This was going to be a post with a few random notes, but as I started writing it became all about my recent and future dating activities. So it's kind of unified in theme, now. Funny how that worked. I even went back and changed the title.
It's the weekend. Late Friday night, at least. And I'm busy. Most of my weekends are busy, now that I have a new girlfriend. I'm either down at her place for a day and a half, or she's up here, and while the time is fun, it flies, and I'm certainly not online or even on the computer during that time. So when I get back on (the computer) late Sunday night, I'm going a million miles an hour to catch up on what I would usually have been doing all day Saturday and/or Sunday.
This weekend Elle's off to some family events all day Saturday, but she'd going to drive up here early Sunday morning, hopefully arriving in time to surprise me in bed. Later in the day we're doing a sorta double date with Malaya and her husband (they're approaching their first anniversary, so I suppose I should stop saying "new" husband?). Neither Malaya or her guy have met Elle, and since I've told each party a fair amount about the other, I think that curiosity is fairly high. (I knew Malaya's husband long before she ever met him, so there was never any such "first" meeting curiosity betwixt myself and he, when they were dating.) And I've not talked to the capricious young woman formerly known as the I.G. in weeks, so there's very little likelihood of Elle and she ever coming face to face.
One thing that's very odd (to me) with Elle is our mutual physical admiration. I don't just mean sex -- I mean that we are both fairly visual creatures, and we're both in better shape than any of each other's past boy/girl friends, so we tend to spend some amount of time in various states of undress, simply admiring each others physiques.
I'll spare you any overly eroticized descriptions, but she's a dancer and is fairly tall for a woman, so I'm forever getting lost tracing up and down the smooth lengths of her long, shapely legs. I'm also overly fond of her primary objects of human sexual dimorphism, as well as the curve of her upper thigh, where it tapers out at the hip and my hands naturally slide down over her smooth, flat stomach.
For her part, she is forever focusing on an unmentionable portion of my anatomy, but she also quite enamored of my shirtless upper body. And, as I said previously, she loves red hair and freckles, the later of which I have in abundance on my upper arms and shoulders.
It always amazes me that women like the male body, especially that they like body hair. It's become fairly trendy for men to shave themselves to look like overgrown altar boys, but I've yet to meet a woman who actually prefers a bare-chested man to one with body hair. And that includes the IG, who hated and waged constant war on her own body hair, and was 21 when we met; seemingly in the prime age range to believe the media hype about chest waxed metrosexuals.
Women even love hair on the legs; one of the funniest former sex stories Elle ever told me was about a guy she dated who had shaved his genitals. And not just the cock and balls, but several inches up his thighs and stomach. She said it was just a weird, deforested sight, and not at all erotic.
My experiences make me wonder who exactly is pushing the hairless man ideal? Homosexual fashion magazine photographers? (Except that gay men don't seem to dislike body hair either.) At any rate, I've not shaved my chest in years, since Malaya asked me to stop doing it since the stubble tickled her ear when she laid her head on my chest or stomach. And I'm certainly not going to start now, the way Elle loves to run her hands and finger tips over it.
Yes, that's me in a very recent photo, to the right. I thumbnailed it so anyone opposed to a topless man won't scar their beautiful eyes. Click it to see it larger. No, I don't know what's going on with my forehead there. It's an odd angle, and unforgiving bathroom lights overhead.
The picture stemmed from an amusing girlfriend interaction. I was giving my head a buzz, as I do every few weeks, and I texted Elle to tell her that she'd be seeing a bit less of me next time we met, she asked for a pic. That's what resulted, and since I may not continue to have pecs and abs forever, I figured I should immortalize the fitness moment on the blog. I'm not doing any special diet or physical training; just my usual 90 minutes 3 or 4x a week at the gym, with most of that spent on cardio. I imagine that if I concentrated more on lifting, and took some of those protein powders that are forever getting professional athletes suspended, I'd really see some upper body definition form. Perhaps someday...
I must be doing something right, since Elle is always raving about what a perfectly "manly" shape I have. The wider shoulders than waist, the muscular legs, the solid jaw and defined neck, etc. None of those are things I think of myself as a paragon of, but she certainly enjoys the visuals. Sometimes when we're lounging around she asks me to get up and walk around just so she can enjoy the view. I'm game, though it feels weird. I'm not self conscious, but I've always thought of myself as average to ugly in looks, and I was also the skinny kid. So why is this hot chick asking me to parade around for her eyes? She probably feels much the same strangeness when I ask her to parade around, bend over, pose with a saucy expression on her face, etc, for me, but she's done some modeling and has danced and sung on stage countless times, so it's less odd for her. Besides, men are usually the visual creatures in a relationship, so women are more used to being looked over and admired in private, not to mention their "every guy is looking at my boobs/ass" regular daily existence.
