Friday, May 25, 2012

Requesting Good JuJu

Once upon a time, what feels like a billion years ago, I was friends with this guy D. He worked with some neat people, and one day he invited me to a Saturday brunch with some of these people. They were lovely, pleasant folks, and I connected with a few of them on Facebook afterward.

One of them I've seen a few times since - he came to my birthday celebration, I went to his, I've done some cat-sitting for him; another I haven't seen at all since our meeting; and the third I believe I saw once more, at some kind of company event of theirs - but I'm not actually sure, because I was ridiculously drunk at this particular event. I'm still embarrassed remembering it.

Then one day earlier this year, the third girl invited pretty much every single person she knew on Facebook to her 30th birthday party. It looked like a pretty fun event and I'd get to dress up all cute. I had nothing else going on that night and I figured I might meet some cute guys, even though as we all probably remember, shortly after this year began I basically gave up on dating because fuck that noise. I just kind of wanted to dress up and go flirting. Off I went, said hello to the birthday girl, and then found myself sitting with another girl about my age and a few guys, making small talk.

After a while, I got bored (small talk and I do not get along) and stood off to the side. The other girl in the group and I began chatting and somehow got on the topic of dating. I, of course, rolled my eyes and grumbled about how dating in this city is REALLY fucking difficult and how I have decided not to do it anymore. She agreed enthusiastically (about the difficult part, not the "fuck this" part), and we bonded. By the end of the night I'd introduced her to a ridiculously tall fellow and I had a somewhat shorter guy talking with me, but we kept reconnecting with one another, and before she left she promised to find me on Facebook. She did, and then I did a very un-me-like thing and sent her a message suggesting we meet for lunch some day during the week. A few lunches and nights out later, I'm happy to say I feel like we're pretty good friends and I'm well on my way to feeling like I can really trust her. She's the one who was with me the night I found the coconut.

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Don't Push Your Peener on Me

I'm running into a problem lately.

Here's my thing: when I'm in social situations and I get uncomfortable, I blurt things out, I ramble, I generally get panicky and say stupid things. And when am I uncomfortable in social situations? Almost always. No joke. So then I announce, "Ducks have corkscrew penises!" which inevitably leads to me explaining how barnacles have the largest peens, as far as peen size:body size ratio goes, and this is because hey! Barnacles don't move much! This way the boy barnies can just reach over to a girl barney with their peener and go *waggle waggle* (which is weiner-speak for "Hey baby, come here often? WANT TO?") and then sexing happens with minimal effort on the parts of both barnacles, except the part that is the reaching, searching, traveling peen.

There, see? I talk about stuff like that, because it's funny to me, but really, not terribly appropriate. Especially if I've just met you. "Hi. Nice to meet you. Um. So did you know that ducks are rapists?" This is why I don't get invited back to people's houses very much. Lovely low-key party? Don't invite this girl, unless you get a kick out of seeing all your other guests become wildly uncomfortable.

Where am I going with this? Well, I suppose it results in two problems, actually. One, I don't get invited to things. Which is probably fine, since I panic and feel anxious almost the entire time I'm there, anyway, and wish I'd stayed at home with a book instead. But two, and the one I really want to get into, is that people - and here I mean DUDES - think it's okay to bring up suggestive things to me on a regular basis.

Yeah, okay, I talk about peens. But you know what? Corkscrew duck wangs and blind waggling barnacle beacons are pretty de-sexualized. That is not me saying, "Your turn! Tell me about your personal, private peener now!" And it is certainly not me saying, "Please make eyes at me every time we talk and make sexual comments to make it very clear that you want to be in my pants at some time in the near future."

First of all, does that work? Ever? Just randomly blurting to your female friend something suggestive? Does she ever go, "Oh my god, I didn't know you wanted to bonk me! Let's go!"? (the punctuation in that is weird, and wrong, but I am standing by it, because I'm a rebel.)

Second of all, I'm pretty sure that's sexual harassment. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, because it happens to me a lot, and it NEVER fails to make me uncomfortable, and I wondered, is sexual harassment just a workplace thing? And I don't think it is.

Sexually suggestive remarks/actions that are unwelcome make me uncomfortable. If I do not respond in kind the first time, don't fucking keep doing it. Also you should probably find a better way to hit on women, because there's a really fucking high chance that it will not work, and now you've made me feel awkward around you forever.

Maybe this isn't true for all women. But the guys that do this to me are guys who know me, and thus should know that if I wanted to have anything at all to do with their nether regions, I would have made that pretty clear right away. And really, I know it's me and I know everyone thinks I'm just this raging boner-loving slut machine who is perfectly happy to jump in the sack with anyone who smiles at me, but NEWSFLASH: that is not me. I enjoy flirting. It's fun, it's light, and it doesn't have to lead anywhere, and I love that. But flirting does not mean telling me I have big boobs, or suggesting that I want to hump [you/him/anyone], or asking about my masturbation habits.

Why don't I just tell these guys to go fuck themselves and leave me out of the whole process and NO, I don't want to hear about it later? Because when I'm in an uncomfortable situation, I feel helpless. Throw me a fucking life preserver, because I'm flailing out here, and I'm not as strong as I pretend to be. This was proven to me in a big, scary way just recently. I'm not sure why, but I can grab some convenient pop psychology to pretend to guess at it and say maybe it's because I was raised with a very strong sense of male authority and female subservience, and no matter how much I may logically disagree with that notion, things sort of get ingrained in you during your formative years and they're difficult to scour off. Plus I always wonder if I'm overreacting, because I do that.

SO. I hope that what you have taken away from this post is that barnacles have ginormously long dongs, and I hope that you're wondering, like me, how the hell the great traveling penis even knows it's reached a lady barnacle. Does a barnacle penis also have eyes so it knows where it's going? What if he bumps it into something that vaguely feels lady-barnacle-like and ends up raping an oyster? I feel like that would just turn out badly for both parties. Or would it turn out great for evolution?