May 31, 2005
It's topics like this that remind me how long it's been since I was single.
They also remind me how very nice it is to be married.
Because you don't have to think about this stuff when you're married. It's all out there. It's been dealt with. You know their secrets. They know yours. And what's even better is that neither of you care. Your past has not been a hindrance to your future and, honestly, what could be better than that? You lived, you learned, you weren't denied the object of your affection because you might have been stupid in the past. I repeat: what could be better than that?
But that's not the part of this business I'm supposed to be demystifying, is it? I'm supposed to be hitting the "before" marriage business, not the after. Sigh. Ah, well. It may have been awhile, but, the way I see it, this is comes down to trust. When do you trust someone with not only the good bits about your history, but the parts that might be considered bad? Particularly your sexual history, knowing what a loaded gun that might be in someone's hands.
The only answer I can give is that this is a question best left up to your gut. If your sexual history isn't going to get someone killed (i.e. HIV/AIDS) or make them ill (other sexually transmitted diseases that may not be lethal, but definitely leave a mark), you can wait for full disclosure until you feel comfortable enough to share that information---if you feel it's necessary to share that information, and I'll come back to this in a moment. However, if you have been engaging in risky sexual behavior---and I shouldn't have to define what this is for you, kids. You're all grown-ups. If you don't know this by now, well, you're a lost cause----you should definitely tell anyone you sleep with that you've been a particularly naughty girl/boy BEFORE YOU SLEEP WITH THEM. I don't care if it's hard or if it's uncomfortable or if it's not really something you want to bring up in the heat of the moment. In this day and age, sex can kill. It can and does. Still. It's not fair to not let someone in on the risks they're taking by being with you.
Preaching aside, if you should tell someone about your past is yet another issue that needs to be addressed. Now, at one point in time I would have said, absolutely, you must lay everything out on the table for your partner's consumption, and they should do the same; that there shouldn't be any secrets between you. But now? Well, I'm not so sure. I think this comes part and parcel with maturity and the realization all of the noteworthy bits of your life haven't happened in your early twenties, when sharing this sort of thing seems to be a benign and expected act.
As I often tell Mr. H, when he relates to me his latest tale of singledom over Sunday morning coffee, I am so happy I'll never have to deal with any of the trials and tribulations of being single ever again. And I am. Believe me, I am. But, I will admit, there are times when I wonder what I would do if I were, and this is one of those instances: would I disclose everything to this hypothetical potential partner? Or would there be some things I would keep to myself, not necessarily because they're horrible things that I would fear would make this hypothetical person run the other way, but simply because I don't think they need to be related; that they're not necessary to the conversation? And the answer is that I don't think I would disclose everything. Life is long. So much longer than it seems it ever could be when you're in your twenties. Experience is gained. Lessons have been learned. And one of the lessons learned is that not everything in your past is relevant to the future. A particular instance may have, in part, made you who you are today, but that doesn't mean you have to tell all. As long as what you're choosing not to disclose is a benign thing, there can be some things you can choose to keep to yourself. I don't think this is bad. It's simply a case of the other person not needing to know.
And that's all the psuedo-advice this particular diva can dish out on this fine Tuesday morning. My partners in crime, the other fabulous divas, have dished out their own bits of advice, so go and read what they have to say. Also be sure to check out what The Minister of Propaganda, The Wiz, and Phin have said on the subject. We'll see when/if Stiggy chimes in on this topic, since he's off gallivanting around Europe at the present moment.
UPDATE: This week's guest diva, Moogie, has also chimed in. Go and read.
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May 24, 2005
This week's topic was inspired by one, in my humble opinion, particularly annoying Yes song: which is better to have---a broken heart or a lonely heart?
Now, whomever wrote this song for Yes came to the conclusion that, indeed, it was better to be the owner of a lonely heart, rather than a broken heart. Much better than... This is the first time I've actually read the lyrics to this tune, and I have to say I have no idea what their reasoning behind this bit of advice is. I've never been able to understand the words when they sang them, so I don't know why I was thinking I would be enlightened when I read them, but hey, I'm a hopeful girl that way. Alas, they have not provided any enlightenment. So, I suppose I must actually work at this post and come up with my own conclusion. Bastards.
{Goes back and reads the lyrics again}
It seems, upon a second reading, that if you have a lonely heart, somehow, you seem to have control over your fate. You can make the choice not to be lonely, whereas if your heart is broken, well, you're pretty much screwed. Hmmph. Basically, this gets back to an old Shakespearean theme: is it better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all?
