Since the kids were born I have been mostly avoiding men. I have only been alone with them a handful of times in the past six years. I just… don’t. Men are more complicated than women in a variety of ways.

Only in the past few weeks I’ve been alone with a man more than once. I’m having feelings about this. One of the men I’ve spent time with lately came into my life during my last hunting period. He was prey and I was reeling him in when the monogamy standard slammed into place. Now he’s becoming a friend. (I’d be very cool with pimping him out to my friends–he’s a really nice guy so far.) But when I hang out with him there’s a little tension there. Like I feel around interesting people.

And when I went dancing this weekend one of Noah’s male friends asked to come along. I was surprised. I’ve barely been in a crowded room with this guy let alone riding in a car with him alone. Luckily the car ride was the only alone time. Luckily? What was I going to do to him?

I don’t know. But being around men is always fraught. I of course have no idea what they are thinking or feeling. But being around men makes me want to have sex. That’s just how I make friends. Only I can’t any more. It’s weird. I don’t allow myself to get into full fledged fantasies at this point. I don’t theorize the best approach. But there are noticeable signs in my body. Controlling my physical actions is conscious.

I default into seductive physical mannerisms unconsciously. Being “friendly” but not too friendly takes conscious effort. I’m going through the effort. Maybe some day it will even feel natural.

For now I miss falling into bed with everyone. I miss the adrenaline and excitement and bonding. I miss that oxytocin rush. Yes, I bond with Noah but it’s different. It isn’t new and exciting. I like Noah. He’s still my favorite.

My shrink doesn’t seem to think that monogamy is a necessary or useful goal for me. Which I have feelings about.

I think I kind of have to prove to myself that I am physically capable of keeping it in my pants. It takes effort. There are so many interesting people in the world. It’s funny how it is easier to notice that women are attractive and that I’d be happy to have sex with them but I have less physical urge to pounce. Women are much harder to approach and I have a much lower success rate.

If I had been more successful in my early efforts with girls I kind of wonder if I would be so male focused. I like girls. I like girls a lot. Not so many are willing to let me touch their sticky bits. Boys have lower standards. So I respond to them more quickly.

I am not assuming that either of the men I spent alone time with were feeling tension. I’m talking about my experience. Given how often I have been turned down for sex I feel like I am not the best judge of someone else’s interest or not. I have to just ask and wait for the yes or no.

So when I’m around interesting men I want to ask. I want to pretty fiercely. I was totally appropriate.

One of the guys asked if I wanted to go running with him and his dog. He’s happy to slow down for me. It would be impetus for me to work on speed. He regularly runs in the 9 min/mile range. The fastest I’ve consistently managed is in the 11 min/mile range. I would kind of like to have the ability to go faster. It just takes practice. I’m competitive and I have a very hard time with feeling like I’m crippling other people with my lack of ability. I tend to progress very quickly when I start trying to catch up to someone.

But we are in a range of physical fitness I’ve never dreamed of before. I’m intimidated and intrigued at the same time.

I have also spent time with another male friend in the past few months. But he is an older friend. Also a former play partner. The tension is there but diffused. How to explain it. We both like one another and if it were ok we would play more. But since it isn’t ok we don’t have that new-shiny-burning-to-try-a-new-toy feeling. It’s more yes, “Ah yes. I remember you and your canes. Mmmmm canes. Tell them hello for me!” Much more civilized feeling.

New-shiny is harder to resist. I don’t know how good that is yet. I like knowing.

Dancing was interesting. Three of us chicks and the dude friend. It was like junior high dancing where you are mostly all in a group circle but occasionally there is barely flirty interactions. Mostly the flirty interactions happen when someone outside the group makes interest known so we pull into the circle and make it fucking clear that this bitch is taken. It’s rather fun. I pretty much always get to do the dominant ownership grab. I walked out of that club full of adrenaline. Noah totally got jumped.

One random woman grabbed my ass by mistake. I got angry. Her male companion told me it was ok because it was a mistake. I said it wasn’t ok and he’s lucky I didn’t hit someone. There was also a party of drunken women falling on me for a while. When I locked my elbow behind me and bent my knees such that when anyone fell on me they got a very sharp jab they left me alone. I heard multiple “OW!” exclamations and I felt savage glee.

I actually thought the music mostly sucked. It was good enough to dance to after a while but I wasn’t impressed. Next time we will try a different location.

If I can go dancing and the music is that bad and I have that much fun… it must be the company. Pretty much everyone walked out saying, “When can we go again?” At least that is what all the moms said.

I had a 2-3 hour nap before I went and I slept 3-ish hours when I got home. Then I had a very full Sunday full of physical chores I’ve been putting off.

My house is almost clean again. My house hasn’t been fully clean since the last time I invited people over. Several projects have been exploding all over me in obnoxious and messy ways. Whine whine whine. Yesterday, almost as some karmic payback for being allowed to have fun I got a ton of cleaning done.

