The Teddy Bear

Psychologist and author Patricia Evans describes a model of an abusive relationship called the Teddy Bear Model. I found it extremely enlightening so I thought I would share it with you here.

It starts out with a personality disorder in Person A (can be a man or a woman, but in the case of spousal abuse, usually a man) in which A develops a compulsive need to have another person on which to project himself. This person, Person B, fulfills certain needs in Person A, supporting him emotionally, uplifting him, making him feel better, adoring him, and providing a place for A to dump all of his negative traits and his fears.

Now Person B can be likened to a teddy bear. She is always ready to play when A is playful, always supportive, always sympathetic, always understands him, always adores him. He can put Teddy on a shelf and she will always be there when he needs her. She’ll always be happy to see him and give him what he needs. In fact, he becomes so enmeshed with his Teddy that he feels she is simply an extension of himself.

So, A~ comes home from work one day and finds his Teddy there on the shelf waiting for him.

"Hello, Teddy, I’ve had a bad day. I hate my boss."

"Oh, I’m so sorry. Your boss is an ass."

"Yes, I’d like to kick his ass so hard he could floss with my shoelaces."

"Yes, you poor thing. You work so hard and you’re so good at your job."

"Okay, well bye Teddy!"

And Teddy waves and he goes happily out the door.

Except one day, when he says good-bye to Teddy, she says "Where are you going?"

And he stares at her. Did Teddy just ask him a question?

"When will you be back?" Teddy asks.

Yep, Teddy is questioning him. That ain’t right. Teddy is supposed to sit quietly on her shelf until he summons her. She has no business questioning him, she is nothing but an extension of himself! Teddy is acting up and must be reminded of her place.

"What the fuck is your problem? You’re always questioning me! Can’t I even go out without you hounding me and wanting to know every little thing?! I’m going out! I’ll be home when I get home!"

And he storms out the door. And Teddy is bewildered. What happened? Does he really think I'm always questioning him? I only asked him where he was going and when he’d be home, was that wrong? Maybe he thinks I don’t want him to go out. I’ll just have to explain that’s not what I meant. He just misunderstood why I was asking.

So the next day, she says to him, "I thought you might be upset with me because you thought I didn’t want you to go out. I don’t mind if you go out. I just wanted to know where you were going and when you’d be home."

Uh-oh, now Teddy is trying to explain her point of view. Teddy doesn’t have a point of view. She is an extension of himself.

"Geez, can’t you just drop it! Why do you have to keep going on and on about things? Why are you always trying to start an argument?"

One day, Teddy comes home from work full of excitement. She finds him sitting in front of the TV and she rushes to tell him her good news.

"Guess what! I got an award at work today for that software project I completed under budget last quarter!"

Silence.

"My boss said it was the tightest 60,000 lines of code he’s ever seen!"

Silence.

"I got $250 and a little trophy for my desk."

Without taking his eyes off the TV, he says "No-kidding-that’s-great."

Looks like Teddy has forgotten her place again. Her job is to support HIM and his accomplishments, not to brag about her own. She must not be allowed to think she’s too smart, else she forget how smart HE is.

Teddy realizes he doesn’t want to be disturbed so she goes off to the kitchen to start dinner. Ten minutes later he comes in and finds her rinsing the hamburger meat in the sink before mixing it in with the spaghetti sauce.

"What the fuck are you doing!?"


She looks up, confused. "I’m just rinsing off the grease. What do you mean?"


"You’re washing all the nutrition right down the drain! I can’t believe you’re too stupid to even fix spaghetti right!"


"Washing all the nutrition down the drain? It’s just the grease. It’s fat. The nutrition is the protein and that’s in the meat."

Jesus-please-us, now Teddy’s contradicting him!

When Teddy looks up, she’s startled to see him turning bright red, fists clenched, shaking with rage.

"What is it? I always fix it this way. I’ve been doing this to our spaghetti meat for years, I thought you knew that. You never said it bothered you. I won’t do it anymore if it’s that big a deal. I just thought we didn’t need all the extra fat..." Again, she’s babbling, trying to explain because he must have misunderstood.

"ANY MORON KNOWS THAT ALL THE FLAVOR IN THE HAMBURGER MEAT IS IN THE GREASE!! What an idiot! You’ve ruined the entire meal and I see you’re even burning the vegetables too. You’re so stupid. You just wasted about seven dollars worth of good hamburger meat."


And she begins to cry, looking around miserably at the vegetables and the "ruined" hamburger meat.


"I’m not eating that crap. If you had a half a brain you might be dangerous, you know that? I’m going out."

And he storms out the door. And Teddy begins to go over the course of events, trying to figure out exactly when she had enraged him. What had she done? She's pretty sure it wasn't really the hamburger meat, for clearly his rage was all out of proportion for a guy more generally the laid-back, relaxed sort of guy who takes things in stride--at least he used to be and still is around other people. She alone brings this out in him, if she could figure out what it was she did that made him so mad, maybe she could explain it to him and he would see that she didn’t mean it. It must have been a huge misunderstanding for him to become so angry that he called her names.

Another day, Teddy comes through the door balancing the baby on one hip and a grocery bag on the other. She’s in a great mood, still singing the song that was playing on the radio in the car as she goes into the kitchen to put the baby in his high chair and the groceries on the counter.

He is watching TV, sulking. He’s been in a rotten mood all week, still having problems with his boss. Now, here’s Teddy, all smiles and sunshine. Can’t she see he’s in a bad mood? She is an extension of himself, she must reflect what he’s feeling. She must offer support and sympathy. And instead she’s in there singing??

"Hey, keep it down, would ya? I’m trying to watch the game!"


"Sorry, hon." She pops her head around the door and says to him, "Would you mind getting the other bags of groceries from the car while I get the baby started on his lunch? He’s about to eat my arm off if I don’t feed him soon!"

What, she still doesn’t get it? Still with that damn cheery disposition. I guess she’s going to need a lesson on what kind of mood we’re in today.

He gets up and begins stalking around, looking for his shoes. He throws down the remote control, kicks the stroller out of the way and generally makes a dramatic presentation of his tantrum. But she is back in the kitchen now, happily feeding the baby, gurgling and making baby talk, and still with the damn singing! She doesn't even care that she's made him mad, the evil bitch.

A few minutes later, he stomps into the kitchen with the last of the groceries and faces her with an accusatory stance. "You didn’t buy any bagels, did you?"


"Hmm? Bagels? No, I didn’t." She doesn’t even look up, she’s still making funny faces at the baby.


"Great. Thanks a lot! You know that I always take a bagel to work with me in the morning, but you don’t care. You don’t care about anybody but yourself!"

Teddy most definitely should have known that he wanted bagels. She should always anticipate his needs. She is an extension of himself, she should already know what he wants.

"Did you want bagels? You didn’t mention it, I didn’t know. You used to take a bagel to work with you but then you went on the Atkins plan and you said you would just grab some eggs and bacon from the cafeteria at work."


"You are such a selfish cunt. You don’t care about me! You don’t care about the baby! You probably didn’t even buy any baby food or diapers, did you? I can’t even count on you to do the least little thing for me around here. I guess I’ll have to do it myself since you’re too selfish to consider anyone else’s needs."