I would have to say, yes, it is better to have loved and lost, because at least then you know what you're missing. The thought of going through that all again may terrify you, but at least you've risked something. You've gone out and made choices and are living with the ramifications of those choices. You've been brave before and you can be brave again, because you know what love feels like---and on its good days, it's a pretty nice thing. But if you think loneliness is the best option, well, you may, like the song says, realize you have control over your fate. You may realize that you don't have to let it get to you, you can insert Oprah's message of EMPOWERMENT here, yadda, yadda yadda, ad nauseam, ad infinitum.
But...
Let's be honest, kids. How many people do you know who seem to have a serious attachment to being lonely? They've made loneliness into their mate and they talk about loneliness the way some women and men talk about their significant others. Because those people are out there. I'm sure you've met a few: single women and men who constantly bemoan how if only I could meet the right person and then never actually get off their ass to do something about it. You invite them out, you introduce them to someone you think they'll get along with, hoping against hope that this will get them to quit their bitching, or at least move to a new stage of bitching, and five minutes later---POOF!---they've hit the self-destruct button and are back at your side, bitching and moaning again, about how that person wasn't right for them, what were you thinking, etc. They have run back to their ever faithful mate: loneliness. These are the people, in my experience, who have the ideal mate all laid out in their mind and they won't settle for anything but that, while they know, somewhere in the back of their mind, that said ideal mate simply does not exist in reality. They set the bar too high for any mere mortal to pass over.
In other words: there are people out there for whom loneliness is their drug of choice and, boy are they ever addicted to it. Instead of falling off and having to get back on, they prefer never to get on the horse in the first place. They've decided that while getting on the horse is ideal, and something they really should do, they prefer to turn the horse into a unicorn: a mythical creature that can and will never be caught. It's more comfortable for them. And that's fine and dandy. I just wish the few friends of mine who are like this would quit bitching about the damn horse, because it gets so boring to have to listen to it.
But, you don't have to take my word for it. You can go and read what the other Disarming and Demystifying Divas have written on the topic. Make sure to give a warm welcome to Pammy, one of our Red Hat Divas, who has joined in this week. If you'd like to flip the coin and see what the males have to say, you can go over and read what the Air Marshal, The Wiz, Stigmata (who's filling in for our beloved, but dead as a doornail and subsequently flushed down the toity Puffster) and Phin have coughed up.
UPDATE: Serendipity
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May 17, 2005
(You'll need to click on the image to actually be able to read it.)
And do women ever love jewelry. In my humble opinion, there are very few exceptions to this rule. Even if some women don't opt for the all the flash a professional, Certified Gemologist-employing jeweler can provide, they still wear a chain around their neck, a ring or two on their fingers, and earrings. The question, to my mind, would be why? The reason I ask this question is because I don't think most women have stopped to think about why they wear all this stuff.
Jewelry is such an automatic thing for most women. I know it is for me. I don't have my ears pierced, so I rarely worry about earrings, and when I do, well, I can't find any that I like because the clips you find in department stores are not designed with my demographic in mind. I don't wear anything around my neck mainly because chains and I do not, for the most part, get along. But I always wear my wedding ring, my watch, and a bracelet the husband bought me in Kuwait that I'm particularly fond of. I believe this throws me in the "low maintenence" section of the jewelry department, but even I am susceptible to the thrills of all things sparkly.
I don't know what that's all about, either. I'm not a jewelry hound. Never have been, never will be. I suspect you'll never find me draped, head to toe, in diamonds at any point in my life. Even knowing this, I still cannot stop myself from looking at the sparklies on display. I just can't. My friends are the same way. In the past, I have compared this susceptibility in women to oooh and aaaah at the offerings in a display window to men's fascination with women's breasts: in either situation, we can't really help ourselves when it comes to looking. Heterosexual men, always, always, always, look. They cannot help themselves. I think it's hardwired. When they're younger, they stare and gape and generally act like it's the first time they've seen a pair of boobs. But when they get older, the better they get at looking surreptitiously. The open-mouthed staring becomes a quick glance downwards that you might easily miss if you're not paying attention. They might not have any need to look; they might be happily married to their wives, whom they adore, but they still look. It's the same with me and jewelry. I have no need for more jewelry, but I still look.
But I don't feel the need to be sneaky about it.
