Entering a Boys-Only Group...

In an attempt to further my ambition to live in a world where gender only means something in terms of copulating and dating, I've joined what has been a heretofor mens-only group for personal growth. I must admit to myself that I've been rather lost ever since I took the bar exam, and I'm hoping that this group (which costs me $200 a month) will get my ass back into gear. Sure, the newsletters and mass emails are addressed to "Gentlemen" and I haven't revealed my gender to the online group (yet), but I still feel that it is the right place for me to be, even if I am the only one with ovaries. Plus, the head honcho knows that I'm a woman, or at least he knew at one point (I've met him in person and exchanged a couple of emails with him ages ago, using the same email I have associated with my membership). It will be an interesting journey of self-discovery. I just hope that I'm not kicked out because of the prevalent "No Girls Allowed" assumption that seems to permeate the group.

Tick...tick...tick...BOOM! Dynamite!

I have 10 days and 22.5 hours until I find out my bar exam results. I'm abso-fucking-lutely terrified. My plan right now is to either move to another state if I don't pass, or to move to the area where I was born and keep moving back to if I do pass because I've officially stopped giving a shit about my father and I really don't want to continue to live under his roof. It kind of sucks to know that there is a chance that I failed, that busting my ass for 2 months studying was for nothing, and that I have to start all over from graduation. That being said, at least I do have some money coming in. I do have a half-time job, essentially regurgitating bullshit in a more user-friendly form. It's a bit like writing claims for a patent, so naturally I don't hate it and I am kinda sorta good at it. The best part is the fact that it allows me to halt my student loan repayments, as I don't earn enough to afford minimum payments according to the US Dept. of Education. Since it's for an online company, I've officially joined the tech industry, which I never thought would happen since I never actually hung out with anyone super techie. I need to start drinking in SV bars to be among my work "people." Socially, my life is kind of quiet. I think I've officially screwed myself over with the dude I was banging, since I had an ovary freak-out directed at him, and he's been silent ever since even though I apologized (I didn't get mad at him, just said that I was done dating, so he should be glad that I'm never going to basically stop fucking him out of the blue because I've decided to be monogamous with someone else). It's been over a week. I'm being strong and deleted everything from him, including all pictures of his washboard abs that he sent to my phone (super hard to do...I miss those photos), so i don't have any way to contact him. Okay, I lie, I still have his email address in case I do move back to where he is and he's down to fuck regularly. I'm still texting the guy I was dating back during my last month of law school. Every time I try to end things, I can't because I kind of don't want to lose the emotional closeness that we have. I know that it's never going to go anywhere because I know he's never going to step up and make a lifetime commitment to me. The closer I get to thirty (3 and a half years...yikes!), the more I want to get married and have kids, and I really need to find a guy who wants that too...and will give me attractive offspring. I really don't want to have ugly children. That's the primary reason why I'm not dating anyone now, since the only guys who actually do hit on me aren't that physically attractive. I'm nannying this week, to two teen girls, which actually makes me want to have kids more because I know that I can do raising kids full time. You know what I don't get at all? People with money and some stardust that's rubbed off on them thinking that the sun shines out of their ass. The latest example is a local celebrity and the "precious" brats of said celebrity. In my town, everyone gossips and so everyone knows everyone's business, but everything is handled in hushed tones and isn't splashed all over the news. Well, the "new" celebrity (who's only been living in town for a decade or so) had a very public breakdown and went off to rehab in a manner that was splashed all over the internet. Not how this town handles things. Then, I was walking past said celebrity's house on Halloween (the line of business that the celebrity is in would loan itself to an impressive Halloween display being a requirement), and the house looked more trailer trash than usual because now it has year-round Christmas lights strung up. The eldest brat apparently had a party going on...and that party had a guest list. Why the hell does that child think that they're so special so as to actually need a guest list for their glorified tea party? Justin Beiber's birthday party needs a guest list, the Halloween party hosted by a noname offspring of a minor celeb who's never appeared in the tabloids does not need a guest list. My friends and I joke that we need to have an intervention and explain to this family what is appropriate behavior and what is not appropriate behavior for residents, but now may not exactly be the time since the celebrity isn't at home and therefore not present to hear the lecture. If I do attempt to reign in this trailer trash family, I promise to post the results here.

