I’ve had many prompts to think about my identity in the last few days. I’ve thought about what it means to me to be a slut. I’ve thought about how my self-perceptions have changed over the years. I have thought about the different mirrors of who I am, and what completely different views they present and I’ve wondered which of them are most true?

In the eyes of people who have known me for years and years, I am still very harsh and abrasive. My family still defaults to abrasive to describe my personality and it is a word that many old friends still use pretty often. When I have used the word to describe myself recently though, many of the people who have met me in the last year say that they don’t think it fits. I have been told that I am blunt, and extremely honest–but not abrasive. I fight the thought that I am a wussy hypocondriac despite the fact that I have had many doctors yell at me because I take far more pain than I should because I don’t want to admit that I am having a problem. I won’t see a doctor until the problem is really significant and even then I still drive myself because I will not ask anyone for help. Even when I really shouldn’t be driving.

I feel like I am needy and clingy and whiney. It doesn’t make sense to me that people regularly tell me that I can ask for their time and attention. Aren’t I doing it all the time? No? Oh… Last night Puppy and I were having a conversation about how people never see themselves the way that others see them. I trotted out my list of, if not negative then at least very harsh, adjectives and he told me that almost none of them were true. Then he stopped himself. His comment: “Ok, unless I don’t feed you regularly. You can get a bit grumpy when you are overly hungry. But that is fair and is not a negative reflection on your personality.” I don’t know how to change my self-image though. If I am told just about anything positive I will brush it off. Lately, I don’t even believe it when people tell me that I am smart. I am having enormous insecurity issues around my intelligence–enough that I am starting to have trouble in school.

Slut. Since January 1st (just to pick a date) I have had sex with 10 people. Of those people, James, Noah, and Chris were not new to me. So I have had 7 new partners in 2005. Wow. And I thought I was slowing down. Guess not so much… And I’ve been monogamous for 5 weeks. So in the 8 weeks prior I picked up 6 new partners. I guess I am a slut. It is a lot easier to pick up numbers when you are sleeping with couples though. Wow. In the first 8 weeks of 2005 I slept with as many new-to-me people as Puppy has in his entire life. Wow. I’m not sure how I feel about that. Not true. I do somewhat know how I feel about it. I feel like a slut, and not with much pride or self-esteem in it. If I sit down and think about my list–which can take a while–there are exactly 4 specific people that I regret sleeping with. And all of those people happened years and years ago before I was being very conscious about my choices. So why am I so upset about the number? I don’t understand. Why do I feel like a bad person because I have had sex with a lot of people. Every single time I have made the decision to have sex in the past 6 years I have stopped and thought about whether or not I will feel good about the decision in the morning. Will I regret having been with this person? And I have turned down sex when I thought I would feel bad about it later. So why in the hell does the number bother me? None of the people do. I would not take back a single experience–even those 4 people that I shouldn’t have–because these experiences make me who I am. Yet… I still feel like a cheap tramp. Like I am something to be looked down on for my behavior. I wish I could stop hating myself for this. As a result of thinking about this word lately, I have been sort of feeling like it isn’t a good current description of my behavior. But after looking at the numbers–yes it is true. I guess the question is: does it make me a bad person?

How do we get rid of the programming that our families installed in us? How do I stop feeling like any time I request attention I am being too demanding? How do I stop believing that I am a total bitch that no one will ever like? How do I make myself believe that I am a kind person? How do I wrap my head around the belief that I am a generous person? Cause I don’t feel like I am. I feel like I am everything bad that has ever been said about me and more.

Today is the birthday of the most wonderfulest, fabulousest BlackSheep EVER!!!

YYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY Black Sheep!!!

I love you lots and lots and lots and lots!!!!!!!!!

In a discussion about the difference between “crisps” and “chips.”

Me: Why do you think the name changed as it crossed the pond?

Puppy: Because the Pilgrims had a large store of Doritos on board and it got very confusing to tell the difference between french fries as chips and Doritos as chips.