Today during my babysitting time I am going to work on the recommended reading list. I don’t know that I will finish it but I will get it started. Mostly finished.

Perfection is the enemy of the good. Am I remembering that right? Internet says sure.

Just start. Just do it.

This morning one of my neighbors is coming over to look at my collection of trellis options that I’m not using. She got a blackberry bush and she stuck it in the center of her yard with a tomato cage. Oh man. That’s some excitement waiting to happen. I have a few things that work well for spreading the vines well so you can get more fruit without it spreading on the ground.

I nearly accosted one of the neighborhood kids yesterday. The kid who wore all the clothes my kids inherited. I yelled at her, “Hey, is there any chance you want a job?” She looked shocked. Turns out she’s only twelve so no wonder she was surprised.

She and I talked and negotiated for over an hour. I talked to both of her parents. They apparently live across the street from one another, which seems very useful for split custody. Her mom, of course, already knows me. We’ve talked a fair bit over the years.

She’s not ready to be a babysitter but she’s interested in mother’s helper work. I told her that we could start with two, two-hour sessions a week and see if we like it. I offered her a starting rate of $5/hour with the idea that she would slowly increase up to $10/hour when she’s ready for real babysitting. I told her that part of the process for getting ready for babysitting is saving up money for a CPR class. Her eyes went wide but she nodded.

Her mother is emphatic that she doesn’t want to be involved in this process. Both of her parents seem kind of afraid of teaching her responsibility steps. I’ve learned a fair bit from my previous hiring-people experiences.

This one is a kid. I’m finding a twelve year old.

A twelve year old kid who has a living situation I’m going to have feelings about. I can tell. But I can’t write about it.

My other neighbor had a brilliant suggestion for Shanna’s sales stand and he offered to do manual labor to build it with me. I laughed at him and told him he doesn’t have time. He grinned and looked sheepish and said it was probably true. He is massively overbooked. He’s a giver. He volunteers to help a lot of people. He sounds like a lot of people I know. So I’m not going to let him help, but he did give great advice. I’m grateful.

I am pretty sure my next door neighbor is moving. Would one of my friends like to move in next door? I can bat my eye lashes at you. I can cook you dinner and share vegetables with you and grow things in your yard that are nice to look at and to eat. (I only offered dinner once although it would probably happen more than that over time. Don’t expect every night or anything.)

Sometimes I am perplexed by the mixture of introvert and extrovert that I am. I clearly gain energy by going out and feeling exciting. I don’t even have to get laid. That’s a false equivalency in my brain. I don’t require anonymous sex to have fun. Clearly. But being around people can be very hard for me and I require a lot of time alone so that I don’t get bitchy and mean and explosively angry over the stupidest things.

My shrink tells me that the Eastern world has a lot more respect for that kind of balance. She has spent some time living in Thailand so of course she considers herself an expert. I always feel a little weird about white people “explaining” other cultures. It always comes from a place of judgment and evaluation in comparison with the culture of origin.

Pam mocks herself for being self absorbed, but one of the things I like about her is that she spends a lot of time talking about herself and her family and how things work and why. She doesn’t spend as much time analyzing Australians, even though she lived there for a while. She explains what she knows. She talks about the differences she experienced. But she doesn’t try to …. what’s the word… mystify them? She treats them like differences in people.

I feel weird when white people tell me, “Eastern cultures understand alone time versus social time better than Western cultures.” It makes me feel squiggly in my insides. What the fuck does that mean? It feels like fetishization.

The East and the West are big places. I hesitate to compare them except to say one is on the east side and one is on the west side. I mean, really… otherwise they vary so dramatically within themselves that you can’t talk about them that way.

I understand why white/Western thought wants to have the convenience of us and them but everyone always seems to want to leave South America out of that conversation. We can’t just have East/West conversations unless we ignore Africa. In those conversations we are saying only the Eurasian continent matters anyway.

Err, no.

So… I’m not sure I need to fetishize “Eastern cultures” in order to figure out alone time and public life balance. I’m pretty sure this problem is more universal than that.

Today, right in this minute, I feel ok about the fact that life has ups and downs. For the rest of my life this is going to be the most golden era. The work I want will be hard. Right now, with my kids I get to have the most safety and security and ease I’ve ever had.

Ok, maybe it will get better but I doubt it. Things will change. I will miss my children terribly when they are grown and not with me as much. I am so very spoiled by their daily company now. I like them so much. We have so much fun.

I can’t go back and change my past. All I can do is make new memories full of joy.

What do I wish I had known when I was twelve?

I’m going to have the opportunity over and over to help other people have a different journey. That thought makes me cry. I feel really glad right now that I didn’t die. There is something I can do. It is important. It doesn’t have to fit into the lives of everyone in the whole world.

That’s ok. I don’t need to be that big. I don’t have that much to give.

You have to know your limits. Otherwise you will make promises you can’t keep. Then you let people down.

I like my neighborhood. I like my friends. I feel very lucky. I have, if anything, too many wonderful options.