And he slams out the door, presumably to the store to get bagels.

And Teddy falls into that familiar limbo world of disorientation that follows his tantrums. What happened? Did he tell me he wanted bagels and I forgot? No, I'm sure he said he was going low-carb this week and wanted nothing for breakfast. He didn’t give me a chance to show him he was wrong about the baby food, I did buy plenty of it. Does he really think I don’t care about my family’s needs? What did I do to make him think that?

Another time, she spends thirty minutes in the deodorant aisle of the store because she knows he needs deodorant but can’t remember which brand he prefers. Should she just pick one and then offer to bring it back and exchange it if it’s the wrong one? Should she call him and ask? Maybe she should just go home and check and then come back so she will be sure and get the right one. No matter what, he will think that she’s too stupid to remember his brand preferences or that she doesn’t care enough to know.

This kind of relationship almost always escalates over time until verbal abuse and temper tantrums are not enough to keep Teddy in line and physical assault becomes necessary. Teddy must not be allowed to be influenced by anyone but him, so her friendships and outside relationships are blocked or tainted. She’ll notice that he gets grumpy when she spends time with her friends or family, so she spends less and less time with them. Soon she is left with no support structure and no way to compare her disorientated confusion to reality and figure out what’s happening. Without some emotional link to reality in the outside world, she will continue to spin around in her mind and wonder what it is that she is doing to cause this. If she could only figure out what it is, she can fix it and then they can be happy.

When Teddy decides she’s had enough and tries to leave, he will do anything to keep her. He must not lose his Teddy. And she wonders, if he really thinks I am so stupid and selfish and unattractive and rude and inconsiderate--why doesn’t he want out of this as much as I do?

The necessary ingredients for this kind of abusive relationship are

1) Person A with a particular personality disorder that prevents him from seeing Teddy as a separate person. Because Teddy is the person he has enmeshed with and projected himself on, she is the only person he needs to control. Every other person he interacts with may regard him as kind, sensitive and charming. Also, this is a true psychological need on his part. If the illusion breaks and Teddy escapes, he will feel very uncomfortable and intolerably restless until he finds another Teddy to project onto. This is why abusive men always have a new girlfriend or wife, sometimes within days of the end of the previous relationship. Teddy is the only solution to his pain and much easier to get and more satisfying than therapy.

2) Person B, Teddy, with particular traits of her own. She is humble, generous, tolerant (forgiving) and has moderately low self esteem. Her self esteem will be further damaged by the abuse, making the Teddy illusion that much stronger and harder to break.

Someone's Leaving the Island

I read an article recently claiming that studies show blue eyed people to be more likely to possess above average intelligence. I have not found that to be true. In fact, the most brilliant people I know have brown eyes. What the heck, let's see if it's true. Post your answer as a comment here, and be sure to include your eye color so we can determine if there's a correlation toward intelligence.

Blue Eyes:
The Hardest Logic Puzzle in the World

A group of people with assorted eye colors live on an island. They are all perfect logicians -- if a conclusion can be logically deduced, they will do it instantly. No one knows the color of their eyes. Every night at midnight, a ferry stops at the island. If anyone has figured out the color of their own eyes, they [must] leave the island that midnight. Everyone can see everyone else at all times and keeps a count of the number of people they see with each eye color (excluding themselves), but they cannot otherwise communicate. Everyone on the island knows all the rules in this paragraph.

On this island there are 100 blue-eyed people, 100 brown-eyed people, and the Guru (she happens to have green eyes). So any given blue-eyed person can see 100 people with brown eyes and 99 people with blue eyes (and one with green), but that does not tell him his own eye color; as far as he knows the totals could be 101 brown and 99 blue. Or 100 brown, 99 blue, and he could have red eyes.

The Guru is allowed to speak once (let's say at noon), on one day in all their endless years on the island. Standing before the islanders, she says the following:

"I can see someone who has blue eyes."

Who leaves the island, and on what night?


There are no mirrors or reflecting surfaces, nothing dumb. It is not a trick question, and the answer is logical. It doesn't depend on tricky wording or anyone lying or guessing, and it doesn't involve people doing something silly like creating a sign language or doing genetics. The Guru is not making eye contact with anyone in particular; she's simply saying "I count at least one blue-eyed person on this island who isn't me."

And lastly, the answer is not "no one leaves."

My Beloved Julio

So many of you have expressed an interest in knowing, so this day I will share my memories of Julio. When I’m feeling rather sassy, I may refer to Julio. If my affection for you is great, I may even call you by his name. It is an endearment, an honor, to be called “Julio” by me. In my fiction, you’ll also find references to him when I need a name for a minor character. Not “George” or “Bob” but always “Julio.”

Julio was my first love. He was but a lowly goat-roper, and I an aspiring barrel racer. I used to watch him perform, my teenaged hormones all tingly at the sight of his rippling manly muscles as he roped and wrestled those animals to the ground and then tied them down. I wanted him to do the same to me. When I rode my horse, ever faster, racing, pushing for more speed, more agility around those turns, my thoughts were on him. I gripped my pony between my legs and experienced sensations that bewildered my young mind.

My daddy hated him. My mama loved him but wanted a better life for me than she had; she wanted me to marry the wealthy Toad instead, who lived on the other side of the tracks and never touched a goat in his life. Alas, the choices we make in life, and I often wonder what joys my life would have revealed to me if I had married my beloved Julio instead of the wicked Toad.

Actually, y’all, Julio was the name of a cook in the restaurant (Judge Bean’s) where I worked as a waitress when I was in college. He was the only cook in the kitchen who spoke any English, so when the waitresses or managers needed to speak to someone in the kitchen, to give instructions or to ask a question, they always shouted through the window, “Hey Julio!” We’d all say “Hey Julio!” even if Julio wasn’t in the kitchen that day, and the cooks would always answer to it. After a while, it became a joke, just a funny thing to say, and pretty soon we were all calling each other Julio.

This strange, quirky habit stayed with me to this day, and I often greet people with a hearty “Hey Julio!” when I’m in a goofy mood. That’s it, not as interesting as a tale of star-crossed lovers, I know. Just another idiosyncrasy of being Tess.

"I'll Call You"

What the heck is that, exactly?

Is that a promise? A fervent hope? A cruel joke? A euphemism for "Don’t Hold Your Breath"?

I think I can say with certainty that I have never uttered those words to someone without the sincere intention of actually picking up a telephone in the not-distant future and dialing that person’s number. In fact, I can’t specifically remember a time when I said "I’ll call you." and didn’t do it.

So what’s up with guys who, apparently, make a lifestyle out of the insincere "I’ll call you."?

Is it safe to assume that men make that statement with the same sincere intent...and then for some reason change their mind? Perhaps there should be an etiquette for letting the person, the callee, know that the plans have changed and that there will be no phonecall forthcoming. He’s thought it over and no longer intends to call, in spite of what he said at the end of the date.

Or maybe at least "I’ll call you" could be amended for accuracy. Maybe guys could end a date with "I’ll call you if I don’t change my mind." Or "Maybe I’ll call you." Wow, that "maybe" just changes the whole meaning of the statement, doesn’t it? Now the callee knows that he might call but he might not. She knows the score.