Dude. He’s a freak.

* ApRiL fOoLiGaNs!!! *

Thursday, March 31st
7-10pm (and beyond …)
OASIS –135 12th Street (Madison/Oak), Downtown Oakland
$5 (21+)
Featuring Captain Erotica’s Ice Bar!
2 Rooms of music (1 thumpa-thumpa/1 non t-t) & outside patio/lounge
This is truly THE happy hour party of the season …don ’t miss it!
Come early and get some dinner—Oasis serves up exotic, super-yummy West African fare.

All Tribe-star DJ lineup: Star-D, S&M, Drs. Yo & Fiasco!
(thumpa-thumpa AND non-thumpa-thumpa)

Bring your light poi (not fire) & hula-hoops!

Pix of 2004 April Fooligans & other Evil Ali parties on the party tribe: evilalipresents.tribe.net
Here ’s a blurb on Oasis: eastbay.citysearch.com/profile/1015807

How do I get to Oasis, you ask?
BART to either Lake Merritt Station and walk 3 bks north or 12th Street Station and walk ~5 blocks East); or drive (read the street cleaning signs if you think you ’ll be there past midnight).

Hey people

Does anyone think they might come to the party tonight in Oakland? It is going to be lots of fun!!!

Come on… You know you want to…

*smooch*

meme

I am in a bad mood today. Really fucking hostile. I hope I get over this before tonight. Well, if I don’t I am going to find someone who wants the ever loving shit beaten out of them and go to town. Any potential takers?

I’m not sure why I am this pissy. Puppy and I talked about his cracks and I think things are better on that front. We spent some time cuddling, he tolerated me tickling him in revenge for silly comments (usually he fights back and manages to stop me). He really is an awesome guy. [I had a dream last night. Puppy and I had a four year old daughter. It was quite a day in the life for what life could potentially be like in seven or eight years. *blink* I think all the spawning near me is messing with my brain.]

So I woke up in a good mood. Being woken up for sex in the middle of the night is generally likely to have me wake up with a smile. Why didn’t it last?!

A couple of cool people are working on cheering me up. They can stay. Someone else has managed to piss me off with two sentences. That person… well… hm. It is a good thing I am not seeing that person soon. I probably wouldn’t be civil.

But I am having lunch with the very very very very hot tenacious_snail so that won’t suck. It will very probably even help cheer me up. And later this afternoon I am very likely to go visit genderfur. So also more goodness.

Maybe the ranting is over before I finish writing it.

I ‘hosted’ the Berkeley TNG munch tonight. No one showed up.

I’ve had discussions with a close friend lately that have included a few off-hand comments that have hurt my feelings.

In an attempt to be funny Puppy has said a few things that have near devastated me.

Tonight: I cry. I wonder how much of it has to do with the fact that I’m on BCP and I am due to ‘start’ within the next two days.

* ApRiL fOoLiGaNs!!! *

Thursday, March 31st
7-10pm (and beyond …)
OASIS –135 12th Street (Madison/Oak), Downtown Oakland
$5 (21+)
Featuring Captain Erotica’s Ice Bar!
2 Rooms of music (1 thumpa-thumpa/1 non t-t) & outside patio/lounge
This is truly THE happy hour party of the season …don ’t miss it!
Come early and get some dinner—Oasis serves up exotic, super-yummy West African fare.

All Tribe-star DJ lineup: Star-D, S&M, Drs. Yo & Fiasco!
(thumpa-thumpa AND non-thumpa-thumpa)

Bring your light poi (not fire) & hula-hoops!

Pix of 2004 April Fooligans & other Evil Ali parties on the party tribe: evilalipresents.tribe.net
Here ’s a blurb on Oasis: eastbay.citysearch.com/profile/1015807

How do I get to Oasis, you ask?
BART to either Lake Merritt Station and walk 3 bks north or 12th Street Station and walk ~5 blocks East); or drive (read the street cleaning signs if you think you ’ll be there past midnight).