Don't ever try to show that you're smarter...

Right now I'm studying for the bar exam, which is just over a week away. One of the things that you're supposed to do to prepare for the bar exam is to write mock essays. Well, I have now learned hard and fast that I really need to dumb myself down for essays in certain areas of the law. My first Con Law essay was all about a law regulating tobacco advertisements near schools to prevent minors from being exposed to it. Unfortunately, this was one area that I allegedly knew too well since I spent an entire class devoted to that very issue. This meant that I knew the test that, in real life, would have been applied in this narrow situation (limiting minors' access to commercial speech where the subject matter is illegal for minors to purchase or consume). My first reaction when I looked at the fact pattern was, "Sweet, this'll be no problem." Unfortunately, that test was too specific for the person grading my essay. Instead, I was just supposed to generalize everything and pretend that I had never heard of this test before and pretend that this had absolutely nothing to do with minors or illegal products. I might as well have been writing about a city that wanted to ban all advertising of fiction books within city limits. If you can't be a lawyer without passing the bar, then I would've been more likely to become a lawyer if I never set foot into a single law school classroom. Fuck this shit.

The redeeming qualities of a strip club

I popped my strip club cherry a couple of weeks ago. I ended up there for the first time as so many others do, drunk and at the suggestion of others who had taken it upon themselves to prevent me from pouring my body into a cab and heading home once I had exceeded my alcohol limit for that evening. Hitting the club at a peak time, albeit on a weeknight (we went after attending a venture capital firm party with an open bar), I have to admit that I was surprised at the low quality of the physical attractiveness of the strippers. Maybe it's because I am straight, but I would have only done one of them if I was straight. The general overall unattractiveness didn't prevent me from copping a feel almost every time a new stripper came on stage. I fully unleashed my inner dirty old man that night and groped plenty of t&a. That being said, I still don't completely understand the desire to become a stripper (other than the money, of course). I would rather turn a legitimate blind eye to creepy men having sexual fantasies about me than try to profit from it and pretending to enjoy that they think of me in that manner frequently. Ignorance is bliss, after all. I do understand the power trip that accompanies the knowledge that the patrons openly want you but can't have you. However, that would not be enough for me. I suppose that I am just not desperate enough...yet.

