Mating Rituals

I'll never get used to them. Even when I am only one of many in a seething, desperate, drunken mass, I feel myself inside this hamster wheel of skepticism and alienation. It's not always a bad thing, but drinking at least made the plastic more transparent. I know, what an idiotic metaphor.

Why sex? Well, it feels good if you do it the right way(s) with the right person(s), sure. But beneath that, we're fundamentally--I don't care whether or not you "believe in" marriage or kids, or even want either of them--geared to pair off, find a cave, and squeeze out another little monkey or six.

That said, (very reductive, I know), what purpose do relationships serve, when you do not--as I don't--have any intention of reproducing?

There are plenty of happy, childless, long-term couples out there, right? Do they still fuck? What happens to their sex drive once makin' babies becomes obsolete? It's like Jackie Treehorn says, "The brain is the greatest erogenous zone in the body." That's where my sex drive derives, anyway. First thought, then action. And are men and women so fundamentally different in this respect?

I know this makes me sound very ignorant, but the thing is that, for someone who has actively pursued sexual...(I refuse to say "liberation") awareness for most of her pubescent life, I feel like I suddenly know nothing about it.

That brings me back to the question of what a relationship--homo or hetero, open or closed, long-term or short-term, but romantic regardless--is FOR, if not for reproducing. Body heat. It's true. Also, instinctively, let's go back to the jungle or the open plain, the mountains, or whatever. Let's go all the way back to spears. Back-to-back, you're better off, regardless of your gender. That expression--for someone to "have your back," really gets at the heart of what I'm trying to understand. Yes, I have an agenda here. I want to know:

What is it about a relationship that has been so important to me, over the course of the last year, that I let Liam put me through the ringer without just walking away? Why did I let myself, and him, become so unhappy that I felt more like his enemy than his partner or lover? I know where it began, but that doesn't mean that I can just blame him and move on. It began with a lie. It always does. And not just any lie, but a lie that put me at personal risk. I'm talking STDs here. That's something I take very. Fucking. Seriously. Condom or no, viruses are getting cleverer and cleverer, and their consequences are dire.

Oral sex is awesome, on either end, if it's done well. I'm not going to put in a fucking dental dam, or suck on a big rubber tube. That would take all of the enjoyment out of it for me. Does that put me at a higher health risk for stuff like HPV, AIDS, etc? You're goddamned right it does. I have no delusions about that. So, when Liam was cheating on me, lying to me about it to the point that I didn't know who he had done or what, I had to assume for the sake of my own safety that he was having unprotected sex (oral or otherwise) with women I did not know. And I have to say--nothing personal here, but a couple of them were really nasty. Like, really got around. And I never found out about it until AFTER the fact. AFTER I'd had unprotected sex with him.

My rage about that only increased with each time he did it. I lost track of how many, but who's counting now?

The point is, my "partner" risked my safety and my longterm health for the sake of getting his fucking dick wet. That was not a gesture of love, devotion, or even friendship. It was very nearly the most careless, selfish thing that anyone has ever done to me. And he did it a lot.

He seems to feel pretty sorry for himself, with his busted tooth and his dental bills, about the raging, abusive alcoholic he escaped from. I can't pay his dental bill, so he came in and pretty much said that I should "give" him the scooter I have been needing to sell to support myself.

I wonder how much antibiotics for chlamydia come out to, after all the treatment? The immunization shot against HPV? Anything else that might turn up in my system long after he's scot-free on his scooter? He loved to preach about his privacy, but the wall we kept coming up against was that his "privacy" could have cost my private-parts a whole lot of trouble. Somehow, that never seemed to sink in with him. We were doomed, and have been, for a very long time.

And yeah, I'm feeling pretty resentful about the old issues. The breakup is going fine, it's just that now I can really look back and see it for what it was: a fucking train wreck for the last year. Before that, it was beautiful. Blame aside, that's all I know. But clearly, I have been feeling this way for a long, long time. Resentful doesn't even begin to cover it. Try furious. Wounded. Betrayed. Scared enough to strike.

Sex doesn't mean what it used to mean. Diseases are very, very real, and I don't want a goddamned one of them. I wouldn't wish them on anyone, but the conclusion I keep arriving at concerning my conflict over monogamy is this:

It's not just monogamy. It's statistics. It's trust. It's knowing how many invisible enemies are out there, waiting to feed on my pleasure parts, and having trusted someone else with my long-term health.

I don't think that he ever understood how serious it was--not just the cheating, not the jealousy, but the lying about it.

Goddamn it, I want to see a pedigree before I fuck anybody ever again. I'm gonna go get myself tested for everything under the sun, and I'm going to present any future partner with some fucking papers. And I'm gonna keep 'em updated in cycles of six months!

Well, anyway, I don't know about that, but I sure as shit am going to make a mofo wrap his shit up. Twice.

