Prescriptive of Perspective
Today I was hit with two very different relationship situations (not me personally, just watchin' other folks): the "just started" and the "been there awhile". They mesh like nitro and glycerin. I don't know how to segue easily between the two but here they are, and my mental gymnastics around them.
Just Started:
I have this friend: we'll call her Ado Annie. I will call her this because Ado Annie is my most favouritest character from Oklahoma! (and yes, I love musicals and yes, I know them by heart and no, I'm not gonna stop!)
Anyway... Ado is one of those natural innocents who sees nothing wrong with sex (hear! hear!) and sees nothing wrong with speaking her mind (hear! hear!). But I mean.... at all. And she doesn't like to play games or tell falsehoods or pussyfoot around a topic, which is all very excellent.
She also is very, very emotionally open and honest.
So we were having a discussion today about how this may, kinda, sorta, get her into trouble. You see, when you are dating Mr. Wonderul and on date 4 you really don't want to hit him with how special he is. Guys are not equipped for this conversation before you've had the toilet paper roll discussion or the toothpaste discussion and definitely not before you've discussed things like fiscal policy, religion, sex, AND famous double-jointed acrobats.
I kinda let this all on her while we were chatting today and the next thing I saw on her IM notice was "honesty is not the best policy" and now I need to backpedal and explain myself. And I'm doing it publicly, because this is my own salon of shame.
I do not like playing games and I do not believe in self censorship and I speak my mind on a regular and ongoing basis, sans checking station, and it has often got me into more hot water than a Maine Lobster will ever see.
My advice to her was to back off on the honesty. Not to lie -- that's stupid -- but there are things that are just TMI early on. For example, you don't discuss (with prospective boyfriends -- or come to think of it, actual boyfriends or girlfriends or husbands or wives etc.) your raging yeast infections, your recurrent flatulence, how you think that one particular ass hair is a little thicker than the other, the color and content of the handkerchief you just sneezed in to, and how much you spent on that sweater -- EVEN IF IT DOES AFFECT THEM. There is just TMI all over the place. (For those of you questioning how any of this would affect a relationship with the other person, the answer is that it will-- either in immediate or long-term sexual attraction and/or fiscal perception). You don't tell them about your psychotic ex boyfriend in college, your bout with bulimia, or the time you went hiking and nearly killed yourself because you went off trail -- because if they know you well enough they'll worry too much and if they don't they won't worry at all, and the past may be what makes you now but it's Too Much Information. And in return, they don't tell you about the time they tricked that girl into showing her boobs, or the time they lit that fart and burned their ass hair off, or the time they cheated on their math test, or the time they flirted with a girl at work but already had a girlfriend. They tell their guy friends about that stuff.
The fact of the matter is that a guy who is a handful of dates into a new relationship does not want to be hit with how special he is, unless it's laced with a lot of innuendo about his sexual prowess and his dick size. He does not want to hear how understanding and sweet he is -- save that for later. He wants to impress you first with his physical abilities and his mental abilities, his sensitive inner man-geek-athelete-hunter-gatherer side will come out later-- much later-- if at all.
Now, counterpoint and refutation and contrariwise: what happens when that keen edge falls off?
Been Around:
The first few weeks/month of any relationship is filled with that kinda Nora Ephron-esque sheen: oh look, he loves XYZ and so do I! We both like thoats! We think puppy abusers are lame! How cool!
And then... the comfort level hikes up. She wears makeup less often, he calls less often. An opportunity for a group event comes up and the assumption is the other one will make him/herself available. Is *then* ok to come out with the emotional diarrhea (If it's even still present)? Or is this comfort level a sign of ambivalence and complacency, as some might think? "I've got a sure thing here, let's not mess it up/I'm too tired to look elsewhere" are the rationales I've seen. Shoot, I've been on the receiving end of the classic male, "I'll just be ambivalent until she goes away" more than once so I *know* that's an established practice.
It seems like there's too much communication in the former situation and not enough in the latter... and I'm at a loss to do much more than identify it. I'll delegate the fixing to someone else, methinks...
Comments
Intriguing rambling post. Some questions:
What exactly is "the toilet paper roll discussion"?
How much hot water does the typical Maine lobster actually see? They're almost blind first off, spend their lives in murky cold water, and for the ones dropped backwards into a boiling pot in a bright kitchen...
Do you mean that one person's ass hair is thicker than another's or seperate ass hairs on the same person differ in girth? What edification could discussing this bring?