Down and out in Los Angeles

I spent last week in Los Angeles. The initial plan was to get tan, fuck Craigslist Guy, and forget about Blue-collared Townie. I accomplished only one of those goals. It started out well enough, with two hotel rooms booked for two days each (one for Wednesday and Thursday, one for Friday and Saturday). Then I drove off without my license and got pulled over for speeding while heading back to get it (yes, CHP, we drivers get that you need to catch as many as possible to make up the financial deficit in your department resulting from state budget cuts). Well, that meant I couldn't make it to LA early enough to fuck Craigslist Guy on Tuesday, since his roommate was going to be home by the time I got to his condo. We made plans to meet at my hotel room as soon as I checked in the next day, and I fell asleep with pornographic images of having torrid hotel sex swirling around in my mind. The very next day, Craigslist Guy went completely AWOL. Thinking that he was uninterested but too much of a pansy to tell me, I indulged in a little self-pity and allowed myself to wallow in the feeling of missing Blue-collared Townie, whose bed I had slept in almost every single night for the week prior to me leaving (the only exception was my last night in town, when we slept in my room). I felt vaguely out of sorts with a king-size bed all to myself and without Blue-collared Townie's arm draped across my torso. I ended up writing him a letter both nights that I was at that hotel (I blame the fact that the hotel provided complimentary stationary and envelopes) as well as texting him occasionally, telling him that I missed him (to which he responded with ambivalence, never once stating that he missed me too). Turns out that Craigslist Guy's car had been broken into, and his cell phone and laptop had been stolen. That's why he had been silent. His car had to be left in the shop to be repaired for the next couple of days, and once he got it back, he had to go to his nephew's graduation party in San Diego. I like the fact that he has a healthy relationship with his extended family, so I completely understood about his priorities. The only tragedy was that this now meant that I wasn't going to get laid at all, or so I thought, but I'll get to that later. So I spent all day Thursday bemoaning the lack of sex and toasting my skin, leaving me with a vague, but not intolerable, sunburn. It eventually faded into a tan, which is unfortunately now peeling, but I digress. Several people surrounding the pool were rather entitled and delusional about their own fabulousness. One woman who was pudgy, but still insisted on wearing a bikini, said that she was blessed that she was so attractive, and then proceeded to criticize another woman's haircut. I felt like asking her if she was crazy or secretly wearing a fat suit, in order to point out that she wasn't as hot as she thought she was, considering that she could stand to lose 10-20 pounds from around her waist, and thus was in no position to call someone else ugly. Despite the unpleasant company, it felt heavenly to spend the day lazing about in the sun. I spent the next morning and Saturday in much the same way, which is why I specifically picked out hotels based on their pool areas (you'd be surprised at how many hotels in LA have unattractive, almost industrial, pool areas). Saturday night was interesting. I met up with a friend who I hadn't seen in almost a year and a half. The last time I saw him was in Manhattan (he just graduated from Columbia, so we'll call him Mr. Ivy), where he abandoned me at a bar in the Upper West Side the night before Thanksgiving rather late at night because he wanted to get to bed so he could get up early the next morning and get a head start on studying for his final exams for that semester. After that incident, I really should have completely stopped being his friend, especially since I had spent the better part of the evening trying to cheer him up (and a little part of me was toying with the idea of possibly hooking up with him if the opportunity presented itself). But really, Mr. Ivy is like the little brother I never had. He's damn amusing, and when he does piss me off, all I really can do is ruffle his hair and roll my eyes heavenward as he apologizes for being wretched. After that night in Manhattan, I knew for certain that he had no interest in me that way and we were never going to hook up. So, naturally, I thought nothing of it to invite him up to my hotel room as I finished getting ready (if I wanted to hook up with him, I wouldn't have let him see me without even mascara on my eyelashes; I'd have wanted to present only my best self). We go meet with his friends and start drinking. Everyone's wonderfully social and we're all having a good time playing drinking games. I tell Mr. Ivy that I'll drive his car back and he can crash at my hotel room if need be. That hadn't been an invitation for sex since he has spent that night at my place in the past and nothing has ever happened. I did bitch about missing Blue-collared Townie and not getting to screw Craigslist Guy to Mr. Ivy, which that alone should have indicated that I didn't view him as someone with a penis. Eventually the restaurant closed, so Mr. Ivy and I went over to his friend's apartment to drink some more. I spent the whole time talking to his friend's roommate and his friend in the living room while Mr. Ivy smoked a couple of bowls on the balcony of the apartment. Eventually, though, everyone but Mr. Ivy became tired and I used that as an excuse to leave. Well, Mr. Ivy was too fucked up to drive at this point, so we went to my hotel room. And that's when we stepped into the Twilight Zone. Upon arriving at my hotel room, Mr. Ivy turned on the tv and I changed into my pajamas. I pulled out my Ouija board from my suitcase and suggested that we have fun with it. Mr. Ivy sat across from me on the bed, and we asked a few questions. He seemed to grow bored of it, so I moved to put it away. As I was putting the board back in its box, Mr. Ivy literally lunged at me from a sitting position and started kissing me on the mouth. All I could think was "What the hell." There was every indication from him that he was not interested in anything beyond friendship, and besides a hug hello, he didn't touch me at all that evening (nor had he touched me in the past beyond a hug hello and a hug goodbye). When Mr. Ivy finally came up for air, I asked him why he kissed me. His response was that he thought it was a cool idea. Obviously, it was a situation where he finally got fucked up enough to the point of where he was thinking "Oooh, woman" and was going to screw me just because I was the nearest vagina. The kissing and sex reminded me of why I didn't have sex with teenage boys, choosing to lose my virginity when I was old enough to screw men who had at least some experience in bed. It wasn't the worst sex I've had in bed, but it was decidedly lackluster. To make matters worse, he didn't even finish. Mr. Ivy is the only guy I've had sex with who didn't finish. It really is rather humiliating. He didn't even touch me after that and didn't mention the sex in the morning, which makes me think that it was even more unpleasant for him and that he just thinks that I'm horrible in the sack. He remembers it, but I had to be the one to mention it. Apparently, he thought that I demonstrated that I wanted to hook up after we left his friend's apartment. No mention of why he thought it was a good idea to hook up (was he just doing it as a favor to me?) or how it was for him (admittedly, I haven't talked about the quality either). When I jokingly said that we'd need to hook up again so that I could restore my ego by making him orgasm, he just said that the ego was a very important thing, as opposed to saying that he was or wasn't interested in hooking up again. At this point, I don't think I will hook up with him again, simply because once is enough of a mindfuck, since all I can do is guess at his side of things without even a single hint as to what he's thinking or feeling (assuming that he does have a single thought on the subject). He did apologize for throwing himself at me, but that doesn't say much, except that he's worried that I was offended by his sudden interest in me (or rather my availability at that moment). Oh, well, fuck Mr. Ivy for not being honest and forthright about his intentions towards me. Definitely a strange ending to an unexpected week.

