Train/ Part 2

After a long day in the city, I was more than ready for the train ride home. I would have loved to take a nice nap, however, two things kept me awake. One, I did not want to fall asleep and pass my destination, and two, I was so excited about being on a train that I didn't want to miss a minute of it.

Unfortunately, the fluorescent lights were on throughout the train, so I was not able to look out the window and see anything in the dark night. I didn't sit next to anyone, so it was a fairly quiet trip home. However, the person announcing our stops was getting tired and wasn't really giving fair warning, so I became nervous that I was going to miss my stop. (The train does NOT stop for long. You have one minute to get on or off and then that sucker leaves whether you're in the right place or not.)

He gave a warning call for my station, so I made my way downstairs to the doors. It turns out he gave advance warning on ours, because there was a huge group of us waiting downstairs for a good 5-10 minutes before we arrived at the depot. There was a pretty woman waiting next to me, with black hair and several piercings. She was very laid back, and had an easy smile. She didn't shy away from eye contact and it felt like we had several conversations without speaking a word. I would bet my right arm that she was queer.

There was this awful elderly woman next to us who complained about everything. "This is unsanitary. We're waiting too long. Public transportation is filled with germs." And I'm pretty sure we all wanted to say "So why are you on it, then?" but we politely refrained from saying anything. The girl and I did share a look, a smile, a stifled laugh.

It was a connection. Just another nameless connection with another girl who I will probably never see again. Her smile bloomed across her face effortlessly, and she winked at me as we disembarked. I smiled in return. There was a jostling of the crowd, and I lost her in the darkness as we both made our way home in the night.

I smiled even as I thought of my empty bed. Even though I have no one to sleep next to, I have the ability to take five minutes and make a connection with a stranger. In one moment, I had a shared thought, an unspoken conversation with a human being who did not exist to me before that moment. That seems like a good reason to smile.

Train/Part 1

The other day, I had the opportunity to take the train! I somehow grew up with the notion that no one on the west coast takes the train, so this was to be my first experience with trains. I had thought they were practically obsolete until I arrived at the train station only to be jostled by families, college kids, business travelers, and everyone with either a book, an iPod, or both.

I boarded the train and prepared for my two hour trip by choosing a seat at a table next to a pretty blond with a book in hand. Conversation was awkward at first, far less graceful than the smooth motion of the train. (I thought trains were supposed to be rickety and loud, not smooth and quiet. I could hardly tell when we slowed to a stop and took off again.)

I took a trip down to the cafe on the first level and grabbed a coffee just as we were passing the cliffs down to the ocean. I stopped at the doors and watched the ocean fly by through the huge windows. The silver sky blended softly towards the dark, swirling ocean: beautiful in its ferocity, stunning in shades of gray.

I made my way back up the staircase to my seat across from the shy blond. After offering a banana, she began to open up. She was from Washington, originally came to California to go to school and ended up staying. We talked about how I want to move to Washington, and the beautiful scenery of both our states. She takes the train often, and since it was my first time, she talked me through the experience. We shared a few laughs and it was easy to see that whatever social barrier she usually carried, she was beginning to relax. The conversation moved fluidly for quite some time and I was happy to be sitting near her.

Eventually we fell into a comfortable silence, staring at the ocean. I was reading a book as well, but noticed when she pulled out a notepad and began to compose a song from notes inside her head. She used all string instruments, cellos, violins, violas, harps, etc. It was wonderful to watch, though I hope I was subtle about it as she did seem very shy.

We both got off at the same destination, and I saw her several times afterward, strolling about the city. Each time we would laugh at each other and wave, a common bond formed over a simple train ride. It wasn't until I got home that I realized we never asked for each others' names.

Lost/Found

I thought I had written up a draft for a new post the other day (which apparently I didn't), and instead stumbled upon a draft I had written up after the last time I saw first:girl. I saved the draft instead of publishing it because I was hurting, and I didn't want your first impressions of first:girl to be biased. I want to start from the beginning with her.

To do that, I have to talk about M2 and Patty, so that you can see the position I was in when I met first:girl. I want it all to make sense and go in chronological order. However, it's been a long time since first:girl and I stopped talking, and I still have a hard time writing about her.

It'll be posted. Eventually. I'm going to make that a goal. Talk about first:girl. Before June. In June, we enter each others' lives again, so I better be ready to deal with her by then.