================================================================

This is the burner crowd I’ve been hanging out with. It should be a good time. I am going. 🙂 Yay for Spring Break.

Ok my prettys….

I’m going to BaGG. I am bringing rope. Who wants to get tied up? I am looking for people to show off with… come on… you know you want to…

🙂

We just did the exchange of, “When I tell you ‘I am doing x event’ I am really telling you, ‘Would you like to come with me to x event?'” Nothing like clarity in communication. 😀 So I may skip waltzing this Friday to go over to his friends house. The friend who asks him, “Are you still dating what’s-her-face?” Why yes. Yes he is. And it is going so much better than I could have hoped.

He is continually surprising me. Everytime I think I have reached the absolute possible outer limits of his coolness and patience, he pulls up reserves. We have spent the last several nights talking and playing and having sex. For hours and hours and hours. It is really amazing. I really love that I can ask him if I can show him how to do something. Then I show him. Then he shows me how to do something. Then I practice it. Then he decides that show and tell is over and he is going to do what he wants to do. *swoon* We have discussed extensively how he really has less than no interest in bottoming or submitting. He is actually rather insecure about his lack of interest. “What do you think of the idea that someone can’t be a good dominant/master unless they have submitted?” Oh honey. It’s ok. In the past couple of nights we have had some rather intense play. In one exchange he was talking to me, he told me a variety of things that I am–and I assented. (No, you filthy perverts don’t get to know what names he calls me. :P) And he asked me if I wanted to be his slave. Dude. Uhm. That is a word that means a LOT to me. I don’t think it is a casual thing. I took a deep breath and told him yes. Then I told him that a more important question is, does he want to be my Master? His response was that he already is. In the days after this exchange we talked about what he believes a Master is, how a person becomes one, and how both of us believe that it is highly probable/possible that you can be one person’s Master and not be anyone else’s. It isn’t a one-size-fits-all role. We haven’t really delved deeply into what a potential full M/s relationship for us would look like. Uhm. Let’s date for a few more months first. I learned a lot from shoving James into the role of “Daddy” and I hope I don’t make the mistake of pushing someone into the shape I have in my head again. That being said, I think these early conversations are a good idea. I think if Tom and I had talked about things more early on it would have saved us a lot of heart ache when we discovered that our views weren’t really compatable.

I am finally on the freakin invite list for the sex party I’ve been going to for almost 8 months. HA! Bloody figures. Puppy and I are going. We have talked about the possibility of sex with people at the party. His comments were that he really has no interest in being with anyone else. So he will not be engaging in sex play with other people. However, he wants me to be happy and if that includes having sex with other people at this party then he gets my ass. *blink* What did you say?! Oh my god. Filthy pervert. Have I mentioned that at the rate we are going we are going to double the amount of anal sex I have had in my lifetime inside of a month? Was that tmi? HA! Oh well. So this reaction truly startled me. I asked him why he thinks he will be ok with this. He told me that he is more confident in my devotion than he felt with any of the partners who brought up poly and that is allowing him to be more flexible in his own definition of what is ok. Interesting food for thought. We also reached a decision about an event that is upcoming that I will be writing about probably today in a much tighter filter. I’m kind of nervous.

I just talked to Tom on the phone. I am picking up my cat soon because she is moving in with my mom and sister. (They are moving to a big, spiffy house! I am so excited for them!) I will be giving him back his keys, picking up the motor oil I haven’t gotten back yet and he will be giving me the excess paint that we talked about getting rid of. He is working on selling the house. It was like being stabbed in the chest. Why does it still hurt so much? I have such wonderful stuff starting with Puppy, and yet there is still agony there. I feel very awkward about it. Puppy is likely to meet Tom this weekend because I have to go pick up the paint on Saturday before heading to my mom’s. Puppy wants to come help my family. I think he is crazy for wanting to meet them. *woof* This is going to be quite the stressful weekend.

Breath. Just think about all the good stuff.