Why obscure the score by saying you’ll do something and then not doing it?

My best friend Sissy has a boyfriend, Bill, who says there is an implied "B.I.D." after each "I’ll call you." Any time he says "I’ll call you." you can assume that he means "Before I Die." Lest Sissy get the wrong idea about the time frame associated with the expected phone call.

Still, B.I.D. implies that he does indeed plan on calling, eventually, right? What about when a guy intends never to call? How about "I’ll call you--I.Y.D." (In Your Dreams).

Remember that Friends episode when Chandler kept having to go out with Rachel’s boss even though he didn’t like her, because he couldn’t stop himself from saying "I’ll call you." at the end of each date? Is that what this is about? You can’t think of a polite way of ending a mediocre date with someone you don’t want to see again?

How about this--if you feel compelled to say "I’ll call you" to be polite, how about go ahead and call for the same reason, to be polite. Say thanks for the date, take care, hang up. You don’t have to ask her out again just because you called.

Or better yet, end the date with a polite "Good luck" or "Take care" instead. How about "Have a great weekend, hope all that works out for you with your boss." How about just "Good night."

We can take the kiss-off phrases a lot better than a false promise.

Really, if you’re ending your mediocre or bad dates with "I’ll call you," what do you say at the end of a really fantastic date?

Don’t tell me."How do you want your eggs?"

Hi Fidelity

Of all the human behaviors that fascinate me, I’d like to understand this one most of all. It’s not so much that I don’t understand infidelity, it’s more that I don’t understand why we, as a society and as individuals, create an institution (marriage) that is so blatantly false as to be ignored at some point by one or both partners throughout their lives. Why do we pretend to believe that we, against all odds, will never experience adultery in our marriages? I’m obviously jaded, having been hit on by so many married men, but I have seen it happen even in the strongest, most loving relationships. Much more often than not.

In general, movies are kinder to unfaithful women than to unfaithful men. Male characters typically require no good reason to fool around and the results are often disastrous. As an adulterer in Fatal Attraction Michael Douglas pays a high price for his indiscretion. Again, as a near adulterer in Disclosure he faces serious consequences. The message is the same in both cases: bad things happen to a man who lets his willy wander.

But women in movies are often given good reason when they cheat. Often their husband is abusive or non-attentive. Even when they cheat for no good reason, they get off with little or no consequences. In Unfaithful, Diane Lane cheats, but the disastrous results are due to her husband's actions, not her own. Meryl Streep in Bridges of Madison County experiences no consequence for her infidelity and is in fact portrayed as an extremely sympathetic character. In The Notebook, Rachel McAdams spends a weekend orgasmic and sweaty in the arms of her old boyfriend before breaking off her engagement with current boyfriend. She gets to live happily ever after. Why are women given license to cheat? Do audiences dislike seeing a woman brought to ruin by her disloyalty? Does it reflect an actual cultural double standard in the way that we regard cheating?

I have seen statistics that show that women cheat more than men do. If this is true, and if film portrayal of it can be believed, then we can imagine that women cheat more because they are more unhappy in marriage than men are. Men, having less reason to be unhappy in marriage, cheat only for selfish reasons.

However, I don't believe this is the case. I believe that in real life, women face far harsher judgment in the community when they cheat. So the treatment of unfaithful women in movies is quite interesting.

I've never understood why cheating is so common. And the thing is, it’s so common that I don’t know why we pretend to be shocked by it anymore.
On one hand, I recognize our ridiculous cultural prescription that clings to the notion of mating for life. I know how unromantic I sound. Believe me, I can succumb to the thunderbolt of love as easily as anyone. I can relate to the desire to commit, to declare one's eternal devotion to another. I have done it twice. But when I look back on twenty years of adulthood, I'm in awe of the changes I've gone through as a person. How silly to assume that two people going through such massive change and maturity will always be happier together than apart. Not that they can't possibly do that, but it's pretty silly to assume they will! So yeah, I guess I understand that cheating is one way of handling that.

What confuses me is cheating as a more desirable option than ending the relationship. If your marriage is not meeting your needs, how is it improved by compromising your character and cuckolding your spouse? Stay together for the kids? The kids can handle a mature divorce much better than a family ripped apart by betrayal.

My analytical mind has come up with a few answers. For one thing, some of us crave drama. Nothing more dramatic than having an affair. Or sometimes the person you’re married to makes you happy and meets most of your needs, but not quite all of them. In an effort to get all your needs met at the same time, you keep the spouse and shag the neighbor on the side. And sometimes, as with my ex, cheating is a means of one partner holding power over the other.

And I guess for men, having more than one woman at a time is a strong fantasy that never really goes away. It’s the classic rock-star success symbol: scoring with multitudes of gorgeous babes. For the average man, two semi-gorgeous women is a close enough approximation to the ideal. Leaving one woman for another simply misses the mark—they have to be simultaneous.

But I believe in commitment, I do. I have to. It’s meaningful and true. I refuse to be so jaded that I don’t value honesty in my relationships. It doesn’t have to be forever, but it must be true while it lasts.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

I wish also that you have friends, whom even if evil and rash, be bold and loyal, and that at least you can trust in one of them beyond doubt. And since life is like that, I wish that you also have enemies. Not many, not few, but just enough, so that from time to time you may question your own “truths”. And that among them, there be at least one who is fair, so that you do not be too sure about yourself.

~Victor Hugo

Touched for the Very First Time

Tell me your first time story. I don't know why, but loss of virginity stories turn me on. It's my favorite part in all those silly Harlequin romance novels. The formula has changed a bit now, no doubt, to accommodate the modern woman, but once upon a time every romance novel heroine had to be a virgin until she was deflowered midway through the book by the manly hero. Always in these unrealistic scenes, he handles her gently in spite of his burning loins driving him to get busy and rock that ass. For her, it only hurts for a second before the pain is driven away by the rising tide of passion that washes over her and carries her to glory in a mind-blowing orgasm together with her man. Luv it.

Y'all, if my first time story was the least bit interesting or erotic, I'd tell you. It's not. So I'll tell you someone else's first time story.

This man's name was Julio. I dated him for about a month. He was mid-40's clean-cut, very conservative. He was a Catholic altar boy (not when I met him—I mean he had been an altar boy as a child). Although he claimed to be agnostic, he still attended mass every week. He talked a lot about guilt and sin. You get what I'm saying, he was very Catholic.

So this young man, Julio, at the age of 20 had not yet committed the sin of fornication. He was a virgin. As was bound to happen, he acquired a girlfriend who was free of the burden of guilt and shame associated with sex. She just wanted to shag him rotten. Every time they made out, she would push him to go a little farther and his defenses grew a little weaker.
One of the things I love about this story is the delightful gender role reversal. It was the chick pushing the guy to go all the way. What a hoot!

