Another Big Gun

So I met this man a few weeks ago. From a place not unlike this one. He wanted to "cam." I didnt' have a cam, but I looked at his. he looked very tired. we chatted/ Imd for an hour or two, he sent me links to some Romanian bands on YouTube. Turns out he was Romanian. From Transylvania. Did i know anything about transylvania? yes. Vlad in a casket minus his head, i knew that story. some others.

I had no idea before that, his chat English was like that. he wanted to talk on the phone. So we talked. He had an accent, his English was in process, for sure, but he got it. He told me he's only been talking on the phone for two months, he taught himself English by watching TV and repeating everything, over the past 9 months. I figured he was smart.

So I agreed to meet him. He called me the next day, and the next. We met for coffee at Victrola. He wasn't dressed for a "date," definitely. I saw him out the window before I left and changed clothes fast. Was he attractive? to me? well, yes. Amazing eyes, bad teeth, latinlike in a certain way, everything is about me, you know that way, holding my drink, getting my napkins, opening doors, like that. he held out his hand, he wanted to touch mine. We sat in front, on the sidewalk, across the street was a little Lyndon LaRouche campaign table in front of the grocery store. He said it still seemed strange to him to see people campaigning openly like that, free speech being free. We talked about Qadaffi and Ceausescu.

We walked to the park, a lot of history there. Makes me feel rooted i guess. He pulls me behind him and slips his hand in between our bodies to my breast. It feels tight and comfortable, clever. and i like the way his touch feels. But then, we're at a park, where there's not only kids but a history of public sex. So we walk more and talk.

He talks about being in the army in Romania, carrying big guns, they were empty. They gave them guns but no ammunition. He didn't say why.

He told me about a time when he was involved with a yoga/ tantra teacher. How his endurance developed to a point where he would last for four or five hours. then he couldn't orgazm, at all, then he had nightmares about demons or something like that. He felt he was playing with something beyond his control, and he stopped. that's what he said.

He kept touching me, trying to touch my breasts and sex. How do i feel about that? It irritated me, though i liked the feel and i can't help making noises like that, but it definitely irritated me. He said, "I understand, this is your neighborhood, where you live." He stopped. Then he wanted me to get in his car in the parking lot at the grocery store. For what? More semi-public semi-sex? We said goodbye.

I came home to my neighbor and her baby locked out of their apt by their drunk dad/ husband. We went for a walk and she talked. We came back and he'd opened the door and passed out.

I come inside and he'd called already. We talked a while, i told him about my neighbor. He said, "oh, my little lady." My girl calls me her "cute little lady." He wanted me to come to his house the next night. he wanted to sleep with his face in my neck.

That was a couple of weeks ago, I think. I lost count of the days and the times he's called me. I like him. But his teeth are bad. ?

Big Guns

When I was 8 we moved to Libya. We lived in temporary housing for the first months, downtown in Tripoli. My brother was 6 and my sister three months old. My brother and i were like fric and frac, always the same height, identical coloring, people asked if we were twins regularly. Our birthdays were two years and two weeks apart. The first night in our new home we heard this godawful wailing during what seemed like the middle of the night. Very loud, we were sure the place was haunted and ran into our parents bedroom. They had no idea what the noise was. Turns out our apartment (4rth floor) was right next to a mosque. With loudspeakers, of course, calling to prayer, right at our level.

One day my mom asked us to go to the store for her. It was a few blocks from our apt. So we went, and my brother knocked a bottle of pop onto the floor, where it broke and splashed onto my legs and feet and into my shoes. Ick. I took them off, it was summer, preferring barefoot to sticking shoes. So we're walking along, I'm fairly small, btw, for my age, about the size of my 6yo brother. All of a sudden I feel someone's hand in my underwear, from behind.