(special note: I hate updating through the website now. I really like my semagic. *pout*)

I have had a lot of time to think in the last month about things that are important to me in relationships. Ending/changing the relationships I had been in has caused me to think rather distinctly about what was I getting from them anyway? Why was I choosing to structure my version of poly the way I was? What is it that I needed that I didn’t get from Tom? What did I get from Tom? How does bdsm stuff fit into my life anyway? I have been out of my relationship with Tom for approaching eight months and the D/s in our relationship died more than a year before that and we barely played in the last year we had together. I have done a few scattered scenes with people in the past two years and a few partners (thank you Noah in particular) have tried to give me some of what I said I wanted and was looking for, but I haven’t had a relationship with a strong bdsm component really in about two years. That is a long time. It is really weird to think about it that way. I have not consistently played with a particular person in two years.

I hadn’t really stopped and thought that until just this minute. Wow. Given that bdsm is such a strong part of my identity I haven’t actually been following through on it. I have been conscious of missing it, but I’ve been trying not to think about it because I hate feeling bereft. I have managed to fulfill my needs for sex in the past year, but bdsm is different. I think that I have been noticing more that I had significant needs that weren’t being met. I think that is why I have been going to more bdsm events and that is why I was so very excited about the couple looking for a service girl.

In the past six months of living with Miss Jenny and Miss Sara I have discovered that I am not ok with just doing service to do service. I have had these major jags of feeling bitter and angry towards them after doing things for them. And then I realized that they had not asked for the service, expected the service, wanted the service…etc. So I was choosing to go out of my way to do something for them that they hadn’t wanted and then I was getting angry at them for it. Wow…. uhm. Yeah. Needless to say that I have stopped doing stuff when it makes me angry because it is total bullshit to be mad at them for things that they have no part in. *cough* Sometimes I’m slow though. I have no idea why I was feeling that way towards them though. I have been thinking about it a lot.

So there is this huge part of me that wants to do service, but apparently doing it for my housemates isn’t a good idea. And I hadn’t managed to feel right/good about it with the people I was dating. I think there was some component of not feeling special enough to the people to want to give them the gift of service. (I am not slamming anyone or saying that anyone did anything wrong. Everyone was wonderful and was wonderful to me in particular. These are my feelings.) I view my submission and my service as a significant gift that I give people. I get so much shit from people in the scene because they don’t view me as submissive, but they simply are not aware of the fact that they don’t see my submission because I don’t think they deserve it. I am incredibly picky about who I will serve. I think that if things had continued on the course they were on eight weeks ago I would have been pretty happy with the couple who wanted service. He in particular really understood how to value service and appreciate it for what it was. But then… yeah. The path changed.

So now I’m seeing Puppy. I have been doing so for a month. It has been an intense, overwhelming month. I am absolutely crazy about him. I feel special in a way that I haven’t in a very long time. I couldn’t even tell you how long. I feel the need to justify right now that I knew I was special to the people I have dated in the past year, but I think there was a distinct not-poly-pc part of my brain that was stuck in the mode of “I must not be that special if I am just one of many.” Yes I know that I am now kicked off the poly bus for even thinking that. But it is how I feel. Although, as I write it and reflect on it… I wonder if it was just about being one of many or the fact that I was never the primary. Hm. Because when Tom played with any of our friends I didn’t feel devalued. Hm. More ponderance needs to happen. Maybe I’m not kicked off the poly bus yet. Anyway. So we have been having these really interesting conversations. He has no real experience with D/s and is actually still somewhat new to the scene. I am teaching someone. HA! I can’t freakin believe my luck. And yet, it feels different. I’m not really teaching him; I am exploring with him. I have at no time dictated how I want things to be. We haven’t really worked any specific D/s interactions into our relationship but we talk about what aspects of D/s appeal to us. We are discussing generic future plans in general. It is really bizarre to be talking to someone who will finish grad school at about the same time as me and who wants to do most of the things I want to do in pretty much the same time frame. I am fighting my urge to panic because it is scary.