So one night they got well past third base but not yet a home run. She slithers down and starts giving him a blowjob. Reader, this just fascinates me—the power of guilt and shame was so strong that he was not able to enjoy his first hummer. He wanted it. He kept trying to push the disturbing thoughts out of his mind and concentrate on the pleasure of the gift she was giving him. But he began to go mad. Auditory hallucinations—he heard his mother's horrified voice crying out to him in shock, "Julio! What are you doing?" Then he saw the anguished face of Christ floating over him. He was filled with self-disgust and shame. So ashamed he thought he might throw up.

Needless to say, he lost his erection and put a stop to the night's activities.

Now Julio was more normal than you may be thinking. He did not dedicate himself to the priesthood, nor did he break up with his girlfriend and buy a subscription to Playboy so he could spend the rest of his college days jerking off. He wanted sex. So he thought a lot about it over the next week or so and brought himself to a comfortable compromise. As long as he didn't actually do the hibbedy-dibbedy then he needn't feel guilty. Oral sex was okay because he wouldn't actually do anything. Whatever sin she was committing by sucking on his sausage was between her and Jesus. But he himself would be sin- and guilt-free.

And eagerly he did set out for his next date with her. He wondered how to actually get her in the position he'd last had her without asking her or taking any action whatsoever.

Fortunately, her goals were in harmony with his own and it wasn't long before he was laid back with his eyes closed, pants around his knees, while his girlfriend gave kind attention to his manhood.

Suddenly something happened. She climbed up on top of him and put himself where he could do the most good. For her. Before he could freak out, she'd rolled them both over and he was on top of her, doing what comes naturally.

It didn't last long, but he was able to deliver the goods without collapsing into spasms. In fact, when it was over, he felt fantastic. He thought he could hear angels singing a hallelujah chorus. He couldn't stop smiling. He knew he'd grown at least six inches taller and if he stepped off a bridge he had no doubt that he could fly.

Wow. What had he been waiting for? He wanted to turn around and go back to his girlfriend's house, pick her up and do it again.

Unfortunately, after turning him into a sex maniac, the girl lost interest in him and it was a while before he had the opportunity to experience nirvana again.

What an interesting thing—to go from the extreme of paralyzing guilt and shame to the extreme of glorious acceptance of himself as a sexual being. I asked him, "What happened to the guilt and shame? It didn't just go away, did it?"

Well, what happened was he had an Epiphany with that first sexual experience. He had not hurt anyone, he had not lied, he had not committed a crime, he had not taken anything that was not given to him, he had not disrespected anyone, he had not betrayed anyone. He had not done a single thing that felt wrong. Why, exactly, was he supposed to feel guilty? Because someone had told him that God didn't want him to do that? Why would God have a problem with two people privately sharing something special and giving each other pleasure? With a world full of people killing, hurting, cheating and destroying each other, Julio figured God's least concern was the configuration of body parts between two people making each other feel good.

So began his crisis of faith. However, you can take the boy away from the altar but you can't take the altar out of the boy. Julio dumped me because I was "too sexual." He'd be ashamed to introduce me to his mother, he said. Seriously. Did he think that I don't know how to act around someone's mother? Did he think I might whip a dildo out of my purse and offer to let her borrow it?

So anyway, that's my favorite first time story so far. Tell me yours…

Patience

When we slept, he stretched his leg across the wide bed, mumbling, half asleep, “No. I need to be touching you.” And so his foot lay always against mine, or his hairy leg caressed my smooth one, and he talked in his sleep, with many sweet things to say.

I breathed his breath into my lungs like a shotgun hit and held it there, wanting to get higher on him, intoxicated. Delirious. And on our last morning together, I kissed the back of his neck and whispered, “Don’t forget me.” It was my way of casting a spell to hold me in his memory. I thought he was asleep, but he startled me by answering, “No way. I promise.”

Since we parted, I have, as I tend to do, descended into purple shades of madness, and he cheerfully says, “You’re so cute.” This should absolutely drive me fruity, but instead it calms me. Here is a man who finds my madness cute. He seems not afraid of it. He is rather insane himself.

We both admit to jealousy, neither of us wanting to discuss what there may or may not be to be jealous of. It would be ludicrous to make unsubtle promises or declarations at this point. We both have very full lives to live with a thousand miles in between them.

This morning I woke up before the alarm and quietly watched the sunrise for a few minutes from my pillow, thinking of him, of course, wondering if he might be thinking of me. My alarm clicked on, the radio station, precisely with the opening bars of this song. Almost like it was magick. Must be my week for heavy metal rock ballads, I thought, as I reached over to turn off the radio so I could get out of bed. Then the words stopped me, and I lay there a bit longer, listening.

Shed a tear 'cause I'm missing you

I'm still alright to smile

Girl, I think about you every day now

You know how I am, how could I not close my eyes and feel him in that song?

Sit here on the stairs

'Cause I'd rather be alone

If I can't have you right now, I'll wait dear

Sometimes, I get so tense

But I can't speed up the time

But you know, love, there's one more thing to consider

Said woman take it slow

Things will be just fine

You and I'll just use a little patience

It was like those days when his bed was “our” bed and he needed to be touching me—this morning he reached his heart across the miles and touched me in my bed for a few minutes. What a nice way to start the day.

He Was There

Wow. I looked up and he was just there. I wasn't looking for him. In fact I didn't even want to be there, I tried to get out of going to New York.

He was just there, that first day and every moment of all the next few days, he was there. So connected to me, like I could actually see and feel the glowing red cord between us. Vibrating. A chord between us. Harmony.

He was right there. With his sexy-ass Titus Pullo haircut and his entertaining voices and his technical skills and his vibrant energy that fills whatever space he is in with electricity.

Crazy days of working, crazy nights of passion and talking and acting silly, and then I came home.

I'm left with these things: his tee shirt, which I will never wash; the cork from a bottle of wine we shared; a gum wrapper chain made by my nervous hands when they wanted to be touching him instead. And hope---this ZAP! I thought would occur only once in my life, well here it is again, and this time connected to a man not entirely untouchable and one intrepid enough to confess to being a little bit zapped! by it too. If nothing else, I possess the comforting knowledge that I'm not broken or wasted, I can ZAP! again when properly inspired.

I'm left also with the confusion of conflicting urges--to laugh and cry at the same time. A woman should not indulge in grown-up affairs if she cries like a little girl to see it end.

Did it end? How could it not, I am here.

He is there.

Isn’t it amazing when the universe puts you exactly where you need to be, right when you need to be there, so that something truly extraordinary can happen and change your life? The trick is to get out of your own way so the universe can do its job.

Winter in New York always makes me think of this movie.

ser•en•dip•i•ty - the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for

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Another Old Lang Syne

Dan Fogelberg died today. Aaaww~! Sent me off in search of this song, which is so beautiful and sad.

Met my old lover in the grocery store
The snow was falling Christmas Eve
I stole behind her in the frozen foods
And I touched her on the sleeve
She didn't recognize the face at first
But then her eyes flew open wide
She went to hug me and she spilled her purse
And we laughed until we cried.

And because I always associate unnatural meaning to minor synchronicities in my life, as I hummed this lovely song in my head tonight I thought of a phone call received today--not an old lover but someone I loved and still care for (always) as a dear friend. It was so nice to hear his voice; he sounded well and happy.