What is a thoat? Ebonics for throat is all I could come up with.
"sensitive inner man geek athelete hunter gatherer side"? Is that one person?
Some comments:
The blogging world seems to me fraught with TMI which is part of what makes it intriguing when it works for the person and gives it a can't click away fast enough when it doesn't. Some of your neighbors and mine let it all hang out with varying degrees of success and readability. To a guy just clicking through to see what's what, some folks presentations (overall cyber presence) draw me in and some don't but that depends as much on what I'm interested in hearing as what they are willing to reveal. I have friends male and female with which I would never talk about some of the stuff I discuss openly and unthinkingly with others. It's whatever works given the personalities involved and I think you have to think on your feet and don't beleive you can generalize about what is going to work for everyone. Sometimes you quess wrong about how MI is TMI. Obviously when one is first making someone's aquaintance, opening with a description of their Crohn's disease, yeast infection or some past embarrassment is a risky card to play. Since everybody flatuates, discussing it openly unsolicited only identifies the speaker as someone who feels the need to discuss it for some reason and not as a unique producer of gas. If what you want to share on a blog is the fact that you inadvertantly passed gas while bending over naked in the kitchen then there are probably people out there that want to hear about it but also quite a few that don't so you have to understand that the folks following your words will be a certain sort. Pouring out all ones emotions and intimate details of their sex life into vox may be therapuetic for some and provide interesting reading for others but will not be without effect in the real world should the two ever happen to intertwine, which for many is the purpose of having a blog in the first place.
All fascinating stuff.
Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to compose a post about how not all of my semen has been the same consistency lately and about the fact that I seem to have a rash on my instep.
Oh my goodness, I shouldn't laugh so hard because my throat hurts like nobody's business (pun intended), but that was funny.
To answer:
The toilet paper roll discussion is that in which you have to specify which way the paper that is immediately available for grab will be grabbed -- over the roll or under the roll. Each couple has different rules.
A Maine Lobster probably wouldn't see in the sense of visual, but of course the smallest english words are most varied in definition and in this case I meant see as in Merriam Websters 2a definition, "to have experience of". In that case, assuming you have a largish lobster (and from what I hear all of the lobsters in Maine are gigantahuge; I prefer crab, myself) I'd say a couple of gallons. That is a lot of hot water.
I meant the second ass-hair discrepancy -- two ass hairs on one person of different girth. For example, if for the most part you have that peach-fuzz ass hair but one wild very thick nasty ass hair, it may be the subject of uncomfortable revelation before, say, you end up seeing the whole ass.
A thoat is a beast found in Heinlein's Number of the Beast, and ended up being the subject of many bad puns for at least a paragraph ("Did you say a thoat?" "Yes" "I thoat that's what you said" "I thoat we agreed no more puns" "I'd rather cut my thoat" "A man can't talk terribly well with his thoat cut".) It was a random beast I was looking for.
"sensitive inner man geek athelete hunter gatherer side"? Is that one person? Certainly. Each of those can take several forms of definition but for the purpose of clarity I'll mention the ones I was thinking of whilst rambling: sensitive as in sensitive ponytail guy from Singles, but not too whiny; Inner man geek as in the guy who can fix things, but can talk about other stuff too; athelete hunter gatherer as in the guy who can go out and do things and retrieve things (like tampons) and can keep up with you (or me or whomever).
Now. As to the thicker context here:
My point was -- and yes, again, I admit to rambling: I am ill and that post was written in four parts while chatting with 3 people and so I lost that gem of cohesion -- that it is not dishonest to keep things from someone early on in a relationship (and I'll let the readers decide what that means, with or without the help of merriam webster) if they are things that person does not need to know. If you wax lyrical about how the specialness of everything, say, 3 dates in, you're likely to make the other party a little freaked out unless they are on the same 9th cloud you are (nb: this happens to GIRLS as well as GUYS -- and yes I've done my share of "um, yeah, you're nice too" awkward conversations). To my way of thinking, if you're in the early stages of whateverness and have discovered this, you keep it to yourself the same way you keep someone's surprise party from that someone or the fact that you suffer from GERD from your mother -- not something they need to know and will probably cause more angst than necessary should it come out.
My actual point was pouring out this stuff to a person, face to face, earlier on than would be conventional :)
That said -- I'm all in favor of emotional diarrhea on the vox. Vox is cheap therapy and if you're the kind of person who can back what you say in person as in text (and I can -- and have) then more power to ya. If you can't, as Kristina would say, set yo shit to private, because as you've pointed out if the etherworld hits your realworld then there's gonna be a mushroom cloud or two. And it's an accepted risk.
