Unravel

Last night I worked at the bookstore and had a good chat with De____. Wednesday nights are usually me, her, and our co-worker An____, who isn't exactly, shall we say, well-liked. De___ basically cares nothing for her or what she thinks, and although An____ seems to sort of like me, I also think I'm starting to move into the "dislike" column by proxy, which is fairly amusing to me. She's not a horrible person....she's just extremely shallow, self-centered, and annoying to be around. Oh, the little things? Anyway, last night she came up to me and was like "Ray, look at me" so I turned my head and she was like "ooooh, I like the little goatee" and the proceeded to reach out her hand and rub my chin. Not cool. I tried not to totally jerk away and/or slap her hand aside, so I just sort of turned my head and said "you really shouldn't just reach out and touch people's faces." But she didn't get it -- she just thought it was cute. Hmm. She's in my evidence pile for why I don't get along well with Cancers. Also in the pile is the annoying manager in the office and George W. Bush. However, I learned today that Lil Kim is a Cancer, so maybe there are exceptions.....
( But wait! There's more! If you act now.... )

More more more, said the baby.

Oh, I forgot that yesterday, after lunch with Be__ I decided to e-mail Ka__. I felt sort of guilty about just passively giving her shirt back. Here it is:

Hey Ka___,

I just wanted to let you know that I was cleaning out my closet and I found your Indigo Girls concert t-shirt (in a bag of winter clotes -- ??), and I gave it to Be___ to return to you. I was going to mail it to you, but even though I know where your apartment is located, I don't know the actual address!

Also, I think you're leaving your job soon, and moving to NYC in a few weeks? I wanted to wish you good luck and a smooth transition. I'm assuming you'll still be reachable via this e-mail address? I'd like to drop you a line if I take a trip to New York in the next year or so -- maybe we can have coffee or something. My other e-mail address (@bboy.com) went bankrupt and got deleted, so you can reach me at this e-mail (raybear@in-box.net), which seems to be doing ok.

Good luck at Columbia.
Take care,
Raymond
_______________________

Then last night, I had this dream where I was moving into Melanie's place, and I was suddenly feeling like it was a wrong decision, but then I started to explore the apartment more, and it really was more of a house, with a back patio overlooking the water and in the distance were these crazy building that looked Turkish in design. I was trying to guess where I was located since I was near a body of water and near Turkey, and tried to guess what city it was (I remember thinking, is Istanbul a coastal city?). So I decided to stay and move in. But then Ka___ was there and I was feeling very anxious and wanted her to leave. Come to think, it was similar to how I was feeling about my annoying co-worker last night. Hmm. Maybe I have a ghost I need to exorcise. Or maybe my brain was just combining random things from my day yesterday and outputting it in a narrative form.

My g.e. is one hot mama.

So I called up Melanie to see if she's feeling better (which she is) and we only got to talk for about 10-15 minutes, but true to form, we packed a lot in.
So...there's this woman at camp that she almost hooked up with (or at least there was a sexual vibe between them) but it fell through partly because Melanie outed herself as being in a nonmonogamous relationship with me. She thought that this woman ended up hooking up with another counselor, and she felt sort of weird about it, but then it got straightened out, so to speak. Well, she recently found out that this woman DIDNT hook up with her, and so now something might go down. She said some drunken flirting went on recently. We both talked about how we both agree that it's good to have out outside flings right before seeing each other, because we can reconnect with each other, which as you ethical sluts know, is an important part of the partnership. So we're both sort of hoping to get lucky this weekend. I told her I was ok with her hooking up with this woman, though I'd feel weird if she did it more than twice the whole summer. I also told Melanie that I preferred if she were sober when it happened. Why? I'm not totally sure. I think becuase I want the encounter to be deliberate and not accidental or written off because it was a drunken encounter. I want her to fck because she wants to, not because her defenses are down. And I try and hold the same standard to myself. An unusual request, I know, but she was ok with it thankfully. (But I don't care if the woman is drunk! -- as long as she knows where Melanie stands on the whole hookup....)
I asked her again if she was ok with my date, and she said yes, and that she was curious to know how things would turn out. I think she really wants Damon or someone to come along for safety purposes. I'm still thinking about it. Even if I don't have someone to check in with in-person, I would definitely have some sort of system set up where I call Damon an hour after the initial meeting time to let him know things are ok. But to be frank, I don't want to set up a definite time to meet him in person, then it turns out I want to go off and fool around with this Chris guy and I send Damon home. Not really fun or fair. So I'm still meditating on what boundaries I need and want.

I feel a little twinge of jealousy about Melanie hooking up with someone else, but nothing minor and certainly nothing I'm going to let dictate my feelings. I'm still working on deprogramming my reflex to feel jealous and my compulsion to claim ownership as well as my insecurities. Again, why the reconnecting will help next weekend. And we are getting ready to sign a one-year lease together -- if nothing else I can just remember that if I seem to be forgetting whether she's committed to being with me.

But I definitely prefer the knowing EVERYTHING route. I want to know when it happened and exactly what happened. (It's like erotica, but better!) Seriously, even though it's sometimes weird to hear the explicit activities that your partner does (because sometimes I feel like sex is in a bubble with her, and nothing happened before and nothing will happen after...or something like that), I find that my imagination is so overactive, it's better to hear the facts so that I'm not creating anything above and beyond what actually happened. And I'm sure I'll want to share my adventures with her.

Tonight's homework assignment for myself:
1. Read more ES to help cope with bits of jealousy and possession
2. Think more about boundaries and safety and excitement for my date!!
3. Create hot fantasies for those Cape Cod nights -- yee-haw.


P.S. To Joe across the pond. If you and Pun are still fighting over who gets to role-play Raymond Boywonder, I can send you detailed accounts of the multiple sides of Ray. I am a switch, you know. ;)