At any rate, her constant comments on my desirability influenced the above photo. Also, I sent it to Malaya's cell and asked her if I'd ever been in that sort of shape when I was with her. I wasn't trolling for compliments, and in fact I rather expected snark and sarcasm. But I was genuinely curious what she'd say, since she hasn't seen me without a shirt in years. (She said surprisingly nice things, and confirmed that I'd never been that muscular when in her acquaintance.)
It's hard to keep track of one's own bodily changes. I see myself every day, and muscles grow very slowly, so I can't really remember if I was bigger or smaller 4 or 5 years ago. I suppose most men around my age experience a similar transformation, though it's usually going the other way on the fitness meter. And that's probably where I'd be going, if I hadn't been single and childless and trying to date 22 y/o's over the past couple of years.
The muscles and six pack never quite got me through the door with the IG, but they certainly helped win Elle over. Or more accurately, they didn't really affect her "I like him a lot" judgment, but they did make her enjoy the "getting to know him in a physical way" process more than she might otherwise have. It's funny, since she's much more discerning in her partner selection than the (secretly slutty) IG was (that's one of the little details that came out when we argued as our friendship apparently came to an end earlier this summer). Elle has dated a lot of guys, especially in the month+ she was doing online dating before we met, but most of them were just one or two dates and not so much as a peck on the cheek. She's very often marveled at how attracted she was to me, and how the things we've been doing together are different than her usual behavior with a new boyfriend.
The irony is that the IG, while much younger and having dated far fewer guys than Elle, had sex with substantially more men, though most of them were very short term relationships she almost invariably regretted afterwards. It's ironic since she knew me much longer than most guys she went down on, and she liked me a great deal more, and often told me how much more attractive/built I was than most of her exes. (And non-exes she concealed during our time together. She just came to think of me as a friend and a big brother, rather than a boyfriend, and she liked me too much to ruin our relationship with sex. And she was right, since that would have ruined it, especially since she would have cheated on me, as she had (and will continue to do) with every other guy she's slept with. And I'm very monogamous, so we would have fought and it would have been ugly and then we'd not have been friends anymore.
Instead of that we didn't have sex, and ended up fighting about the non-sex, and it was ugly, and now we're not friends anymore. Great success!
I digress. Not that this post ever had a central theme to digress from.
Next weekend I'm going down to Elle's place on Saturday night and staying over through Sunday, and the weekend after that we're looking at some sort of getaway. Up to wine country for an overnight, down to Monterey, etc. She's got a real job doing scientific lab stuff, and she needs to tend ongoing experiments and projects almost every day (frequently including weekends) so she can't just take off a Friday and/or Monday and be gone for 4 days without a lot of advance planning, which slightly limits our ability to dash off for romantic weekends away.
I'm interested in enjoying some of those with her, though I've had to do some soul searching to feel accommodating about that sort of activity. Much less encouraging. Who doesn't like a vacation? Me, that's who. I came to this realization some months ago, and probably blogged about it then. Though I certainly can't expect anyone reading this to remember that, since I didn't, and I (theoretically) wrote it. At any rate, the realization was that most people enjoy travel and getaway activities on weekends or holidays since they work all week, and whether they love or hate their jobs, when they leave work on Friday evening, they want to not think about it until Monday morning.
That's a perfectly natural concept, it's just not one I've ever really experienced, since I've never had a M-F, 9-5 type job. I'm always working on some freelance editing project, or a website, or writing fiction, or at least I should be. So I don't have a regular schedule, which means I don't really have any regular vacations. When I'm not at home I'm always thinking about the work I should/could be doing, and since I enjoy my work and since it's got to be kept up on constantly, I usually do some hours of it every day.
In a larger sense, most people don't have anything personal tied up in their jobs or careers. They do them for the money and maybe the satisfaction, but it's not really anything personal. They're just a cog in a wheel, and if they weren't doing what they do, someone else would, with no real difference to the company or the world at large.
That's not meant as an insult; it's just the way of things. Sure, some teachers are really good and memorable to their students, and some doctors save lives, etc. But the vast majority of people are fairly faceless and highly fungible, in their careers. Usually by choice; it's certainly easier and safer to go to work and just do what you're assigned than it is to strike out on your own and take all the risks/rewards/initiative.
I'm rambling here, but my point is that I feel a more personal connection to my work than most people do. Not so much the website stuff; true, if I didn't do it much of it wouldn't get done, on my site or any other, but if a few tens of thousands of Diablo 3 fans had slightly less game info and news to read, it wouldn't really change their lives in any significant fashion. Not much more so than if their usual barrista were eaten by Shamu, and the new guy put too much/little cream in their mochachino.
On the fiction though, as terribly as I've (so far) underachieved my potential, I am the only one who can do it. True, the fantasy/horror/mystery readers of the world aren't exactly living lives of quite desperation, deprivation, and misery due to the fact that I've written about a dozen fewer books than I should have, to this point in my life. But the books/movies I have in my head aren't going to be written by anyone else, and if/when I write them, they'll be something permanent, a literary legacy, for better or for worse. And to that I feel some amount of responsibility (though not enough to do more than 1/10th as much writing as I fucking well should be doing), which makes me want/need to work on them. Even on weekends.