We drank a toast to innocence
We drank a toast to now
And tried to reach beyond the emptiness
But neither one knew how.

The things that bring old lovers back to our attention, what an odd sensation. Boredom, in this case--when pirates get bored, I guess they like to revisit sites of previous pillage and plunder where they particularly enjoyed themselves, islands where the buried treasure was never uncovered.

The beer was empty and our tongues were tired
And running out of things to say
She gave a kiss to me as I got out
And I watched her drive away.

When you talk to someone you've missed, does your mind start spinning off all the questions you'd wanted to ask but never got the chance? Mine did. Not serious questions, necessarily, but silly questions like, "Do you dream in other languages?" or curious questions like "Who was the beautiful green eyed woman in the photograph?" Fortunately the call was cut short before I could ask much, and perhaps I'm fortunate that he didn't ask much either.

God bless the boredom that prompted the phone call. Though the conversation was short and a little awkward, it was nice to know we're still friends.

Just for a moment I was back at school
And felt that old familiar pain
And as I turned to make my way back home
The snow turned into rain --

While My Guitar Gently Weeps

..

It sits pouting in the corner, my guitar, its slender neck pointing into the air like an accusatory finger, or perhaps like a phallic symbol mocking me in my temporary (but still maddening) celibacy. We both miss him, my guitar and me. We both sigh and moan, counting the days until he comes home again. We both long to feel his skilled fingers once again, him playing us both with equal vigor and producing the loveliest of music from each of us.

Only a week without him--that's nothing compared to the years my guitar and I were without him before we knew him, but of course the intensity of being without him could only be felt in cruel contrast to the intensity and pleasure of being with him. I didn't know how much I was missing him until the day he captured me with his blue gaze and dropped a slow, sexy wink. Now I know exactly how much I'm missing him--enough to fill my days with thoughts of him, even as I sternly remind myself to get a grip and knock that shit off, before lapsing back into my bittersweet blue-eyed daydreams minutes later. Enough to fill my nights with dreams, either strange or erotic but always with him here with me and my guitar, right where he belongs.

Only a few days, then my guitar and I will be touched again the way we need to be touched. As much as I love my guitar, though, I'm afraid I must insist--me first!

Envy is for the dead

I saw this interesting idea recently and found it intriguing:

PERSPECTIVE: Jealousy is simply and clearly the fear that one does not have value. Jealousy scans for evidence to prove the point - that others will be preferred and rewarded more than you. There is only one alternative - self-value. If you cannot love yourself, you will not believe that you are loved. You will always think it's a mistake or luck. Take your eyes off others and turn the scanner within. Find the seeds of your jealousy, clear the old voices and experiences. Put all the energy into building your personal and emotional security. Then you will be the one others envy, and you can remember the pain and reach out to them.

What is jealousy, exactly, and where in our psyches is it born? It seems that such a natural human emotion can’t be entirely unhealthy. Like anger and fear, it serves some purpose in our sense of well being, perhaps to warn us or to inspire us. And such a complex emotion can't be "simply and clearly" summed up or caused by any one aspect of our personality.

For a man, jealousy over a woman is usually first more related to sex than to anything emotional, but even men do feel jealous when a woman they care about gives her affection and attention and admiration to another man, even if she reserves the sex only for him.

Jealousy defined, first of all, I guess is the unpleasant feeling you experience when you perceive that someone is giving something to someone else that should be given to you. It’s a combination of confusion (that should be mine, why is it being given to someone else?), fear (does it mean that there won’t be enough for me? Am I about to lose something valuable?), pain (related to rejection, I guess, that someone does not consider me as special as I think I am), and anger (result of pain). So these emotions can occur in varying degrees and mixtures, and the whole combination, the jealousy, can occur in varying degrees. Like any other unpleasant emotion, its presence doesn’t necessarily indicate a problem, but the way you handle it can cause huge problems.

As an issue of low self-esteem, I see “envy” as what’s involved rather than jealousy. Perhaps it’s a subtle difference, but to envy someone is to strongly desire what they have—again, it can be a very unpleasant emotion but it doesn’t involve the same elements as jealousy. With envy, there’s no sense that the something the other person has should rightfully belong to you, no sense of confusion why they have it and you don’t, no sense of rejection really. Simply really wanting bad what it is that they have. As it relates to self-esteem, yes, I see envy as an indicator that one doesn’t feel deserving to have it. When we envy someone, we feel we have no choice, all we can do is watch and want. "Eat your heart out," the saying goes. Perhaps we don't feel worthy or capable of setting that as a goal for ourselves, nor do we feel any confidence that we could ever achieve it, so we just...want it.

With jealousy, one definitely feels deserving to have it, that’s the source of the emotion, that feeling that you are worthy of it, that you earned it or deserve it or have a right to it, but it’s being given to someone else. To me, that’s actually an indicator of good self-esteem. Maybe in extreme jealousy, it’s even an indication of too much self-esteem—ego, the feeling that you deserve everything from everybody and anything anyone gives to someone else makes you jealous because it should be yours. In this sort of person, there’s no feeling unworthy of having that thing, it’s just the opposite.

In the matter at hand, I can say I have a super cool life, I can’t complain, and I'm appreciative enough of what I've got, who I am and what I've done that I'm not likely to envy anybody else. If I see something I want, I either set it as a goal for myself or I examine what it is I want and why, and sometimes find that I don't really want it after all. Whatever I would like to have that I can’t have right now, I can quite easily put out of my mind (if I’m left alone and not provoked), or I can put it on the shelf of my heart labeled “Someday I Will Have This, Just Watch and See.” I feel no sense of being unworthy to have it.

And, dear Lord in Heaven, I absolutely never envied Her for what she has. I would sooner convert and become a nun than to step into her shoes. Consider for a moment what has been seen through my eyes. While the relationship may be the most perfect, fulfilling, inspiring, healthy relationship in the history of mankind, consider the small sliver of that relationship I have seen. Two people tossing romantic cliches back and forth to each other, making declarations of love and devotion that sound quite large and impressive but really have no substance when you look close, telling very little about them other than the fact that they both know how to use Google and how to find music on the internet. The slice of relationship I saw, it could have been any two people in love, very generic.

Come now. Do you not know me well enough to know that I would never envy this? Sure, everybody wants love but does this seem like thekind of love you'd expect me to eat myheart out for? (Again, it's very likely the relationship itself is very deep and earth-shakingly good, but I would only be able to envy what I could see, and what I saw was not something I want.) When have you ever known me to be impressed by a cliche?

You know me, I'd get a bigger kick out of subtlety and more flattered by something that seems very understated but is in fact something deeply meaningful to me or to us. I'd be more touched by a very simple gesture than week after week of grandiosity and hyperbole.

You can believe it, or choose not to believe it if your ego requires you to think certain things about my motivations, but if you sincerely think that my motivations were jealousy and envy, you don't know me well at all. Envy, or feelings of being unworthy, were never a factor here.

Jealousy was born when I began to perceive that certain things should be given to me, that I had earned them or that I was led to believe they might be given to me, only to have them yanked out from under my nose and given to someone else. Jealous--yep, I was.

