That was the spouse who turned out to be both closet gay AND a pedophile. I assume he told the guy who loaned them to him “These were supposed to be for my closet stash in the attic, moron.” Yes, the police found he had one of those when they were searching the house for evidence to prove what he did to my kids—his own biological children. He also had a gun hidden up there.

I’d never been up there.

I definitely agree that watching people trying to hook up is amusing. In my freshman year of college I once watched this guy at a nearby table in the dining hall deep in conversation with his buddies. (Not that my focus was entirely on this one guy as I was scanning the room constantly, avoiding the chemistry note cards I was studying…) At any rate, a girl with an extremely short skirt or shorts or something (it was 5 years ago and my memory is not that great) bent over near him to pick something up from the ground and I watched the guy stop midsentence and fixate on her rear until she stood upright again. It was hilarious.

On another note entirely. I write for fun. I write to sleep at night and not dream about waves crashing over my head or getting into rollover accidents in the midst of a busy intersection–I write and read to keep myself from getting overwhelmed with the day to day work of earning my current degree, pursuing my future degree, and living up to my own goals that I’ve set far above my reasonable reach just to watch myself work that hard for them. In other words I’m high stress and writing is my escape. I can create and destroy and analyze my world, my motives, my relationships through and within my writing.

I have to say I am really enjoying the focused tangents of “love/sex/attraction” that this post has opened up. So many individual reactions to a common thread, it’s a wonder anyone is conceived anymore.

And your personal story of, umm “homosexual discovery” we’ll say, was hilarious. My question, What did your then-husband say to his co-worker the next day? That would make for an interesting short story.

Thanks for sharing :p

And, yes, for me, thirty years older wouldn’t work, either.

For me, my mental comfort zone fits inside the brackets of the fact that I’m 23 years older than my oldest child, and 19 years younger than my youngest parent. My “older than me” range was a bit narrower than my “younger than me” range.

Man, heterosexuality sucks. Reading this post made me wish I could go for women sexually, because I’m far more of a “showoff” than a “just let any old dude come to me” girl.

I, on the other hand, am 31, look like I am 12 (not kidding about this at all), and 90% of the people attracted to me are 40-50-year old men. Uggggggggggh. I feel like they’re all wannabe pedophiles.

Oh, sure, sometimes I get frustrated and overwhelmed, worried that I’ve lost my way and the characters have mutinied. But most of the time, it’s the rush that keeps me going. That feeling of being a conduit rather than a creator is addicting.

The pressure of publication on the other hand is paralyzing. It dampens the rush of creating with a dose of reality. Suddenly I’m writing for an unknown audience. Mistakes will get me thrown out of the game, at least temporarily. Suddenly there’s pressure and fear, uncertainty and second-guessing.

Still, I want to be published. I want to see my name on the book cover and on the binding. I want to walk into a store and know that something I created from nothing could provide some stranger a night or two of entertainment. For that is probably my ultimate goal, I want to entertain someone other than myself. Sharing is half the fun, right?

Okay. So this wasn’t “we.” This was me. But most women have an early experience where we discovered that someone had changed the rules when we weren’t looking, and a smile no longer just meant “Hi.” It carried baggage. So we stopped smiling.

It took me years to get past that, to be able to smile at men again. Some women just don’t. Those first few experiences can be pretty rough.