2006-11-27
Illy-Noise Part 1
I'm back.
I've said it a hundred times - you have to listen to your gut or you'll get in trouble.
Sadly, there are many times when there isn't anything you can do about your gut saying STOP! HALT! DO NOT PROCEED!!!!
You're an adult and you have to honor your commitments, even though you know they are not going to go very well because of the planets' misalignment, or because of the way the tea leaves read in the moments that you spent hunched over your carry-on in the airport bathroom, desperately wanting to to see some angel the you hadn't previously considered, one that maybe would give a little lightness and a little less of an ominous, uncomfortable vibe.
No dice.
Chicago is decidedly not my thing.
Something is going on there and I can't put my finger on it, and there's nothing I can say to bring it out into the sober light of day but it's not cool there.
Things seem distressed and they don't add up and there's a lot that I worry about.
I'm watching this mess unfold on Saturday night and I'm the only person who's drinking at the rate of 1 x 2 hours, even though other people claim to have had only 4 drinks.
I watched.
It was more.
And it doesn't matter who drinks less, you know. Tear it up. It's what you're doing right now.
My laying off the sauce isn't a judgment on anyone who is partying, not even close. I partied until 4 am the night before and until 5 am the week after.
I'm no 12-stepper.
But I don't deny what and how much I drink when I do it.
This way, I own my behavior.
But I digress.
I'm watching a train wreck of slurred sexual chemistry and wanton hormones, but not those of people who are too young to know better.
These are smart, educated grow-ups.
This is a bar, not a weird party.
This is the point in life where you should not be doing things if you don't fully comprehend the possible outcomes.
Hypothetical: I'm loaded and I choose to go home with someone.
I have drunken, uncool sex with this person.
I've never talked to him about whether or not he's going to call me.
I've never talked about where I am in life with him.
I don't know his middle name.
It turns out that he did not sleep with me because he has been harboring some hugely secret crush on me and wants to try to Make It Work with me.
In fact, he slept with me because he was wasted, I was willing, and it all seemed like casual sex.
Can I be upset with him for not calling me?
Should I judge myself because he's not calling me?
Should I call him if I am feeling uneasy about anything; call and clear the air for myself?
No, no, and hell yes.
If there's no expectation of dating, then a hook-up is just sex, regardless of who, what, where, when, and why. Rarely do these things result in a family bbq every Memorial Day and a honeymoon in Maui. Casual sex is hardly a bad thing, trust me.
But it is what it is: chemicals and loneliness.
I would be willing to say that more guys long for an emotional connection than girls do. We get that shit from each other and from our families.
Guys don't.
They get emotional connection from us.
This means that if they are single, they are lonely.
Casual encounters are so often about giving a guy the illusion of a connection. This is why they have that feeling of playing with fire.
This is why fucking drunk is a bad idea. Three drinks sent me to jail.
Imagine the poor choices I might make after 14 drinks, like I had on Friday night?
If I chose to go home with someone after 14 drinks, I would damn well be prepared to take full responsibility for my actions and to be completely prepared for any potential emotional fall-out after doing something that maybe I wouldn't normally do or doing something with an expectation of getting something in return.
You cannot have expectations.
I have a situation in my own life, and it is MONUMENTAL.
It is life-changing, to the point where if I were to discuss it here, there would be people here who would say, "You're a fraud."
I know the map of the mines. I know how to take care of myself. I know the anxiety that tick-tock can induce and I know that I would make it a hundred and a thousand time worse by having any expectation, one way or the other.
Instead, moment by moment, this is what's happening.
This part of it was really hard.
That part of it was really funny.
This has an implication of hope.
that seems really scary.
None of those parcels of fact mean that I expect this thing to work itself out into the ultimate fantasy, nor do they total up to mean that I expect explosive disappointment.
No expectation means that anything could happen and I take what is happening, as it's happening and deal with it right there, out in the open.
It means that anything can happen and I can handle that.
It means that I don't put off other things waiting for something to happen but I don't have to close myself off, either and put seal up the emotions like a walnut in it's shell, either.
I cry when it's sad or when I'm tired and I feel confident that each piece of it deserves face-value.
Seeing people like I saw them over the weekend makes me very, very sad.
I don�t know how to communicate to them that it's totally okay to drink and fuck and smoke and to be hedonistic. Whether I join them or not is neither approval nor judgment.
If they do chose to carry on, they should own those choices.
It's a little like my feelings on Halloween and that bullcrapo about it being the only time a chick can dress slutty.
That's not true.
I'm in my thirties.
I can dress as slutty as I want to. I should know that I'll have a greater level of scrutiny, some of which will be a little negative, but I also understand that if I dress slutty, it's my choice to do so and I need to be prepared to let negative attention roll-off and to defend myself should anything actually dangerous be attempted. It's not a "blame the victim" argument, either.
In this case, I CHOSE to dress slutty.
I should be sure to have my pepper spray and to keep my awareness readily available to myself.
God knows it's taken as many years as I've lived in Arizona to come through that lesson but I get it: Adults don�t' need an excuse to behave however they want to behave but they do need to understand what they are doing and the potential consequences of their behavior.
It's when they don�t calculate the risk fully that they get upset and then the devolution begins and they feel judged or like they're being bad or deviant. Deviant seems like it should be reserved for things that people do when they have no control or can't admit what they are really doing. Making a choice to have another brewski or to go down on a guy you sort of know is not deviant, as long as you're cool with it.
Nobody else really needs to matter if you're cool with what you're doing and you're prepared to take care of yourself.
Just like for my thing.
I'm exploring Heavy Emotional Territory.
There's rejoicing and there's excitement and there's curiosity and intense fantasy about the idea of home.
But I'm prepared to take care of myself because there's some territory that is well-known for its dark passes and it's haunted rivers.
Otherwise?
More later.
I got back yesterday, I'm checking work email and then dealing with cleaning, cooking, shopping, being back on MST, walking the dog, pretending like the worst stray cat in the world doesn't exist if I can't see him, and fretting about my derby stuff that's coming up much faster than it was before I went back to Illy.
arizonasarah at 10:15 a.m.