Category: Essays & Bad Ideas

An assortment of ramblings; some thoughtful, some thoughtless

Compatibility

This deep and abiding need you have to be wanted? Your fear that worshipping me will always leave you sad and slightly unfulfilled? The sinking certainty that you’re going to end up doing whatever I want, no matter what you have to lose? The aching dread that you may never again feel the gentle, nurturing embrace of reciprocal love because someone you barely know has completely shaken your understanding of what is possible between a man and a girl?

It makes me hard.

So your disgusting desperation doesn’t repulse me; it actually makes me desire you.

Isn’t that sweet?

Aww!

Don’t worry your little head about it, dear. I don’t think an untrained monkey could have figured it out either, and y’know, monkeys are pretty smart and cool, so if you think about it that way, there’s really no reason to be upset.

Who’s my little “good try”-er…? That’s right, you are!

Cranky Old Man Shit: Emo-ji

I’m am slowly —slowly— adjusting to emojis. I was slow to embrace emoticons before that. I’m just slow. But I’ll get there, because I try not to cling too tightly to unnecessary conventions.

With that said, I hope we don’t forever lose OTOH, IMHO, AFAIK, and a few other choice bits of early Internet-ese, because they’re more than of-their-time abbreviations. To steal a line from the alt-right fucksticks, I see those terms as virtue signals. The best possible kind.

If I see that someone has peppered qualifiers like “in my humble opinion” and “as far as I know” into their writing, or demonstrated their ability to process opposing ideas with “on the other hand”, it suggests I’m dealing with a reasonable human being who wants to leave room in her thoughts for the possibility that she might be wrong. And we need a lot more reasonable human beings in the world.

Under Construction

Anything could happen, between the two of us. Everything. Nothing. It’s hard to say, and day-to-day. But whatever becomes of us, I want you to go on.

I want you to ache for me throughout a long, long life. I want you to write old-fashioned, pressed-flower-filled letters to me after I’m dead and you still have so many years left. I want you stable enough to land a nice man who will give you a nice son who you’ll give my name, just so you’ll have an excuse to say it every day. You’re one of the vessels I’ve chosen to carry my memory, and I expect you to withstand the test of time.

So what are the pillars upon which you are built? As I break things inside, and remodel you to suit me, which supports are holding you upright? We both know you’d let me wreck them if I wanted, but I don’t… I want to work around them, or perhaps modify them in a pinch. In short, I want the structure to stand even if the architect moves on.

Show me how not to destroy you. So that if I do, it’ll be on purpose.

I don’t want to yell.

Okay, sure, absolutely, I do want to yell at girls, to make them afraid or wet or both. But not when I want them to actually hear me.

That’s why I like the kind of girl I like. Because I don’t have to shout, make my face burn red, or put my fist through the wall next to her head. I can just sit her down, smile, and proceed to explain all the ways she’s failing me. Critique her performance as a person and as property. Sketch for her the broad strokes of my expectations, and stress the importance of creativity in her implementation of those goals. Make her understand that, yes, everything is her fault, but that just means she can make everything perfect if she tries hard enough.

Trying to speak to the broken little girl inside a grown-ass woman is often a challenge, but I assure you, we can do it using our inside voices.

Faith In Absence

You ache for me without knowing me. My touch is a dream that keeps you awake. Your tongue has never tasted my name, and yet it sings to me in adoration. It feels like madness, this frightful longing that consumes you.

But bear something in mind. A girl leaving an offering of flowers at an ancient temple didn’t do so in hope of seeing the gods; she hoped to make the gods see her. She didn’t need proof the gods existed because she could feel them move within her. She didn’t need to behold the throne to know that she was ruled.

You are her daughter, and I am your sun.

Fair Traveler

You didn’t mean for it to happen; you’re not even sure *how* it happened. You didn’t offer, and I didn’t accept. But here we are.

It must be disturbing, realizing that someone accidentally owns you… owns you like a fragile, insignificant object that has fallen into the orbit of something far greater than itself, some sort of dark matter you’ve always suspected was there but you just couldn’t see. And now you don’t know if it’s going to pull you in and burn you up, or spin you off in some terrifying new direction. How thrilling and horrifying for you.

You should have been more careful while exploring the stars, little girl.