These thoughts came about chiefly from reading many of the online dating profiles (not Elle's, though) where the women (men too, but I seldom read those) were so gleefully up front about their desires to party and go crazy every minute of every weekend, and to get out of the city/state/country the minute their vacations arrived. I had subliminal annoyance/confusion about that for a while, until I finally realized why it bothered me. It was due to what I said above; that I feel a need/urge/responsibility to do some work every day, and it seems very weird to me that a person (most people) are the complete opposite. When they're not at work they're not working or thinking about working. In fact, they're working hard to not think about working. That's the whole point of weekend getaways and vacations and drunken nights out for most people!
Which is fine. Whatever gets them (you) through. If I had a job I didn't like and only did for the $, I'm sure I'd feel much the same way. (Though I'd probably spend those weekends and nights diving into my fiction writing as an escape. Which might actually result in more writing productivity, ironically.) But it took me a while to come to this realization, and for months I was mildly annoyed at all the dating personals written by people who wanted nothing but party/fun on weekends. "Sit down, stay home, and accomplish something with your life!" I found myself muttering. And while that reaction is perfectly rational for me, or when applied to my life, it's utterly irrelevant and misplaced when aimed at the lives of most people, who work at work, and try to have fun and forget about work when they're not at work. They're not going to write novels, or even maintain websites, and there's no benefit to them sitting home at their computers at nights. They might as well party, or travel. In fact, those are probably much more wholesome and enriching behaviors than the gaming, watching TV, reading-the-paper-and-yelling-at-their-kids alternatives.
Not that many of the women whose profiles I was viewing had papers to read or kids to yell at, but you get my drift.
Fortunately, Elle agrees and understands my psychology on this. She has a job she loves, but it's not one she can do much on when she's not in the lab. She can read scientific journals and work on grants and proposals and articles and such, but even those largely require her to be in the lab for tech work, computer access, etc. Plus she mostly does that stuff at work, to keep herself busy while she's running experiments on this and that. When away from work, shes' not a party animal (just a dancing machine), and she loves to read and engage in other quiet and solitary pursuits in her free time. So she's quite happy to set aside a couple/few hours during our planned weekends together, when she'll read, or take a walk, or window shop while I hunch over my laptop and attempt to further my literary aspirations.
That's the plan, anyway. Thus far it exists entirely in the theoretical, since we've not had any whole weekends to spend together, and when we are in each others company for a day, we can't help but interact for hours on end, often without the aid of verbal utterances. And it's not like we're eager to put a halt to that, but all things in good time, and since she's been spending virtually all of her free time in some sort of socialization, with her family, friends, or me, Elle's probably happy to plan some free time to herself, for reading or just thinking, while I'm tapping away.
Not that we'll be putting that to the test this weekend, with her early morning arrival, lunch with my friends, and then a few more precious evening hours together before she's got to drive back home to get some sleep before Monday morning work. Personally, I'm looking forward to it.
Also, I've not Twittered in weeks, but that's since I changed my phone upload over to the @Diii.net Twitter account, so I could tweet updates directly from Blizzcon. I did, about five times, during the Blizzard HQ tour on the Thursday before Blizzcon. I then completely forgot about the twitter distraction once BlizzCon began. I was on my laptop constantly at the show, usually in the press room, but I was writing content, posting news, jumping into the live chat, etc. Not burping up 140 character non sequiturs for an audience a fraction the size of that which was viewing the forums and the D3 main page. (I did text a fair amount over my phone, but those were mostly to Malaya, who was also at BlizzCon, or to Elle, who was as almost as horny and missing me as I was horny and missing her.)
After Blizzcon I remembered that any tweets sent from my phone would go to
@Diii.net rahter than
@BlackChampagne, but I only remembered that far enough to stop myself from sending any tweets, rather than as motivation to go into the account and change the settings back. Thus when I've thought occasionally about tweeting during the past 2.5 weeks I've just not done it, since said tweet would have gone up to the @Diii.net, where posts about my mercantile misadventures, cats, garden, and prophylactic purchases would have been out of place. At best.
I just switched my phone tweets back to BC though, so for both of you who sometimes thought about checking there, you can think about it again. It's almost sure not to entertain. If it had been working today, I'd have made two posts in the evening. Which I shall now recreate. With better grammar and punctuation than my thumbs would have provided, and likely character overflows as well.
# I'm enjoying the irony of browsing the birth control aisle in Target while women wheel screaming babies past.
# They say not to shop for food when you're hungry because you'll indulge cravings. By that metric when could I ever rationally buy these intimate items?
Labels: dating, elle, twitter, work, writing