Case in point: when the husband, Mr. H and I were in San Francisco and were walking around the high-end shopping district that is Union Square, we passed a few jewelry stores along the way. We'd be walking along, minding our own business, enjoying the city, and then---whammo! We'd pass a window with diamonds and pearls on display and I'd stop to stare. The boys would keep walking until they realized I was no longer with them, and then they'd come back to see what I was gazing at. The husband didn't mind my behavior: he was used to it. It was Mr. H. who was surprised with me. He knew I didn't ever really want more jewelry, and that I wouldn't probably wear it if I had it, so he didn't understand the fascination with the stuff. I couldn't explain it to him. It's just that it was pretty, it caught my eye and I wanted to look at it. It was particularly bad when we got over to Chinatown, because there was an amazing wealth of goods on display, and they, unlike the pricey shops over in Union Square, had stuff I could actually afford to buy.
I cannot imagine what it would be like to walk into a jewelry store and say, "May I please look at that bracelet? And that ring..." with the actual intention of buying. Looking is one thing that I like, but actually laying down cold hard cash for something, that in reality isn't all that rare? You do know that, right? That diamonds aren't rare at all? Well, you do now. You can walk down a creekbed in South Africa and the pebbles you would feel crunching under the soles of your shoes would not be pebbles at all but rather diamonds. Uncut and unpolished diamonds, but diamonds nonetheless. The only reason diamonds are an expensive quantity is because of an Englishman named Cecil Rhodes, who not only went on to found Rhodesia (now Zambia and Zimbabwe), but also DeBeers. You see, Cecil, and the men who followed him, through some seriously ruthless business practices, created a monopoly for DeBeers. Through this monopoly they were able to keep prices high for something that is not rare at all. You should have seen the look on my sister-in-law's face the first time I told her this: a world-reknowned jewelry hound, she looked like she was about ready to burst out in tears. My brother, her husband, however had a different look on his face: I think the phrase "abject fury" would describe it quite well.
And that, I believe, gives us a clue as to why some women drape themselves in sparklies: it shows off how well they---or their husbands---are doing in the world, financially speaking. Sure, when you're younger, jewelry is about decoration. It's about it being pretty and nothing else. Yet, once you get to a certain point in life, jewelry takes on more meaning than simple decoration. This is how you judge people. Is this shallow? You bet it is. But is it any more shallow to judge someone based on what handbag they carry, what clothes they wear, what car they drive? Nope. It's just one more benchmark we have to use to decide about people without actually having to ask them a thing.
My sister-in-law, sensing a threat to her world, and how she judged the people therein, God Bless Her, blocked out the information I'd related to her. (That is if, of course, if she remembered it, all of us being somewhat inebriated at the time of telling.) I don't think my brother really had a choice in the matter, this not being information that would serve him well in his negotiations at Borsheims.
But anyway, don't take my word for it: go and read what our other Daring Demystifying Divas have to say on the matter. And, because five is always better than four, make sure to check out what my lovely blog child, and Divaesque Lady, Phoenix of Villains Vanquished has to add to the conversation.
As far as The Men's Club is concerned, well, I'm afraid I have good news and bad news. The bad is that Zonker has decided to frame his membership badge and hang it up on the wall because he's got too much work going on at the present moment. We will miss him. The good, however, is that the wonderful Villains over at Naked Villainy have decided to jump into the testosterone pool that is The Men's Club. So, make sure to go over and read what our Maximum Leader has to say, while also checking out Phin, and Puffy. The Wiz was called off on a muy importanto business trip at the last minute yesterday, so I will update when he gets around to posting about this topic.
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May 13, 2005
Don't go and read it unless you have one of two things handy: a. a shower capable of pumping out gallon after gallon of cold water or b. a partner in crime who can help.
Dang!
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Apparently you all don't think I'm the fount of wisdom I make myself out to be because no one---not one single, solitary person---sent a question to the divas sez mailbox for me to answer.
Hmmmph.
I was going to go and snatch a bunch of questions from Carolyn Hax's column, and answer them in my own way, but I just figured it's not worth my time to try and entertain and enlighten a bunch of people who just don't give a damn.
You'll excuse me, but I need to go and milk my martyr complex for what it's worth.
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May 10, 2005
Questions, darling, questions. I need questions for Divas Sez on Friday.
Don't be mediocre, darlings. That simply wouldn't do.