Biting back

Well, as predicted, Liam and I broke up last week. What day exactly, I couldn't tell you. Partially because of the logistics and complications of him moving all of his stuff out, and partially because we really love this house, and are still under lease for a year, we decided to remain roommates. The "friends" bit is pending, as I'm not really sure what kind of a friend he is. So far, the roommates thing is working out pretty well, except for a few things. One, I'll always be the neat roommate. Two, I'm isolated as fuck because my phone is broken, and we never bothered with a land line, and I'm sick for the first time in nearly a year, with no one to take care of me or really support me--and no way to even call anyone and ask if they would mind doing so. So, I'm feeling pretty damned lonely and sorry for myself, and the whole "call your sponsor" when you want to drink thing is simply not applicable at this point, nor has it been for about four days.

You can imagine how that's gone.

Plus, (if I may continue to vent here), part of my relief at the breakup was "Finally, sex." It's no real secret that, for some reason completely unknown to me (and heretofore irrelevant), Liam very rarely wanted to have sex, especially once we moved in together. So, I was really looking forward to just getting good and fucked. No dice. No relief, even in that department, since I was struck with this damned head plague AND the Niagara of all menstruation over the weekend. So I can't exercise (too cold out, and I'm too sick). I can't fuck (unless someone wants to stage his own Halloween bloodbath between my sheets). I can't call anyone. I can't drink. I'm fucking broke. I'm lonely. Goddamn it. I'm feeling so sorry for myself I could just scream. What else is new?

To top it all off, Liam seems to be having the time of his newly single life. I'm glad it's working out so well for him (no sarcasm here), but I resent the fuck out of being the only one stuck here, jobless, broke, sick, lonely, sober, and bleeding.

Things have to get better, and soon.

Ouch.

It's not a wagon. It's a unicycle, and I guess it takes more than I realized to ride.

Last night wasn't pretty. Most of them haven't been, but I wasn't expecting this one.

Chugging vodka, weeping in the grass, vomiting, etcetera.

Back to square one.

Sky Blue Sky

"With the sky blue sky,
this rotten time
wouldn't seem so bad to me now.
Well, I didn't die:
I should be satisfied.
I've survived;
That's good enough for now."

*Wilco

If you wear that velvet dress

Morning, day two, meeting three at noon. Hallucinations now--hearing people who aren't there say bad things to me. Other than that, a dead calm, like fog on the moor. I can't see forwards or backward, only today...and that isn't the AA mantra talking; it's how I feel. Today, fortunately, I have shit to do.

But I feel like I did when Dante died; I feel like something has been suddenly unplugged and will never be replaced. What a lousy comparison, I know--Dante was dearer to me than drinking...but drinking killed him, more or less, and I didn't see it coming. Now, all of the sudden, I am faced with the prospect of never drinking again, and it seems that a part of me is gone for good. A bad part, a good part, I don't know. Dexter calls it "the dark passenger." I'm sure someone else calls it that...or that the phrase originates outside of the show, at least, but that's the first place I heard it.

I'm making myself write in the morning and in the evening about this. About nothing. I don't feel much right now, so my writing will suffer. All the anger that has fueled it for so long is dormant, and the joy that often sends me to the page has also leaked out somewhere.

Otherwise, it's a beautiful, beautiful day outside. Scooter ride to a meeting, and from there, who knows.

How not to die of liver cirrhosis

I think I may have figured it out, which is good, because dying of anything liver-related doesn't sound very appealing. Especially if I suffocated beneath a gargantuan pile of goose liver. I'm dancing around this a bit, because I am every stupid cliche there is, including this one:

An alcoholic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm also an idiot for not realizing or acknowledging it sooner. Drinking every night is so normal for most of the people I know--and I can't say there's anything wrong with it. But a little over a year ago, I started drinking a little earlier each day. Five. Four. Three. Two. Nine. Not sure when the big leap backwards happened, but it's been at least since May now that I've woken up and had beer with my coffee, skipped breakfast in order to get a better buzz going, and maintained a pretty steady momentum throughout the remainder of the day. Then my body would wake me up around two am, needing just a little more so that I could sleep.

I haven't been sober for more than twenty-four hours yet. Last night, towards the end of my 24th sober hour, my body started cramping. I started to cry, couldn't stop shaking, couldn't think of anything except the beer in the fridge (you may be wondering why it was there...well, I'd had guests the previous night, and picked up a twelve-pack for "them."), and I had to have it. So I did. I had one. Just one. That soothed my system enough to get me off the floor and into a hot shower. From there, I was okay. I was able to sleep for a few hours, until I started needing again, at which point I stayed the fuck in bed, held onto Liam like a life raft, and shook and trembled my way through the rest of the night, and well into the morning.

But now, this morning, I'm sitting at the Sunrise Cafe again. Got dressed. Got up. Got myself here. Still sober. Meeting with my sponsor--a much older woman, which was important to me--at 4 today, after which we'll head over to the women's AA meeting, after which I'll hopefully go home and have some tea. Maybe even some sex. Blocks of time right now are things I have to fill with something, anything, besides "the usual."

I lost my job last week. Bit of a wake-up call, you know?