive toy store, it was unsurprising that we should talk about it. While Pam didn't complain for hours or anything but she has some desires that remain unfulfilled. One of the problems is that her hubby takes 2 or 3 anti-depressant medications which have adverse effects on his libido. Considering that she's such a beautiful, passionate womyn, it seems a great shame and I hate to have a good friend with such a cloud hanging over her head. I'm getting laid frequently and having fun and that puts me in the frame of mind that everyone should be having lots and lots of great sex, especially those close to me. And so, when I heard her tale, it just struck a nerve, so to speak. Hopefully they can get things worked out so that both of them find fulfillment.

As the beer flowed and conversation went on, she told me that a couple of her friends find themselves in marriages that are going less than optimally. I'd met these two womyn before so Pam's comments seemed to hit me a bit harder than if they had been complete & total strangers. The comment that really stuck in my mind was how they both loved their husbands but didn't want to touch or be touched by them. I got the impression that they loved their husbands but were no longer in love with them. How terrible. (And they have children.) I had to wonder how many couples find themselves in that kind of situation. I dated a womyn for a 2+ years and we had a terrible sex life. I think I masturbated about a million times more than we made love. (And she dumped me. Oh, the irony.) So I am familiar with the intense frustration that a poor sex life instills within someone and the strain it puts on a relationship. Being a man, I felt that I was being denied my God-given right, namely to have sex whenever I cared to. Selfish? You betcha. But who claims that the libido is rational and/or egalitarian? Aside from the lack of physical pleasure, it also denied me a certain amount of emotional intimacy and that effect snowballed until we were virtually strangers living together. On top of this, it made me question myself: does she not find me attractive any longer? am I that unskilled a lover? am I a horrible person? It was just one big terrible mess from which we could never untangle ourselves. At least we weren't married so separating was a lot easier than had we been married with children for several years.

Part of my fascination with this topic lies in the fact that this kind of stuff has been in the back of my brain for a while. It goes back months to when I was reading articles by Andrea Dworkin, et al and arguing with a reader about gender. More recently, I've read about the upcoming film, Kinsey, as well as that story of the two men here who turned themselves in after murdering 2 or 3 people. One of those people is the former girlfriend of one of the killers. She fled from him to Nebraska and the pair drove down there and kidnapped her. Plus the Scott Peterson case has been on the news a lot. Add in a hefty dose of Steven Pinker & evolutionary psychology and you can see why human nature, gender roles, and relationships have been on my mind.

There are times when I go out for a square here at work that I encounter a gaggle of womyn in the smoking area all chatting away. Often times I overhear their conversation and often times it's about their husbands. Sometimes I get the impression that they've all succeeded in marrying the most uncaring, selfish men on the planet. An exaggeration it may be but there are times when I wonder why some of these womyn are still married to these guys. It makes me wonder sometimes. What is happening behind all the facades of smiles that I see everyday. Well, enough pondering for now.

Miss Pamela and I returned to my place and checked out some erotica on the Net and listened to some tunes with Autumnal Fire in hand. After she left, I went over to The Dulcinea's. The second I walked in the door, she began taking off her clothes. So the second I had my shoes off, I removed my clothes. We started off on the couch and made it to a chair before going to her bed. I awoke during the antelucan hours of Sunday morning and started humping her leg. It wasn't long before I was on top of and inside of her. We laid around in bed for a while before I decided to leave. It's not that I really wanted to go but I was keen on getting out of there before her songs awoke. Just as I was putting on my shoes, one of them came downstairs. He just looked at me. And I at him until I bid him good morning. He said nothing. He'd seen me before at TH and suspected something but I was outed. Not that it's really a big deal but I don't want to add any more confusion to his life. His biological father lives far away, his mom and stepfather are divorcing and now there's my vague presence in his life.

Upon getting home, I found Stevie running vinegar through the coffeemaker. Something was wrong with it and he decided that a cleaning was in order. When that had finished, he made a pot of lukewarm coffee-flavored water. We let it sit for a while longer so that the heating element could get up to temp and then tried again - same thing. With my cup of black liquid, I watched some BookTV. A womyn by the name of Nancy Pearcy gave an anti-humanism spiel at Christian bookstore in promotion of her tome, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its
Cultural Captivity. While giving her criticisms, she bandied the term "religious truth" about quite a bit but never defined it. She just assumed that everyone could see it or, at least, her version of it. It seems to me that there are all kinds of "religious truths" out their competing with one another. When she complained that intelligent design explanations were neglected in the schools, I wished that I could reach into the TV and slap her. The reason they're not taught is that they're not science! And she mischaracterized various statements by folks such as Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennett. Instead of appreciating their awe and amazement of the human predicament, she took their statements to mean that they deny the existence of the soul and that their minds are left without and adequate replacement. After a while, I decided that what my hangover needed was grease. So I zipped over to the Jenifer Street Market and bought some bread and breakfast sausage. A large, fat-laden breakfast gave way to a nap. Which, in turn, gave way to me going over to Dogger's to play D&D. It was a hoot because Pete got all pissed off because we refused to just rush into a month plus journey in stealth. With all these questions about the white dragon supposedly tracking us, he wanted to go find its lair and set a trap. Just the 5 of us. It sounded like a death sentence to me. Cut ourselves off from people for weeks? How could we keep abreast of developments? And so Marv led us on to the next part of the adventure in which we encountered a nasty troll thingy. So we finally kill it only to explore the cave a bit more and find a couple umber hulks and an ilithid. THAT is going to suck. Someone in our party to going to die or, at the very least, have some brain matter sucked out by that ilithid.

Today has been alright. Work is pretty slow. I spent my lunch over at Ancora doing the NYT crossword puzzle since I had forgotten my current read at home. As I was sitting there pondering a clue, the interminably cute blonde approached said hello and that she didn't see me come in the store. It was nice to have a hottie be so friendly. So I enlisted her in doing the puzzle. She got a clue before returning to work. April wandered over as well and lent a hand. Eventually I finished the puzzle in between ogling the blonde's ass. Mmm...And now I'm waiting for this day to fucking end. Two guys here left early because they felt for shite and everyone else is pissed off and frustrated about the impending rollouts this week with the first starting in about 3 hours. I got to see the fickle Ms. Sarah but she was too busy for me to hit on her.