Urban Planning

"Dude, were the urban planners drunk when they laid this out?  Why is there a wall there?!"  It was an offhand comment that I made while snuggled up with a friend, but it fits pretty well.  We all have some rough idea of how to navigate cities, and what to expect.  Sure, there are some quirks that are particular to any given city.  And sometimes roads curve around in ways that you don't necessarily expect, or side roads unexpectedly dump you onto the freeway.  But on the whole, there are some basic patterns that most of us have come to count on.  Even the occasional detour is easy enough to navigate around.

The city of my psyche got laid out a little differently.  It can be a little trickier for folks that are new to the city of me to figure out how to navigate it.  If one has been so unfortunate as to not pick up the Lonely Planet guide before entering, they may be surprised to find that what they thought was a freeway on-ramp actually routes you to a park.  Surprise!  No sexy freeway for you!  But check out this cool swing set!

And while my own layout makes sense to me, I'm still struggling with where the walls are for others.  I often feel like entire parts of others' beings are walled off entirely, save for one toll bridge.  The cost? Sex.  Can't pay?  No visit to the romance district for you!

I'm not quite sure what to do with this metaphor from here.  It didn't particularly illuminate anything for me, though I think it may for others.  When food metaphors aren't adequate for explaining the way I work, it's at least another option to fall back on.

Appearances

Wow, blog!  That post from earlier today was a big pile of depressing!  So here's something less sad that I dug out of the drafts pile.  I wrote it a couple of months ago, and have no idea where I was going with it.  But here it is, probably in incomplete form, for your reading pleasure!

Working as a professional naked chick does weird things to your relationship with your body, and bodies in general.  At least it did to me.

I get that for many people, their bodies are deeply personal to them.  And why wouldn't they be?  They're the container we're in.  It's the space our minds and spirits inhabit.  We carry them with us everywhere we go.  And yeah, that's pretty personal.  So it follows that the appearance of that container, that space, would be similarly personal.

But when the thing that I was selling was that container, I inevitably changed my relationship with my body.  I've become much more utilitarian about my appearance.  Does it get the job done?  Is it bouncing light as it needs to, carrying me where I need to go, responding to sensory input in the ways I'd like it to?  Cool.  That's what it needs to do.

I'm also pretty honest- at least I think- about the limits of my body.  I don't view that as a personal failing.  There is no way that my body can be perfectly suited to everything.  It isn't.  Nobody's is.  It's suited to that which I need it to do.  And that is exactly what I want.  No more, no less.

Saying No

I've had multiple people over the years comment on how good I am at saying no.  It's kind of a weird piece of feedback to hear, and I have some conflicted feelings about it.

Mostly because I really, really do not enjoy telling people no.  That is especially true if they are somebody about whom I particularly care.  I strongly dislike the feeling that I'm disappointing them.  That feeling can easily spiral out of control for me- especially if "no" has been a frequent occurrence in that relationship.  Of course, that spiral of self-resentment and confusion puts the kibosh on any sexy inclinations that there may have been, leading to further no's, and and and....

Of course, the alternative is almost always worse than the no-spiral.  Mentally and emotionally checking out, with the detached hope it ends soon?  That's a pretty awful place to be, too.  And I'm pretty sure it's the option that has way more baggage attached.  So I say "no."

But I hate that it's played such a prominent role in my sex life.  I hate that it's a skill that I've practiced enough for it to seem noteworthy.  I hate that, while I'm apparently skilled at going through the motions of saying no, it has an emotional toll on me.  I would like very much to change that.  But I have no idea where to begin.