I personally am both a happy exhibitionist and voyeusse, and am likely to remain so.
As to your semen issues: look at your recent hydration levels, as well as humidity and of course airing out time. If necessary, take a scientific approach -- I can forward you an Excel spreadsheet -- where you can chart the differences and see if you can reproduce the results (again, pun intended).
Yours in facetiousness,
B
Didn't see that definition of thoat. Here's what I found in the Urban dictionary and you can see why I'd be confused that two people would find a common bond over it.
thoat 7 up, 2 downPerfect place for me to bust a nut.
Hey, bitch, bring yo' thoat over here, I'm bout to bust a nut.
Since I grew up in Maine I'd have to say lobster is the far superior crustacean to any crab although the dungeness I pulled out of Netarts Bay last summer and boiled on the beach was ever so succulant. As to the asshair discussion, with all the depiliating that goes on these days I can't believe that any have survived (or maybe that's why they have become so noticable). I'm not particularly hirsute personally but wasn't aware that others were out there spending time combing through their nethers and worrying to the point where they would feel the need to come clean on the matter preeminantly in anticipation of a close inspection.
Is this spreadsheet preconstructed to topic? Otherwise why would anyone not have Excel and need it forwarded. I'd be interested to see the imbedded formulas.
Hope your thoat feels better.
Well, I'm a big fan of Lucy so the asshair issue isn't one for me. :) Maybe that's why I'm growing my hair out long, to account for its absence elsewhere.
That said -- no, I don't have a preconstructed semen consistency spreadsheet (I am such a slacker).
You stick with your Maine lobster and I'll stick with my Dungeoness crab. As long as you agree that red wine works perfectly ducky with both.
I thoat I said to quit making me laugh? :D
Actually lobster is one of the very few occasions when I prefer a crisp Sav Blanc. Crab too usually although I don't eat enough of it to have formed a vinous pattern since I'm usually camping when I have crab (as I will be a week from today. How's the weather up there by the way. Cold and rainy I hope.)
Lucy? As in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Lucyreconstruction.jpg? That would seem to contradict the sentiment. As usual I fear I'm missing something when the talk turns sartorial or to personal grooming.
The weather is grey and overcast, mid-upper 50's, etc. (see http://www.weather.com :) ). Should be warming up soon for a bit.
Lucy of Lucy's Wax, Salon Tewl, Bellevue. I <3 Lucy :D
As long as you don't do chardonnay. Ew, chardonnay.
one week to go, eh? make friends with divers, they can go get you fresh crab :)
Not a fan of the chard.
Doesn't the Lucy look take quite a bit of work? Does one have to keep oneself in a constant state of perfect depiliation regardless of planned congress? Expensive? Since I'm not bartending anymore, I don't hear much chatter in this area. I suppose I could ask my Mormon interns....
We'll be dropping pots. More for the fun than the catch but a few legal size always makes for a better day. I suppose diving would be a more efficient way to go though. Hadn't crossed my mind as I associate it with warm water. Do certifications run out?
Nope. Once you're cert'd, you're cert'd. Although pots are more fun and you can drink more. And really, crabbing is like fishing -- it's a drinking sport.
Lucy look takes one appointment every 3-4 weeks that is less expensive than a daily latte habit and much more rewarding. And, there's Lucy herself -- Lucy is from Brazil and has a fantastic accent and doesn't pull her punches (but oy vey does she pull the wax). Yeah -- Lucy appointments require a glass of wine when you get home to get over the sting. I'd rather Lucy than shave, though -- no razorburn with Lucy, no nicks/cuts, and things stay neat longer. (ok, ok, TMI!)
You puget-sounding or are you going up the island way?
TMI is when you don't ask and get the intimates anyway.
I got cert'd in a shotgun situation (dive store owner, slipper lobsters, and a midnight drop down a drain pipe were involved) when I lived in Maui and haven't been down since. Didn't know if it was a state by state thing. You just need a card or something to rent tanks correct?
We're starting in Tillimook and going all the way to Victoria along the coast. We have a Eurovan and a raft and no concrete plans except ski to sea race on Sunday. We'll see what the weather and the waters say. We may beat it for Seattle or stay in some beach town. We have Mariners/Red Sox tickets for Tues. Other than that we're wide open. Been to Lake Ozette?