Multi-partner/LavenderLens

I read an article in The Lavender Lens, (a San Diego lesbian oriented magazine) that dealt with the lesbian relationship cycle. It's advice in breaking that cycle was to become part of a multi-person relationship.

I read this article over a month ago and am just now finding a fraction of the words I want to say. I am for this idea, I am against this idea. My own personal beliefs and my wish for mainstream society to accept LGBT relationships are at war with each other and themselves. This idea of a relationship is tearing me apart, mostly because it makes me question my foundational beliefs.

Do I want to get married? Am I a monogamous person? Can I love more than one person at a time? There are so many aspects of a multi-partner relationship that I can really see myself fitting into. Economically, it's a fabulous idea. However, mainstream American society has not been very accepting of multi-person relationships in the past.

(Can I just jump in here with how I'm reluctant to use the word threesome? It seems so sexual when I'm actually talking about a full relationship, more than just for sexual gratification. Does anyone have a better word for this?)

One of my biggest fears? I'm worried that by moving toward multi-partnerships, gay marriage would lose ground and be dismissed entirely. For those who are monogamous, a majority shift to multi-person relationships could ruin their chances of the happy marriage that they have always wanted.

I also have felt disgust for polygyny (the relationship consisting of one husband for multiple wives) in the past. While hopefully a multi-partner relationship in the queer community would promote equality among the parties involved, I worry that a weaker partner could feel exploited. Then there is jealousy, who loves who more, time spent together and apart.

I know I have felt extreme love for more than one person at a time before, but can a relationship with more than two parties really last? Would I want it to last? Do I believe in being in a relationship that would span the majority of my lifetime, or do I wish to experience a series of meaningful relationships with many different people?

The Lavender Lens proposed a model where each person in the relationship has their own bedroom in the house. It is a sanctuary. Permission would be asked to enter a room or engage in sexual activity. This part of the model makes me feel safe. Safe because I would have control over what sexual situations I want to participate and when. If one person is better at handling me while I'm emotional, I could go to her for comfort and cuddling. If I'm in a particular mood and crave a specific kind of sex, I could go to another person for that. If I wanted multiple partners, or for all of us to be together, I could request that they come into my room. They can say no, I can say no; everything is within our own personal control. I love the idea of that.

Expect more pros and cons as I mentally think this through, day after day.

To be continued...

Here is a link to Part 2.

Time/Growth

It's been a month since my last post. A post about dreams. A last ditch effort to try to keep myself going, to keep writing, to keep track of what I was doing. However, I wasn't doing much. It's hard to write about new experiences when you're not putting yourself into new opportunities or situations. I think I needed time to go out and live a little.

I went to a Tegan and Sara concert and realized that I looked like a completely different person than I was two years ago. The person I am now looks ridiculous (not to say that the older me didn't look ridiculous either because I was trying to be bottle blond and that was a disaster). Anyway, the point is that I generally look ridiculous, but I usually look ridiculous and like myself. Now I look ridiculous and like a stranger. So, obviously, that's got to stop.

Secondly, I am forgetting things left and right. I forgot two of my niece's birthdays in one week! I forgot that I had a paper due, I forgot I had class, I forgot that I was supposed to go to the doctor, etc. I started watching Bones, the TV show, and basically held myself hostage trying to watch 4 seasons in the shortest amount of time possible. I got through one and half before I realized that I was beginning to look peaky and needed some sunlight. I took up yoga and tai chi chuan again, which is already helping me to gain back a lot of the flexibility I had as a dancer.

I went to Disneyland and pretended it was my birthday :)

I read a new book.

I met new people.

A friend of a friend was telling a story that he found highly engaging whilst I got distracted by a gorgeous girl walking by. After he asked me what I was looking at and I responded with "She's super hot," the poor boy (who has been surrounded by his church group his whole life) went red, stuttered, laughed, and tried to jump back into his story several times over before he gave up and excused himself. I laughed.

Now, I'm posting again. I think this means that I have finally experienced something again. But I'm not making any promises.

Point/Dreams

As if the fates wanted to prove my point for me, today is m:girl's birthday. Twenty ninth.

Last night I had this terrific and somewhat explicit dream, but there was one aspect of it that was slightly bewildering. I was writing in a journal on a blanket amongst the grass, and I was with an older woman. She complained of feeling tired, and laid down by my side, curling into me under another blanket. I made the first move, and she willingly kissed me back, melting into me and under me with a beauty I had never experienced before. Without being too detailed and explicit, we made love. (And, oh my gosh she had a piercing that drove me wild.)