/Edna voice
{Clicket on baby-got-back-girl over on the right sidebar to receive an email prompt}
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Ahhhhhh. Yeah, I know. everyone's favorite subject. Well, at least it is for some of the men in the audience. For the women? Well, that's another story entirely. In my experience, women, on the whole, do not like strip clubs. Nor, for the most part, do they like strippers---unless they happen to be one. Strippers are seen as a threat to a happy home. This is why men, wisely enough, tend not to advertise when they go to a club. When was the last time any man told his wife, "Yeah, honey, I'll be at such and such bar for a time, then we're planning on going over to the King of Diamonds after that. I don't know when I'll get home. But I'm going to need cash, and I'm going to need it in small denominations, so can you get me $100 in five dollar bills when you go to the bank?"
Yeah, like that's going to go over well.
If they divulge that information at all it's after the fact and not before. I know many a woman who simply does not want to know, so it's a "don't ask, don't tell" situation. One of the husband's friends, however, has a wife who would hit the roof if she found out where he'd been, so he has, on occasion, asked lil' ol' me to cover for him, should his wife call and wonder where he is. Fortunately, she's never called, so I've never had to cover for him.
I, on the other hand, have absolutely no illusions about the husband's activities. He's been. I know he's been. He knows I know because he's told me. I know that, sometime in the future, he'll go again. I see no reason to disillusion myself in regards to this, or demand that he not go: I wouldn't want to put him in a position where he has to lie to me, and I must say that I don't understand women who don't get this. Men are going to go to strip clubs. This is a fact of life: why not just deal with the facts as they are rather than trying to bend them to your particular whims? While you may think that your man's visits to a club means something about your relationship, you should probably know that, unless your man is going on a daily basis, those visits have absolutely nothing to do with your relationship. They do, however, have everything to do with looking at naked women.
Men go to look at naked ladies. They have reached the stage of their life when they have some brass in pocket, and they can pay to see a naked woman, rather than having to work for that particular payoff. I truly believe this activity is them trying to get in touch with the glories of sex and women as seen through the eyes of a teenager, when sex was new and any naked woman was gorgeous, even if she was, in reality, a hag. Nowadays, they just let their eyes wander in an unfocused sort of way to get back to that feeling. They just can't touch.
Now, I can understand how men can go to these places. No hassles there. What I don't understand is why women would want to go. And there are women who dig those places. If you're one of them, well, know this much: I don't get you. Those places are for men. They appeal to men. They smell like men. They are populated with men. This is their clubhouse. If you show up at one of these places, a muppet will pop up and will start singing "Which one of these things is not like the other?" Furthermore, I don't think men want you there. It ruins the illusion for them. How do I know this? Because I've been, and I was a less than enthusiastic visitor. If you want the rest of the story, take the jump.
And no, Mom, you're not allowed to take the jump.
For those of you who would like to skip the jump, you can go and read what the other Delicious Demystifying Divas have to say about this topic. Make sure to go over to Meanderings where one of our Red Hat divas, Michelle, has also thrown in her two cents. You can also go and read if Pete, Zonker, Puffy or Phin have confirmed or denied my suspicions.
UPDATE: Pammy also has chimed in. more...
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May 08, 2005
Let's just say that she truly is demystifying things for the men in the audience.
I shall only add this bit of advice onto hers: learn it and live it!
And, yeah, I'm up at bat for this Friday. Get all your very important questions into the divassezatgmaildotcom mailbox by Thursday evening.
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May 06, 2005
She's also working on one question that is requiring a bit of research to answer, so I will update when she does.
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May 03, 2005
The nose is a particularly funny looking part of our bodies. I mean, honestly, have you ever actually looked at your nose? It is, by all aesthetic rights, a silly thing. It sticks out, for no apparent reason. It could be big, it could be small. It could be wide, or it could be so small that when your nostrils flare on an angry exhale, you look like a pissed off chihuahua. But what the hell is it there for? Why do we have this incongrous thing sticking out of the middle of our faces? The answer, my dear friends, is to smell things. Because we need our sense of smell, as it is necessary to our survival as human beings as our hearing, sight and taste.
It's easy to forget nowadays, when everyone is so very interested in making everything smell like nothing (or everything, as the case may be) that we need that big proboscis on our faces to keep ourselves alive. After all, how can you tell if your food or drink is spoiled when it looks perfectly fine? How can you tell when you're in trouble? Because you smell the fear coming off your comrades---and yourself---in the form of body odor. You can smell sickness. And since it's generally an unpleasant smell, you know to stay away, hence keeping yourself from catching a nasty illness. You can also smell the putrid odor of the decay of death and you know to stay away from that as well. Smell is as crucial to human beings ability to survive as the ability to see the bus that's barrelling at you at 45 m.p.h. These drastic examples aside, smell is also crucial to the survival of the human race for another reason: it helps you find the person you're supposed to mate and reproduce with.