It happened so fast it was exactly like that, my first awareness of it was feeling it, this guy had come up from behind me and lifted my dress and put his hand in my pants in one fast move. I didn't think, just turned and saw his smirking face. I took my shoes and hit him in the head, yelling. He was pretty big, about 12 or 13, and looked shocked. Then took off running across the street into a vacant lot. Another Libyan kid was there and saw the whole thing, he ran after him as I was screaming, in English, for him to get him. They disappeared into an alley and we went home. For the longest time I was afraid I might be pregnant. Seriously.

a few weeks later. One morning i stayed home from school, my brother left for the bus stop as usual. After about five minutes he's back, telling my mother he couldn't go to school because soldiers were shooting at the kids at the bus stop. My mom was pretty incredulous, so he told her to look out the window. I looked with her. He was right. Well, except the shooting was with blanks, after lots of warnings to get inside. That was our introduction to Qaddafi. and his army of 14 year old boys. Some of it's a little fuzzy, but that part is pretty vivid, how young they were. Like they'd been let out of school to play war, they were pumped up, riding around in the back of trucks waving their rifles and machine guns.

Martial law was in place for a while, maybe a week or so, like 12 hour curfew. My smart dad had thought ahead to get a hard core short wave radio to bring with us. We got all our news from BBC in South Africa. That way we knew about the revolution, all of it. It wasn't so bad, better because we were in an apartment building, so we could go back and forth to neighbors and we all shared food and essential stuff. In the end there was only one death, from someone shooting them self accidentally, as i remember.

My next memory is one afternoon going downstairs to the lobby of our building to see a soldier sitting there shooting the shit with the doorman. He had a gun with him. It was as big as I was. Well, that's the way I remember it, anyway. I backed up toward the stairs. At that time I wore glasses. He wanted to look at them, gesturing to me, speaking in Arabic, to take them off and give them to him. That would have meant getting closer to him. The doorman, in English, encouraged me, telling me he wouldn't hurt me. Not convincing. It was very scary, felt like a catch 22. Was he more likely to shoot if I ran away, or if I was closer to him. Was he mad at me already because I didn't give him my glasses right away? I ran upstairs, his laughter chasing me. No shooting.

The Elephant and the Centipede

my daughter, she says the darnedest things. like about this commercial- for Glade somethingorother, i think. anyway, it has this woman elephant (you can tell her gender from the pearls)talking about how smelly her husband's shoes are. he's a centipede.

She says, "Every time I see that commercial I get concerned about the sexual well being of that couple."

Intercourse

"Men will ever rise or fall to the level of the other sex... Let them not imagine that they know aught of the delights which intercourse with the other sex can give, until they have felt the sympathy of mind with mind, and heart with heart; until they bring into that intercourse every affection, every talent, every confidence, every refinement, every respect."

Frances Wright, 1829

"Do you love it? Is it hot? Is it sexy?"

Paris Hilton, 2006

Unconditional love?

the other day i saw it in the grocery store. a woman with a loud child, a little boy. Probably autistic or asperger's, about 7 or 8, crying a lot. She's also got another one, about 4 or 5.

She's trying to buy food and flowers for someone, Mother's day coming up and all. Trying to keep him quiet to avoid disturbing all the shoppers without disabled children. Giving him hugs and trying to calm him. I want to tell her, "It's only noise. Their opinions about you and him don't mean shit." But I, too, stick to the script. I don't know her so that would be inappropriate.

She gets in line and the clerk drops a jar of pickles from the customer just ahead of her. Pickle juice and shards added to her long list of stressors. She says? "For once it's not me who did something like that." Then she continues soothing her son, keeping the other one out of the broken glass.

Today

is beautiful outside. I'm inside, for too long now. Just kind of in a bubble. Need to get a job, just got another "you're overqualified" message. No sex for a while. Not that i'm really interested in fucking for fuck's sake. There's an intriguing possibility on a back burner out in email land, but should i wait til i lose 10 pounds to meet him, or til i get a job or..?

My dad is very sick, dying, but in a kind of unpredictable way. 2 days to 2 years kind of thing. His girlfriend/"adopted daughter" finally decided to marry him. He loves me. After i got back from visiting him i slept several 10+ hour days. In this bubble.

How come with all these mood options i can't find one that fits?