Thursday, March 25, 2004

4 letter words

Everyone knows all of the bad ones, but what about the other four letter words...the ones that are so complex, so intertwined with definitions inside definitions...words like LOVE, WORK, ROAD, and SOUP. Yes, soup.

I’ve been sick the past few days, well, mainly Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday I just kinda chilled. I’m feeling better, although I never felt horrible. Monday I felt overwhelmingly tired and had the uncomfortable tickle in the back of my throat. A cold was trying to find it’s way into my body. So, I took off Monday afternoon, grabbed two small bowls of hot and sour soup on the way home, then snuggled up under my covers for an afternoon nap. Tuesday I made it back to work, but was still feeling a bit tired. So, yes, Tuesday night I picked up two large bowls of hot and sour soup. What can I say, it’s my chicken noodle soup, ok? I just love the spicy flavor, the light veggies, the tofu, and just the general way the hot soup makes me feel. Yes, I’m easy to please. Anyway, on Wednesday I finished off the second bowl for dinner. I haven’t seen much of the cold since early Tuesday morning, but I’ve still been a bit tired this week, and fighting a little drainage through the nose.

As I IM’d Amber this week, have you ever felt so overwhelmed at work that you just wanted to sit there and do nothing? That’s almost the way I felt today, although I didn’t sit around doing nothing. Let me try to put into words the way I have felt lately. Remember, I was away from work for 3.5 weeks with surgery. Imagine you are going to climb a huge mountain. You have all of your supplies and set out that week at the base. You climb all week long, yet when you look up at the mountain on Friday, you find that you are no further up than when you started, and the mountain’s top has grown taller, so you actually have more to climb than you did at the start of the week. That has been this week. I started the week off with enough to keep me busy for quite some time, yet work kept flowing in throughout the past four days.

Last night, an old friend IM’s me. We chatted back and forth about how each of us were doing (He’s known about me for almost a year), and then he asks me about my sexuality, and if I have anyone I'm in love with. He’d noticed I’d gone out on a date with a guy and wondered if I had dropped women altogether. I told him I just went on a date with a guy to kinda experience the other side of things. All I did was talk over a pizza with the guy, but it was one of those things I kinda wanted to try before I went fulltime.

Anyway, so, let’s discuss relationships and love. Love is quite an intricate little word. It’s meaning is defined by so much more. And if you try to find a synonym for love, you’ll never be able to even come close to it’s meaning. What is love? To me, love is made up of physical attraction, sexual attraction, psychological attraction, and relationship attraction.

Right now, I have a physical attraction that is very complex. I’m attracted to women in their softness, their femininity, their curvature, and their beauty. I also find some men attractive in their firmness, their masculinity, their roughness, and their strength. So, if you’re playing along at home, let’s chalk that up as a 10 for women, and a 7 for men.

For sexual attraction, I’m basically attracted to having sex with men. Yeah, I’m attracted to hetero sex. As a woman, I’d rather have sex with a man. However, I also find lesbian sex quite attractive, but the dynamics of lesbian sex are quite a bit different than hetero sex. My attraction to lesbian sex is more about cuddling, foreplay, caressing....the total softness with it. So, let’s give guys a 10, and girls an 8.

Psychological attraction is the attraction you have for what’s upstairs in your mate. For me, I need someone that is intriguing, thoughtful, intelligent, witty, slightly sarcastic, yet also quite liberal. I mean, come on, dating a transsexual is going to take a bit of tolerance and open-mindedness. I also need someone who is secure in themself. (Yes, I know no one likes the word themself, but it works for me in a singular genderless sort of way.) For me, my attraction to another person’s psyche is independent of their physical sex, so that’s a 10 for both the girls and the boys.

Relationship attraction is a bit harder to define. Sex and physical attraction work well in the sack and when you’re just in love with their appearance, but loving someone for the relationship is entirely different. For me, women and men love in two entirely different ways. A woman loves a man for his strength and his security. She wants to feel surrounded by his large arms knowing that he loves only her and has given his heart in protecting her. A woman loves another woman based more on a friendship basis. Yes, they both share in surrounding one another with love, but the masculine factor is mainly removed (assuming we aren’t talking butch dyke stuff). The dynamic behind a male-female relationship is more about sexual relations, while that behind a female-female relationship is more about friendship relations, while I’m sure that sex plays an integral part in both relationships. Both relationships, though, build upon the sharing of one’s souls, and to be honest, the souls do a lot of crossing of the gender lines, even if they never think they do. Of course, all of this is from my point of view. I could be way the hell off target, but then again, I could be hitting on a number of bull’s eyes, but I just might not be hitting all of the targets. Anyway, so, relationship wise, and this is based simply on the bell curves (so, yes, I am stereotyping), I will give the girls a 10, and the boys a 9...assuming the best of what each has to offer.

So, let’s add up the totals...and we have: girls - 38, and boys - 36. So, yeah, I guess I prefer women still, but there are so many factors to consider. Let’s just call me bi, and one day I’ll figure it all out. Who knows, the boys may hit a 3-pointer at the buzzer.

Anyway, I dragged Amber up to a TGSF social meeting tonite so that I could say a few words on the reasons people should vote me as one of the new Outreach Co-Chairs. Actually, she volunteered to go. I’m sure she has a few interesting things to say on her blog. I warned her before we went, though, that there would be people from all along the gender spectrum. Her, Claire, and I grabbed some Thai food before the meeting. Claire had some interesting things on her mind as well, and I tried to tell her that the thoughts she was having were ok. I told her that I had a few times where I would say, “what the hell am I doing?” or “am I doing the right thing?” Sure, this may not be the best road to travel, but it was better than the road I was on. Don’t get me wrong, though, the previous road was ok and there were many highlights, but the likely destinations along that road looked very gloomy from my point of view. Anyway, this is the road I have chosen. It’s going to take a lot of work along the road of my journey, and one day, hopefully I’ll find love on the shoulder, but in the meantime, don’t be surprised to find me pulled over to the side slurping some soup.

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