Today I have spent several hours cleaning his kitchen. I told him in advance that I was going to do it. He said sure. I have felt really good doing it. I like doing it because I know it will make his life easier. I like knowing that he will smile when he walks in and sees what I have done. He will feel special because I chose to spend my time this way. He is coming over to my house this week and we are going to figure out what is wrong with my alternator. I don’t have to be the only one to do things in the relationship. He likes to cook and I like making it easier for him to do so and I clean up after so that he doesn’t have to. I don’t know how to describe what this all means to me deep in the core of my being, but it feels different than it does when I do something for a friend. I feel like I am finding my place. But for now I am just going to swim along. Who knows what the future will bring. I can’t handle thinking about the future yet. Let’s just think about tonight. He wants to tie me up and beat me. I can’t wait.

I wear my latex cheerleader outfit. 😀

Oh my goodness was this morning yummy.

Not once. Not twice. Three times. I almost had a thought of “Wow… young guys do have this amazing recovery time.” Then I thought about akienm and james_carrington and (ok so he is kind of young) angelbob and just shut the thought down.

I have been blessed. YAYYYYYYYYYYYYyy

Cause I am killing time online today in dred of my stupid-ass mid-term tonight.

Reply if you have or have had at any time a crush on me. Anonymous posting enabled. (though I’d love to know who you are)

Then post this in YOUR journal so I can spill my guts!

Officially I should be boycotting this guy cause he is the ex of a good friend, but his music is sooooooooooo amazing.

http://www.jameshuntermusic.com

You can play pretty much any of the songs. “Mollena” was written for my friend… Mollena. Dude. How… clever…

Ok, how about if instead of nauseating you all I just write:
{insert disgusting noises about how happy and delighted I am}

Ok. Moving along.

But yeah… stuff is good. Puppy met a few more friends last night. And he was informed that I am a Princess. He took the news well.

I think it is hella funny that people make so many sarcastic comments about how hard it is to schedule time with me, and then when I provide people with a wide open window YA’LL DON’T DO ANYTHING WITH IT.

You are all fired. Guess I’m going to be staying home and watching movies.

I am ditching class.

I am not willing to do the 2 hour roundtrip drive tonight for 3 hours of mind-numbing boring crap.

I hate semesters. I’ve already been in this stupid class for 8 weeks. After tonight I have 8 weeks to go.

I HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE semesters. They take too long. I’m telling you. Keeping your head above water in a boring class for 11 weeks is a cakewalk. 17 weeks is just asking toooooo much.

I have lots of free time between Friday, March 25th and Friday, April 1st.

Anyone want to come over for food? I have stuff that I need to use. I have ribs and spaghetti and the fixings for many different vegetarian options.

Who would like to come eat? 😀

So I’m sitting here at Puppy’s house, again, just eating my breakfast and minding my business. He opens a letter from his grandfather and reads for a minute then starts laughing. I ask him what. He let me read it.

It looks like a formal business letter with heading and everything:

Dear Philip:

Again–Happy Birthday!! I meant to wish you this today, but forgot. But I’ll call tomorrow and hope to get you even if you have become more elusive–I’m not sure whether the reason is preparation for the “Group”, or diversion with the new young lady that you are escorting to the beach and elsewhere. I understood her name to be Christine Archer–is this correct?–and she likes the outdoors. That’s good, and I hope she is an environmentalist and wants to preserve the outdors. I can’t argue against a major in English–having been one myself at UVA–and all the evidence points to the fact that it is an endangered language and needs to be protected among the younger generations.

===============================

It goes on from there. But I choked on my oj.Uhm. I guess he has told his family about me. We need to nip this misspelled name thing in the bud though. 😉

I’m sitting here reading a book on codependence.

I am simultaneously happy and angry and sad. I don’t know how to deal with the mix of emotions. There are so many warring chemicals in my brain. GRRRRRRRR

It is really interesting to me that I can have simultaneous emotions. Wouldn’t it seem logical to cycle through them rapidly rather than fully experiencing many of them at the same instant?