Take the What Sex Position Are You? test by Ley Ley Courtesy of Reverend BoB.
I'm very happy to have found him again. Thank you Bill, for passing on the info.
Now here's the thing about wedding rings. They're just rings. Just little loops of metal. But they're important. Not necessarily to the couple who might be strong enough to go beyond the symbolism, and what the fuck do I care about the illusory comfort that it affords the family and relatives?
But you see, wedding rings are practical for strangers. They let us believe that you're just being friendly, that you've got reason back home to not actively be expecting anything more than the conversation at hand.
They're a relief, despite the many incidences that should probably have taught me otherwise - like Tuan who is steadily and permanently married and yet was rather insistent that we "get it on" lors that first ski trip.
Thing is, I've fought hard for this naivet�, and when Charming Gentleman this morning mentioned that his WIFE is from Cambodia and so he really enjoys asian food and would love to know about tha restaurant I discovered near la place Denis Dussoubs...
I breathed a sigh of relief and wish I'd known beforehand, so that I could have accepted his invitation to that accoustic-guitar concert he went to last night.
But then, I was tired inside my bones. Exhausted. Uncountable hours on my feet, working hard, stressed behind it, in a third town in three days.
I had no appetite when I hit the hotel, long past 8pm, and barely any strength either, but the stubborn pride of The Adventurer had me out in the streets heading for that Cathedral behind that little foot-bridge on all those postcards I'd sent out my first few times here.
Of the handful of things I've learned in France, is the difference between a church and a cathedral, and it sounds silly but I finally don't get those insulted and incredulous looks when I call one the other, and the other the first, anymore.
I was back by nine, though, in the bath moments later, until the heat made me too drowsy to lie still.
In bed, it was me and Callahan's Lady, and if I ever meet Spider Robinson I'm going to fall to my knees thanking him for the strength he loans with every idealistic, romanticised, utopian word in every story.
This one's about a bordello. THE bordello. Where sex is pure fun and promiscuity a point of pride, love is an entirely different thing and delivered in abundance without expectations or guilt or lines drawn in the sand, lush carpeting, or various practical yet decorative substances covering the walls.
And it has a spiral staircase.
And proud, brilliant, thriving people who know pain, but who also know healing, who know unconditional love and are able to distill it from, and then return it to, the world around them.
People, who in my dysfunctional little head, are true heroes.
And Spider Robinson, like Steven, understands that.
And last night, reading until way past my bedtime, he reminded me when I needed it most.
He reminded me who I've been thriving all this time for a monstre to be.
I woke up this morning after a bare handful of sleep, my body singing with the release of a purely honest masturbation session, and my mind singing with the pure joy of finding love in the world again.
Something to believe in...
I ain't afraid of the fanboys no more. The scary part is, it's only when you stop being afraid that you ever realize that you ever were, or how debilitating it ever was.
Namast�, namast�.
I haven't used that word in far too long.
And kaff? I've been remiss in my duties.
I've forgotten to tell you that I love you. And that it's okay. Everything is, whatever it is. I'm sorry if I let my own stresses and fears and the bumps on my own journey get in the way of communicating that.
Just in general, just to the world and all the people who want to hear it, and by sheer merit of that deserve to, David and Princess and Steven and Mr. Pyke and BoB and Bill and cf and mystie the thousand names I wish I could plant a kiss on the forehead of...
At the risking of sounding like a doped-up flake (and I'll admit, I had hot chocolate for breakfast);
I love you.
Tout simplement.
I am brimming over with it, unconditionally, and in between the server restarts and configuration files, I am at peace with a part of myself I hadn't realized I'd lost touch with.
Paris has been good for me in a lot of ways, a lot of lessons, a lot of growth and realizations, but there have been a million stresses too, and regardless of whether I handled them well at the time or not...
I'm even better able to face them now.
When the little high school boys who check me out every morning at the bus stop, stopped to ask for a light, I smiled rather genuinely when I apologized for not having one.
When the pretty goth-boy wearing a far-too-familiar cut coat and doc boots without any laces got on the bus, I smiled at the first memories of that coat, the first time I saw it, in 1994.
When the three little boys who all want to be my boyfriends got on just before I was wandering off, I put my book down and happily exchanged pleasantries with their dad, un-threatened by the world around me for the first time, for the first time realizing I'd ever felt that way.
In the caf� this morning, surrounded by path�phones and every other ancient gramaphone, starting at the little dog in the "His Master's Voice" poster, I marvelled at the natural extravertedness of the other patrons with their small-town melodious accents, and smiled back, thrilled to be included in their happy view of the day ahead of them.
The sunlight is glinting off the too-green leaves of the trees outside my window, and my compile is just about finished.
And I am brimming again.
I just wish I could lick it onto the end of a stamp and send it out to a million people.
Flake. I'm such a flake.
But a happy one. :)
(the monstre is back and yer gonna be in trou-ble, hey-la, hey-la... bang, bang, shoot, shoot, no wait, wrong song... ;)
Right. Shutting up. Now. But gosh, it's so hard not to babble happily sometimes.
And that in itself is a measure of the wonder in the world.
Something else to believe in.