I’m fortunate enough, though, to be emotionally very flexible. I’m pretty good at changing my perspective, developing healthier (and less painful) ways of seeing the world. In short time I no longer felt that what was being given to Her should be given to me. I felt betrayed by certain manipulations and deceptions, sure, but the jealousy part was easy to get over. Love is love, and you can’t fault someone forever for giving it to the person they feel it for. It’s life. It happens. We could have been friends, and that sting of jealousy would have stayed gone. Yes, really, gone. I no longer felt pain to see the lovers, nor any sense that I should have that. I was curious. I wanted to understand.

Of course, some people get an ego boost from inspiring jealousy in others. And certain well-placed words or actions can bring jealousy back from its cold green grave--that feeling of being entitled to have something which is being given to someone else, that feeling of rejection. When jealousy is gone, how do you get it back? You simply get the person to believe again that they should or could have what's there. Being once bitten, the person might be reluctant to believe it this time, so you might even have to go so far as to suggest that not only will you give her that thing she has earned and is worthy of, but that you will no longer give it to the other person at all. Bang, the person is now ready to feel jealous once again when it turns out to be untrue.

Most importantly, the jealousy could have been severely eased or even completely eliminated with just one brief, sensitive, direct conversation--or even just an email--in which you expressed regret at any pain caused but shared your honest intentions and shared some of the reasons things turned out the way they did.

But if inspiring jealousy was your goal, yep, you did it just the right way.

Imagine the hypocrisy of a man who intentionally provokes jealousy in a woman and then criticizes her for feeling it and questions her self esteem. Especially when his own jealous impulses have caused him to do things like this:

[link deleted, because I'm over it now and far too mature to go there again.]

I think I caught something deadly...

I just finished reading a book that has creeped me out more than anything since, I don’t know, Pet Sematary I guess, but this one is not fiction, it’s real! When I told Steve about it, he laughed at me and said, “Uh, where were you in the 90’s?” Okay, so apparently this is an old book and there’s a movie based on it with Dustin Hoffman and everybody knew about this except for me, until now.

The Hot Zone by Richard Preston.

Come on, y’all, pretend like you never saw Outbreak and you’re just hearing about this Ebola thing for the first time. Oh My God!! Right?? Wow.

What is up with these weird African viruses that can get inside a person and just make him, like, dissolve internally within a couple of weeks until he finally erupts, in impressive geyser-like fashion, with fountains of black blood and vomit? These are viruses (virii?) that incubate only 3-10 days before they kill you, and they have a 90% mortality rate. Which means, if you get this shit onya, you’re toasted. And it ain’t a pleasant way to go.

I’m not going to describe the progress of the disease caused by the Ebola and Marburg viruses; there’s no way I could make it even half as horrifying as it was when I read it. I swear, I could not put this book down, but I felt like I wanted to be wearing rubber gloves and a surgical mask while I read it. I must have increased my hand-washing behavior by at least 300% since I began reading this book.

Instead, I turn my thoughts to the concept of a virus itself. This book has made the virus scarier than anything I can remember being scared of in my whole life, and yet so small that millions of them would fit on the dot of this “i”. If five of those teeny tiny little things got in your blood, you’d die a terrible death. Worse, you’d probably know you were going to die many days before the relief of death actually came to you. It would start with a headache…

But the virus himself…is he evil? Does he kill? I’ve heard some people say that the AIDS virus is a tool of righteousness, a moral judgment on gay people, but the HIV virus kills “people” not “gay people.” And these Ebola critters are far far far more deadly than HIV, and you don’t even have to have sex or do anything immoral to catch them. All you have to do is be there with your living cells ready to receive the uninvited guest of a virus or two.

A virus is not really even a living thing, is it? It is a simple structure made of protein that just lies dormant until it bumps up against something alive. It’s like a tiny little chunk of your hair or fingernail. Not alive at all, does nothing, consumes nothing, produces nothing. Until it brushes up against a living cell, and then it grabs hold. It penetrates, and then its sole activity is replication. It can’t reproduce like a living thing, but its only reason for existence is to create as many copies of itself as it can, using the host cell’s reproductive equipment and instructions. In Ebola, it is this zealous, mindless reproductive frenzy that causes the death of the host organism. The virus simply reproduces itself so rapidly and efficiently that it causes every living cell to burst open with thousands more viruses, turning the whole body to jelly and dead blood.

And then, of course, in order for the virus to continue doing what it loves to do, it must find another living host, and what better chance of doing that than to end the whole infection/drama/kill by causing a massive eruption of virus-filled fluid? You see, this virus produces the best biological means for its own spread to another host. Even the “evil” HIV virus doesn’t do that! It would be, like, since AIDS is spread easiest through body fluids during sexual contact, so one symptom created by the virus is unusual horniness, making sexual contact more likely, thereby increasing the virus’s chance of spreading. That not being the case, I think the AIDS virus is not evil. Not even close.

This Ebola fella, though, he might be evil. He freaks me out. I’ll be having bad dreams about him for a while, you watch.

"What's puzzling you is the nature of my game..."

"Art thou not sorry for these heinous deeds?"

"Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.
Even now I curse the day--and yet, I think,
Few come within the compass of my curse,--
Wherein I did not some notorious ill,
As kill a man, or else devise his death,
Ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it,
Accuse some innocent and forswear myself,
Set deadly enmity between two friends,
Make poor men's cattle break their necks;
Set fire on barns and hay-stacks in the night,
And bid the owners quench them with their tears.
Oft have I digg'd up dead men from their graves,
And set them upright at their dear friends' doors,
Even when their sorrows almost were forgot;
And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,
Have with my knife carved in Roman letters,
'Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.'
Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things
As willingly as one would kill a fly,
And nothing grieves me heartily indeed
But that I cannot do ten thousand more."

For some, villainy comes quite naturally. They were born to wreak havoc on others, taking pleasure in their own ability to cause pain. As we welcome the sweet relief of a villain's departure from our lives, we can rest assured--even the devil gets what he deserves.

I can write the saddest lines tonight.
Write for example: ‘The night is fractured
and they shiver, blue, those stars, in the distance’
The night wind turns in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest lines tonight.

I loved her, sometimes she loved me too.
On nights like these I held her in my arms.
I kissed her greatly under the infinite sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.

How could I not have loved her huge, still eyes.
I can write the saddest lines tonight.

To think I don’t have her, to feel I have lost her.
Hear the vast night, vaster without her.
Lines fall on the soul like dew on the grass.
What does it matter that I couldn’t keep her.
The night is fractured and she is not with me.
That is all. Someone sings far off. Far off,
my soul is not content to have lost her.
As though to reach her, my sight looks for her.
My heart looks for her: she is not with me
The same night whitens, in the same branches.

We, from that time, we are not the same.
I don’t love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.

My voice tried to find the breeze to reach her.
Another’s kisses on her, like my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body, infinite eyes.
I don’t love her, that’s certain, but perhaps I love her.