Being enough

Yesterday, after having survived my last law school final, I related to my current fuckbuddy how my last ex thought that I wouldn't even do alright on the LSAT, much less actually be accepted into law school. Yet, here I am, all three years done and practically a law school graduate. It's clear that I wasn't enough as far as he was concerned. Catching up on "Smash" this afternoon, I've been reminded about all of the auditions that I've been to where it was clear that I wasn't enough for the part. It's a funny thing, but it seems as if we all just want to feel as if we are "enough," whether it's smart enough, funny enough, pretty enough. When you are deemed to be "enough," it's the best feeling in the world, like you actually belong where you are in that moment. However, when you aren't "enough," it royally sucks, and you're left feeling awkward and out of place. That's why everyone is constantly on a path of self-improvement until they "settle down" because they've finally found a career and a social life where they are "enough." In a way, not being "enough" is the challenge that drives people forward, gives them a reason to wake up in the morning. If we were all "enough" every day of the week, we'd all end up just being cogs in a machine. And that is no fun.

Reforming oneself is overrated

All plans to reform my bad behavior have failed. I really can't completely suppress my sexual appetite. The occasional email from Craigslist Guy about how he still wants to have very dirty sex with me when I'm able to is all it takes for me to want to continue to play the field as it is. Plus, the launch of the new AMG product line from Neil Strauss (nice guy irl, hung out with him once when I was in undergrad) made me realize that I've been thinking with my ovaries and not with my head when it comes to the new guy (let's call him BT, for Blue-collared Townie). BT is head-over-heels in love with another woman as well, which endlessly complicates thing. The other woman a) has a boyfriend, b) is moving to another state in June, and c) allegedly won't give BT the time of day. So, one would think that she really wouldn't pose a threat, that the only reason why BT was fixated on her was because he had no one else to fixate on. However, every time that I think that I can forget her, BT drops a new bomb by demonstrating how obsessed he is with this woman. Saturday morning at 4 am, he texted me about how he beat up a guy at a party that he just returned home from because the guy was calling the other woman a stupid bitch. It made me want to cancel the date that we had for later that day. Then, we met for coffee last night, and he told me about how when the other woman wanted to wear a pair of pants to do an activity (she was wearing a skirt), he immediately volunteered to swap his pants for her skirt. A guy who wears a skirt for a woman who doesn't give a shit about him is completely whipped, whether he actually realizes it or not.