Now, personally, I believe that in this day and age we are too obsessed with scent---and not in a good way. How many ads do you see for a product that appeal to your sense of smell during your favorite one hour tee vee show? Think about it for a minute. Just off the top of my head I can think of laundry detergent, fabric softener, cleaning products, air fresheners, shower soap, lotion, arthritis rubs...and this doesn't even count the ads for actual perfume. A primary selling point of these products is that they appeal to your sense of smell in a positive way. We like things to smell nice: our clothes, our houses, our air, but most importantly, our bodies. We want these things to smell nice because it's not fun, in this day and age, to have things that don't smell nice, because that will bring social ridicule upon us. Hence I believe we go a bit overboard in an effort to avoid said ridicule. People make fun of other people who don't wash on a regular basis, hence we find a soap that not only makes us clean, but gives off a fragrance to cover up any body odor we might give off during the course of the day. In fact, the anti-bacterial properties of soap are there, primarily, not to keep you from being sick or becoming infected, but because bacteria is the stuff that makes us smell perhaps not so fresh. You can sweat all day long, but you won't start to smell unless that sweat combines with bacteria. We find a fabric softener that not only keeps the static cling away, but also radiates a powerful flowery fragrance, because that smells better than our own natural smell, which can and will cling to clothes. Fragrance, these days, is just as powerful a marketing factor as the primary purpose of whatever product the fragrance is attached to. As such, I think we've lost quite a bit, and perhaps---just perhaps---are making life more confusing for ourselves. After all, would you rather know what a potential mate smells like, and be able to discern what you find attractive by that, or would you rather judge them by the smell of the fabric softener they use? How can you tell nowadays just what a potential mate smells like when they're bathed, head to toe, in loads of different fragrances?
Now, speaking for myself, I like a man to smell like, well, a man. I refer you to a passage I wrote for the never-finished, forever-being-tweaked manuscript. I'm not going to set it up for you: you don't need to know. Surprisingly enough, this passage hasn't been tweaked too much and has survived a few ruthless edits simply because I like the way I put it the first time round:
"...but to smell him? That was a thing of beauty. He smelled like a man should smell: of utilitarian soap, small, minty traces of the shaving cream heÂ’d used, the wool of his damp overcoat, the starch the drycleaners had used on his shirt, the one whisky heÂ’d allowed himself at the party, and the beginnings of sweat and hormones. She could remain in that miasma for hours and feel nothing but pleasure."
I can conjure all those smells from memory, separately and I can also throw them together as well. Can you? I'm pretty sure you can, and you probably have your own notions of what will and does smell good on your own potential mate. I'm not a big one for men dousing themselves with cologne. I think a man who simply washes on a regular basis smells good. Yet, I will shamefully admit, there was a time that I would gladly follow a man around, like I was the village idiot, when they wore this. Oh, God did that stuff ever smell good to my eighteen-year old nose. I would like to think---ahem---that it was because it accentuated what I thought smelled good on a guy naturally, but that would just be my brain trying to justify my actions. The stuff, in all actuality, appealed to my baser instincts. My hormones ran over whenever I caught a whiff of that stuff. That stuff was ambrosia. I'm getting shivers even now just thinking about it. (Meeeeow!) Not to put too fine a point on it, let's just say that my good sense went straight out the window when a man who was wearing Drakkar walked by. He could have been a complete and utter troll: I didn't care. He was wearing the stuff that appealed to my hormones. And, in that shameful admission, I believe we find the answer to why we're so busy trying to deceive our noses with all the fragrances we use: because they might make us more attractive, more appealing to the opposite sex; they might cover our flaws; they might level the uneven playing field that is the battleground to find a mate---they allow us to think maybe we've got the high ground. What's sad, however, is that you may, in all reality, be down in the swamp and you might not know it because you can't smell it over all the fragrances wafting around you.
Ok, enough with the longwinded bullshit. Now it's time for you, my devoted Cake Eater Reader, to go and read what the other DeliciouslyDiabolical Demystifying Divas have written. Make sure you go over and welcome one of our Divaesque Ladies, Ruth, at Chaos Theory, who has chimed in as well today. As always, in the spirit of equality, make sure to check out what the fearsome foursome that is The Men's Club---Puffy, Phin, Zonker and The Wiz---have produced on this topic as well.
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