After it was over, I looked up and she was one of my acting professors from college. Granted, this particular professor is a gorgeous older woman whom I love and admire very much, but I love and admire her with an unprecedented respect that makes a sexual desire for her out of the question. She hadn't turned into another person, I just hadn't recognized her face before we made love. That is the start of our relationship, glowing with satisfaction on an old picnic blanket in the middle of a field of green grass.

The scene moves, and we are inside a room somewhere (it looks like a spaceship), making a movie about her life, her sexuality, and the scene is set for us to make love. It is the same conversation we had before making love on our picnic, however, the blanket is gone and it is clear that we are on this spacecraft. Though they are the exact same words we said to each other during our lovemaking on the picnic blanket, they are now harsh, false, and ugly. In the end, I can't stand to look at her, and as I walk away, I wake up.

Now that I am awake, I feel ashamed for having a dream like this about someone that I feel should be put above sexual fantasies. I feel dirty for having dreamed about her that way. However, I also wonder about the shift in scene. I wonder about how all of the sounds she made in the grass could sound like the sweetest of music, but under cameras and lights could sound so false and wrong.

It makes me wish I had a therapist or dream analyst who could tell me what my subconscious is trying to say.

Age/Love

I have always been most attracted to people who are older than me. The first woman was 4 years older than me, and the next was 5, the next 7, the next 7, the next 8...Do you see a pattern here?

I am wondering if it is because there is something missing in my age group. It is so hard to find decent women who aren't 5-15 years older than I am. Most of my generation is rude. Most people my age grew up to be disrespectful, impolite, without manners or rudimentary etiquette. Maybe this is part of the reason why I go for women at the extreme ends of the butch/femme spectrum, because they have a beautiful set of mannerisms and behaviors that endears me to them.

With the butch and femme women that I have encountered, there has been self study into their identities. They are intelligent, there's a thirst for good conversation and enlightenment. I can't imagine going out with any of the people I have met and seeing them yell at the waiter or stiff a tip. They have respect for each individual. They are polite. They hold doors or say thank you when someone holds the door for them. That simple thank you is what endears me to a person, and the lack of that simple phrase will make me end a relationship.

The queer girls my age are mean, angry, and bitter. They enjoy protesting and yelling at people who don't understand us. But yelling doesn't help them to understand us. I want to be with someone who respectfully talks to the religious, the traditional about who we are. There are some people who have never encountered an LGBT individual. Bitching that person out isn't going to make them like us or want to treat us like equal citizens. That's not the way to go about it.

So I date the people who were either raised with better manners, or have gotten past the rebel stage in their life. I date the people who help me pass out cookies around the block and chat with the neighbors about the flowers.

Just to clarify: I think age is just a number. It just occurred to me why I date older women than myself, so I wrote about it. I also know that there are exceptions to all of this, I am just generalizing.

P.S. Just wait till I get to why I (for the most part) don't date girls younger than myself, though there are plenty who want to. That post should be a real treat.

Bitter/Compassion

I used to be the most compassionate person that people knew. An old lady trying to water her flowers would bring out the best in me. I would offer to help her, strike up a conversation, and spend the afternoon looking at old photo albums of her with her late husband.

Where did I go? Somewhere along the lines of jesting about being bitter and jokingly telling people to suck it up, I lost all of my compassion. Has my life gotten so bad that I really think everyone's life is easier, or have I had the strength to stand alone and think of other people as weak? Or am I jealous that other people are used to having support systems while I have stood alone since kindergarten? Or do I just not respect anyone anymore?

My life is not that bad. It's not ideal, but whose is? So why have I become this bitter old hag? My god, I'm barely an adult. I've barely made it past puberty and being a teenager. How did I become this angry, cranky, awful old lady who wears all black and lives in the shady looking house on the corner surrounded by 72 black cats?

I can't go around telling people that they are weak if they cry. I can't tell people that it's not okay to lean on anyone else or be emotionally needy for 5 minutes. That's really not okay (as I am beginning to see).