Why the hell am I still seeing BT? The only explanation is that I keep thinking with my ovaries. He makes me want to O.D. on Taylor Swift songs, and I haven't felt this much like a stupid girl in ages. My behavior is unforgivable; I am officially ashamed of how I've been acting, but I can't seem to prevent future mistakes, no matter how many times I bang my head against the wall. It isn't as if BT is perfect. During the few, brief moments when I am actually able to think with my brain around BT, I do notice his glaring flaws. However, my ovaries are quick to rationalize and forgive away those flaws.

In a backhanded way, I am grateful for the existence of the other woman because it does keep me in check to a certain extent. Every mention of her immediately switches my thinking from my ovaries to my brain. I'd like to blame it on sex because the sex is great (on par, but different from sex with CG), but sex is still a separate deal for me. Ergo, I know that my suffering and idiocy stem only from my emotional attachment to BT. However, great sex may be why BT still wants to continue to spend time with me. Supposedly, it's the best sex he's ever had, so, naturally, it wouldn't be surprising that he would want more and actively pursue it. This, too, also keeps me in check with regard to my expectations of what could happen and what might have been if I wasn't moving back to my home state in less than a month.

All in all, this whole situation has been beneficial in a very fucked-up manner because it does painfully illustrate why it is ALWAYS crucial to keep "love" and sex completely separate, regardless of the situation. I have been fortunate enough to come to this realization before I started having sex, and now, having gone through this little slice of personal hell, I certainly will never forget it. At least I went in with my eyes wide open, so I could always see everything for what it was, as much as part of me wanted to ignore the reality in favor of some grand delusion that most females plunge themselves into on a daily basis.

Reforming Bad Habits

Ever since I became sexually active (which was only about a year and 9 months ago...I'm a late bloomer), sex has been nothing but a fun activity. I've avoided having anything really to do with my partners other than sex, so it's like friends with benefits...but with only the benefits part. It's been a nice way to avoid the complications that sex would have added to my already complicated past relationships (I swear the only guys that have ever wanted to date me have been assholes).

Last Wednesday, i went to a personally-beloved dive bar to hear an out-of-state band play. While waiting for the opening acts to finish up, I launched into a conversation with a guy who came over to where I was sitting to warn me that my ass was showing (my shirt was riding up a little at the bottom, leaving a slice of flesh between my shirt and pants exposed). We somehow got into a debate about emotional sex versus no-strings-attached sex, with him actually advocating for emotional sex. The guy believed in emotionally-charged sex so much that he had given up sex until he could find a woman who would be willing to date him first, so he had been celibate for 18 months. It wasn't difficult to convince him to hop into bed with me. However, we started texting the day after, and, somehow, I found myself asking him out. So, now, I'm taking him out on a date on Saturday. Also, he's invited me to his housewarming party on Friday. My excuse for going is that he's promised to tell me the story as to how he ended up smashing 40s with a machete in a stranger's basement earlier this year if I show.

How does anyone end up dating someone they just intended to fuck? It's a pretty cliché story for a guy to date a girl just so that she'll have sex with him, but you never hear about it happening the other way around. Well, it does happen and it's happening to me. It's not like I don't like the guy. He's unintentionally adorable and kind of a badass (you'd have to be in order to smash 40s with a machete). He might be the one to convince me to stop using people for sex (although, is it really using if it's consensual?).

Being sacchrine is overrated

Maybe I'm crazy, but there's something wrong when an employee expects a customer to be "nice and friendly" to them when the customer is pissed off that the company is screwing up the product that the customer ordered and sees absolutely nothing wrong with said screw-up. It's been a few years since I've been in a customer service, but if this is what's acceptable for customer service (i.e. expect the customer to be overly nice and "friendly" [yes, he used the word "friendly"] to you when you've screwed up and the customer is contacting you regarding said screw-up), then maybe the service industry is where all self-entitled brats should find work.