Love is brief: forgetting lasts so long.
Since, on these nights, I held her in my arms,
my soul is not content to have lost her.
Though this is the last pain she will make me suffer,
and these are the last lines I will write for her.
~Pablo Neruda

Pants on Fire

No human behavior has caused me so much tribulation and pain as lying. I know we all do it, to some extent. Some are really really good at it. I’m not naturally a liar. Not that I never do or never have, but I generally avoid that particular form of manipulation because I’m no good at it. So, since I don’t typically lie, I guess I expect the same from people and therefore am (have been) extremely gullible.

Obviously, being lied to isn’t really a problem unless you believe it. So, for me, learning when not to believe has become a priority. It’s difficult (but not impossible) to spot a liar in someone you don’t know very well. There are body language signals you can watch for and other kinds of signs, but when interacting with a stranger, I find it distracting to focus my attention on trying to remember and notice the signs of a liar. I wind up asking him to repeat himself because I’ve been too busy trying to see if he’s telling the truth to even hear what he said.

In fact, the better you know a person, the easier it is to catch their lies. Specifically, after you've caught them in a lie once, you pay closer attention and watch for the next one (and it will come). You learn their unique “liar language,” the tics and quirks they take on when they practice to deceive.

But regardless of how well you know a person, the most absolute and surefire way to know if a person is lying is if they say something that you know for a fact is not true. Brilliant, right? And it’s not as hard as you might think. All you have to do is know things. Random things. Things that may not seem important at the time; things you wouldn’t imagine the person would lie about, as well as things you think they might lie about. Just know lots of things, and then pay attention to what they say. Not only what they say, but pay attention to what it is they want you to believe. Does it contradict some of the stuff you know to be true? What’s the person’s motivation for wanting you to believe the Untruth—honest mistake, self preservation or sinister manipulation?

Here’s some of the “liar language” I have learned over the years:

1) The classic sign of a liar is failure to make eye contact. Remember Ian, the crazy Englishman whose every word was a falsehood? This eye avoidance was something I noticed right away but dismissed it as a cultural difference or perhaps shyness or insecurity. In the absence of any other signs of shyness, I should have realized he was a bullshit artist from the moment we met. His eyes were constantly darting off to the side, bouncing off my face as he talked, peering at something across the room as though he were myopic.

And my ex-husband the ogre, when he lied, he’d stare at the TV or something, as if he were so disinterested in the conversation he could barely remember what he was saying. If you can't see his eyes, he's lying.
When faced with a false accusation, we face our accuser with full focus and direct eye contact. When denying a true accusation, we angle our bodies away from our accuser and look for means of escape (eyes darting toward the door or glancing at a watch).

2) Mis-spoken or unintelligible words. Ian did this too. Postured as "I’m so shocked and offended by what you’ve suggested that I can’t even think straight or string together a coherent sentence!" But a person who truly has been wrongfully accused will communicate very clearly, wanting to clear up the misunderstanding and make the truth known in no uncertain terms.

3) Predicting your suspicions and being pro-active in defending against them. When he starts explaining something you didn’t ask him about, he’s lying. When you ask a simple, innocent question and find the answer is strangely long and drawn out, filled with explanations you didn’t ask for, he’s lying.

4) People look up and toward their stronger hand when imagining something. They look toward the opposite hand when remembering something. If you watch Clinton’s Monica Lew testimony, you’ll notice his eyes go up and toward the left. For most people, this would indicate that he’s remembering events as they happened, not making them up or concocting a story. Until you remember that Clinton is left-handed...(don’t get me wrong, y’all, I love Bill Clinton and I miss him. But he is a liar. Yeah, like any politician isn’t? Don’t get me started on Bush’s liar language. Okay, here’s Bush’s liar language: is his mouth moving? He’s lying.)

5) Liars will include lots of detail in their stories, to make them more believable, of course. But you’ll notice that no details are included that provide another person’s POV or reactions. Liars tend to avoid details that can easily be proved false.

6) Liars use the following phrases: "You don’t believe me, do you?" or “You gotta believe me! It’s true!” or “Please believe me.” One who is telling the truth expects to be believed. "I can prove it!" Offering to prove something without offering any real proof is a sign of deception, especially when you have not asked for proof.

7) A liar is always happy (relieved) to change the subject.

8) Sudden loss of hearing. Purposely misunderstanding what you said. Asking you to repeat yourself. Repeating your words back to you. These things give liars time to think on their feet.

9) Excessive or inappropriate sarcasm. Some people are more sarcastic than others, but liars seem to use this tool more than most.

10) When phrasing an accusation, say it like this: "I didn’t want to do this, but unless you are honest with me, I have no choice." A liar will respond with "do what?" His concern is about the consequences, what you are threatening to do. He needs to consider his options. An innocent person is not concerned with the options because he has nothing to confess.

11) Using "I would never" as support for the lie. "No, I didn’t sleep with her. I would never do a fat chick." This was one of the ogre’s classic signs—and yes, he did do the fat chick.

12) Prior history of lying. I made the mistake of thinking that if someone has been caught in a lie, they are more likely to tell the truth next time, because of the embarrassment of getting caught lying. Not so. With some people, lying is their natural and preferred way of dealing with people, regardless of how many times they get caught.

Another good piece of advice: when confronting someone, don’t offer up all your evidence at once. Seems really obvious, but I used to make this mistake all the time with my ex. The liar will concoct his story to match your evidence. But you can almost always catch the lie if you withhold some things while he goes into his explanation.

The Man Who Taught His Asshole to Talk

Benway: "Why not one all-purpose blob? Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down, you dig, farting out the words. It was unlike anything I ever heard.

"This ass talk had a sort of gut frequency. It hit you right down there like you gotta go. You know when the old colon gives you the elbow and it feels sorta cold inside, and you know all you have to do is turn loose? Well this talking hit you right down there, a bubbly, thick stagnant sound, a sound you could smell.

"This man worked for a carnival, you dig, and to start with it was like a novelty ventriloquist act. Real funny too, at first. He had a number he called 'The Better Ole' that was a scream, I tell you. I forget most of it but it was clever. Like, 'Oh I say, are you still down there, old thing?'

"'Nah! I had to go relieve myself.'

"After a while the ass started talking on its own. He would go in without anything prepared and his ass would ad-lib and toss the gags back at him every time.

"Then it developed sort of teeth-like little raspy in-curving hooks and started eating. He thought this was cute at first and built an act around it, but the asshole would eat its way through his pants and start talking on the street, shouting out it wanted equal rights. It would get drunk too, and have crying jags, nobody loved it and it wanted to be kissed same as any other mouth. Finally it talked all the time, day and night, you could hear him for blocks screaming at it to shut up, and beating it with his fist, and sticking candles up it, but nothing did any good and the asshole said to him: 'It's you who will shut up in the end. Not me. Because we don't need you around here anymore. I can talk and eat and shit.'