Maybe somewhere along the way my hatred for emotionally clingy women got to me, and now I take it out on everyone. Maybe I tried to rescue too many people who shattered me over and over again. Maybe I got tired of being the one everyone leaned on for support. Maybe I was upset that I am always the rock of the family, and I am not allowed to lean on any of my family members in return. Maybe too many people invited me to their pity parties and took advantage of my compassion. Maybe too many people asked it of me, whereas I feel most compassionate for those who do not seek pity. Maybe it's that too many people are fake, and I only want to see truth.

Point is, I have to find that little girl that can't resist mending someone's broken heart.

I'm going to blame the tears here on lack of sleep and emotional overload. And who is here to see me shed them? The interwebs. Who will hold me as I cry myself to sleep? My own arms.

Maybe if I can find that compassion again I'll let someone lean on me, and maybe she hold me as I fall asleep.

Impressing/Truth Telling

Here is the point where my blog becomes difficult. It has become increasingly hard to write in this blog, now that it is connected to people I know and admire. This is the point in time where I have to resist writing fictional stories to impress the people of the interwebs who are so much more experienced than myself, in writing and in relationships.

This is the point in time where I want to write about my sexual prowess, and about how my relationships have gone so well and it turns out that my small town is full of lovely gay women whom I respect and admire.

But I would be lying. And it is so hard not to lie, but I will refrain from doing so because I want one aspect of my life to be pure, upright, and honest. I want one place where I can be me, and look back on it and see me, the real me, through the years. I want to strengthen the relationship I have with myself, and lying is a sure way to break up any relationship.

I have not been dating anyone new. My heart seems to leap beyond my reach, crossing states and countries, clinging to those in relationships, or those who identify as heterosexual. I haven't been having sex because I've never done it before, and I want to be with someone that I have a spark with; someone who will be open with me about what she likes and what she wants. I want to be with someone who isn't afraid of being clear about what she likes, and who is gentle enough to teach me without breaking me.

I have, however, been shaping up. Taking classes, seriously thinking about where I want to go to uni, and how to propel my career from that point on. Journalism, a fleeting dream, is now coming into realization. Not that I won't have a long way to go, but I feel like I am finally taking responsibility for where my life path is going.

My psychology class has been giving me a lot to think about, one being that maybe the reason that I haven't taken responsibility for anything in my life is that I honestly didn't think I would make it this far. When I was about six years old, I was sure that I couldn't live without my mother, and vice versa, so we made a pact. I told her that we would die together in a car accident, so neither of us would have to grow old alone. It seems stupid to think that this would come true, but I believed it for so long. I was sure I would never live past my high school years. Now, into my 20s, I realize that it might take me a long time to die. It could be 5, 10, 20, 30, 50 years. I have not been prepared for the option to live that long.

Now, I'm trying to adjust myself to having a longer life path. This includes a steady career, budgeting, saving up for future occasions, all things that I've never had to plan for before.

But I'm trying. As a direct quote from a psychology peer: "She says that she has always been independent and gives credit to her mother for bringing her up this way. However, [Tabitha] also says she is unable to focus on a clear path for life due to the lack of guidance she got in her upbringing. She says that now she feels lost and passionless and this really doesn’t sound like independence at all."

Well, I meant independence in more than a career fashion. As in, I emotionally lean on myself, take care of myself, all matters that have to do with me are dealt with by me. However, she does have a point. What good is being independent when I don't take up the responsibility to become a functioning adult in society?

So that's what I'm trying to become. And that's the truth.

P.S. Women's curling is on again today. America vs. my favorite girl Eve Muirhead, captain of the Great Britain team.

Olympics/New Stuff

The opening ceremony for the Olympics was brilliant. I loved it. The flying man, the whales moving through the ocean, the ice breaking, the dancing! It was all so beautiful!

In other news, it has been over a month since the last time I have posted. Though I don't have much to say, I have to get back on the horse.

I'm taking a psychology class, and it is making me analyze myself way too deeply. It has gotten to the point where it is starting to unnerve me and make me wish that I'd never taken the class at all. Since this is an eight week class followed by a term 2 class of Human Sexuality, I just can't wait to see what the effect of a sexuality class will do to this blog! (That was half-sarcastic, half real excitement.)

In personal news, I got a perm! I have curly hair now, down to the top of my shoulders. It's cute, and when I wear a wrap around headband it makes me look like I have an Elizabeth Bennet, regency styled updo.

Note: That is not me in the photo. She has an actual updo, where as mine is short enough, and curly enough, that I just drape it over the headband in the back and it produces almost the same effect.