The situation is that I was annoyed with the rescheduling of two make-up classes for two class that have been canceled. Since the TA is the one who appears to handling all of the scheduling and communications between the professor and us "lowly" students, I emailed him (partly to tell him that one of the days that he listed as being a make-up day was in the middle of spring break) to air my grievances and to point out that having both on the same weekday at the same time (Wednesdays at noon) was maybe not the best idea considering that last time, only a third (if that) showed up (I only went because my conflicting class was canceled for that day). I only sent the email because the mp3 recording of the last make-up class was complete shit. Half of the lecture wasn't recorded and the other half was some garbled nonsense that was indecipherable (even the professor admitted that it was a shitty recording), so thank God I was able to go. Said TA got his panties in a twist and told me that he didn't appreciate being talked down to by a peer, that I shouldn't be so rude or harsh, and that I could have asked about changing the day in a nice and friendly manner. First, we aren't peers in this situation. I'm paying your fat ass to improve my class experience. That makes me your customer, not your fucking peer. Second, if I'm frustrated or pissed off about the product that I'm getting because it isn't what I bargained for, there is no way in hell that I'm going to bend over backwards to kiss your ass when I contact you about it. If you think that every goddamn client should be kissing your ass every time they see you no matter how badly you're fucking their shit up that they're paying you to take care of, then you're fucking DELUSIONAL.

Fuck that shit.

Afghanistan = Vietnam 2.0

The war on terror going on in Afghanistan has more or less become my generation's Vietnam War. First, there's the obvious comparisons of the protests (although in Afghanistan's case, that seems to have died down as the years progressed) and the improvement in news reporting. Some may associate the "No Blood For Oil" protesting with Iraq, but it started with Afghanistan before any officials even hinted at going into Iraq. Today, in the NYT, two articles about the armed conflict in Afghanistan were (perhaps unintentionally) juxtaposed with one another on the same page, basically sending the message that the American military was going to leave Afghanistan in the same horrific condition as Vietnam. In one article, Defense Secretary Panetta swears that the American military will no longer be in a combative mode in Afghanistan by the summer of 2013. On the other half of the page is a continuation of an article talking about how the Taliban is winning in Afghanistan, which the reporter is treating as a far-gone conclusion that nothing has changed in Afghanistan and that the United States might as well have never done anything in a military sense to respond to the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. So America will wash its hands of Afghanistan relatively soon and leave it to be a bloody and confused mess, just as America did with Vietnam. However, here, the invasion wasn't just a power struggle with the USSR and the shadow threat of Communism that never really came to fruition, but rather an attempt to retaliate for and prevent terrorist attacks that are a known evil and have created devastation that everyone has witnessed.

Should the United States allow for Afghanistan to really become Vietnam 2.0 and let the Taliban, which fostered Al Qaeda (responsible for, among other things, 9/11, 7/7, and the Madrid train bombings), become the new bogeyman, far surpassing the USSR in the ability to terrify the masses because it has proven to be deadly and will take action (this isn't another cold war, but a very hot one)?

Part of me feels frustrated at the prospect because I do not want my potential future offspring to ever live in a world where it's normal for people to try to blow up airplanes or use them as weapons and that's why we have to do full-body scans at airport security check points (note that even after the hostage crises and the Lockerbie bombing, there still were not extensive security screening measures in place). Or where it's common to not be allowed to visit anything of national significance because of the fear that it might be a target of a terrorist attack (thinking back to the months following 9/11 when so many places were shut down or blocked off out of fear that too many people would congregate there or it was seen as too identifiable and thus would be an ideal terrorist target). When WWII ended, people stopped having to practice blackouts and air raids and carry around gas masks. If the US pulls out of Afghanistan soon, I doubt that we will no longer have to do full body scans at airports or that the fear of a successful bombing of Times Square will disappear within a year or two. Why? Because, quite simply, we will have "lost" the War on Terror by simply giving up instead of seeing it through to the end.