"After that he began waking up in the morning with a transparent jelly like a tadpole's tail all over his mouth. This jelly was what the scientists call un-D.T., Undifferentiated Tissue, which can grow into any kind of flesh on the human body. He would tear it off his mouth and the pieces would stick to his hands like burning gasoline jelly and grow there, grow anywhere on him a glob of it fell. So finally his mouth sealed over, and the whole head would have amputated spontaneous -- (did you know there is a condition occurs in parts of Africa and only among Negroes where the little toe amputates spontaneously?) -- except for the eyes, you dig. That's one thing the asshole couldn't do was see. It needed the eyes. But nerve connections were blocked and infiltrated and atrophied so the brain couldn't give orders any more. It was trapped in the skull, sealed off. For a while you could see the silent, helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes, then finally the brain must have died, because the eyes went out, and there was no more feeling in them than a crab's eye on the end of a stalk. "

~William Burroughs

And the greatest of these was the Prince of Troy

The men of Troy—so legendary in their masculinity as to have condoms named after them, and the greatest of these was Hector, brave Prince of Troy. He has always been my favorite, even before Eric Bana made him delicious in the movie “Troy.”

His name (Ἑκτωρ) means “holding fast.”

He was the eldest son of Priam by Hecabe. Some traditions describe him as a son of Apollo, who did favor him and granted him blessings of protection and victory in the Trojan War. He was also a favorite of Athena.

He wisely proposed a duel between his brother Paris and Menelaus to put an end to the Trojan War. When divine intervention ensured that the gods would have their war after all, Hector fought bravely.

Protesilaus, who was the first of the Greeks to jump upon the Trojan coast, was said to be slain by Hector. This is not mentioned in the Iliad; his first act described in that poem is his censure of Paris who took to flight after having gone out to fight Menelaus in single combat. Hector himself then challenged Menelaus and killed him.

Pierre-Claude-Francois Delrome 1783-1859: Hector admonishes Paris, who removes his wreath and reaches for his helmet. Behind him sits Helen. (shameless hussy)

Hector was a lover as well as a fighter. The scene which takes place at the Scaean gate with his beloved wife Andromache is one of the most delicate and beautiful scenes in the Iliad. She pleads with him to withdraw from the field for her sake as well as their son’s. With understanding, compassion and tenderness, Hector convinces her to let him go. His baby son shrinks in terror from his father’s helmet, and Hector expresses hope that his son will one day be proud of his father and a better man than himself.

Hector is one of Homer’s noblest conceptions. He is a great leader, a man who commands respect. Even Achilles trembles when he approaches him. He has a presentiment of the fall of his country, but he perseveres in his heroic resistance, preferring death to slavery and disgrace. But besides these virtues of a warrior, he is distinguished also, and perhaps more so than Achilles, by those of a man: his heart is open to the gentle feelings of a son, a husband, and a father.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

My friend Sissy wrote a blog recently in which she asked the eternal question that has buggared women timelessly--how do you "wash that man outta your hair"? How do you get over a guy and move on? How do you put yourself out of your own misery and stop thinking about him?

To find the answers, I consider the Masters of Moving On, men themselves. The reason this is a Woman's question is because men have this one covered. They are already trained to the point of second nature to deny, suppress, cover up or control any form of weakness in themselves. Sitting around pining over a woman would definitely be considered a form of weakness by any man. Not gonna do it, nope.

Okay, so how does he not do it? Assuming that he feels at least the same initial urges to think about her obsessively, what method does he use to deny, suppress, cover up and control those urges? What makes them go away?

Being not a man, I can only guess. He distracts himself, I imagine, with beer and football. Golf. Another woman or two. (Or ten?) Work. Maybe he gets angry at himself and calls himself a puss every time he catches himself thinking about her. Maybe he gets mad at her and convinces himself she's not worth his slightest attention.

Whatever it is, it seems to work quite well most of the time.
Except when it doesn't.

This weekend past, I was having my own private Primal Scream Therapy session when my phone rang, interrupting me in mid-scream. It was Dutch, of all people, whom I haven't heard from in more than a year. We'd had a brief flirtation which never progressed to anything much. His pro/con sheet looked like this:

Pros- tall, good-looking, plays guitar
Cons- married. he's not Chris.

Well, Dutch called to share the news that he and his wife split up and that he's been having dreams about me. I guess he did not wash me completely out of his hair. So, it seems his pro/con sheet looks like this:

Pros- tall, good-looking, plays guitar, he's not Chris
Cons- lives on the other side of the metroplex, he's not my lobster.

It's a funny old world, isn't it?

Anyway, back to the topic of moving on, getting over, washing that man out of one's long red hair (or long black hair, in Sissy's case).

If distractions don't work, I intend to get spiritual. Go within. It's said that intense relationships affect your solar plexus chakra, just below your heart. It vibrates in the color of yellow. I often dream yellow dreams. This is the place where your soul connects and becomes enmeshed with the soul of another. By working on this chakra, meditating and reeling in that tangled yellow cord, I'll wash that man right out of my hair. It's a tricky process, but I can do it and so can Sissy. We can do anything, we are intrepid.

The New Sensual Massage

"Oh, you're in for a treat," I informed my Relentless Tease. "We get to review this for Sex-Kitten."

I held up a book: The New Sensual Massage by Gordon Inkeles.
We started with a warm room, a cushioned pallet on the floor, soft music and incense. I warmed some oil in the microwave. The New Sensual Massage recommends vegetable oil, but I couldn't bring myself to rub cooking oil into my lover's skin. Instead I picked up some scented massage oil from the local erotic toy store.

"You have to be naked," I said, returning from the kitchen to find him sprawled out in his sexy blue boxer briefs. I opened the book and pointed to the cheesy 1970's porn-style pictures of naked men and women massaging each other into rapturous bliss.

"The guys aren't naked," he said.

"Yes they are, look." But for some reason, the pictures in the book showed pussy and breast a-plenty, but nary a penis showed its bald little head. The men, while naked, all posed in ways to discreetly conceal their genitals. I didn't have time to reflect upon that interesting discovery; my man was waiting to be rubbed.

To receive the full pleasure of his New Sensual Massage, the Tease shed his Jockeys and eagerly lay face down to await my magic touch that would transport him to another dimension or would, at least, make him really horny.

The massage starts at the shoulders, works down the back, over the perfectly rounded buttocks, along the thighs to the calves, and down to the ankles, feet and toes. Once my hands touched his body, I must maintain contact until the massage was over.

The book covers the Master Strokes of circulation, kneading, friction, compression, passive exercise, and percussion.

"Ow!" the Tease groaned. "What are you doing?"

"I'm kneading you."

"You're needing me?" He lifted his head and regarded me with a raised eyebrow and his charming, dimpled smile.

"Not yet, silly."

The book led us through special techniques designed to make each part of the body feel good, including the hands, feet, buttocks, scalp and face.
The Relentless Tease has the softest feet I've ever touched, much too soft to be a man's feet. As I rubbed them, I let my eyes travel over the familiar contours of his lovely relaxed body. Now it was time for him to turn over and let me massage up the front of him. I tugged on his toe and whispered, "Turn over now, babe."

He did and I saw that his face wore an expression of purest pleasure. Nothing, not even a blowjob, pleases a man more than having a woman's undivided attention on his naked body from head to toe.

Part Three covers Erotic Massage, to awaken sensually deprived parts of the body. "Your toes have a right to an erotic experience; so does your scalp." Needless to say, his toes got an erotic experience, but I didn't make it all the way back up the front part of his body to his scalp. I encountered one very distracting obstacle along the way. Maybe the Tease will get his big ol' knobby head rubbed next time.