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unknown_games_and_hidden_motivations
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Ouroboros
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he
which reminds me of my night with you in bangkok, something i've been dying to share, but not known if it would be ok. i walked down the street, round the corner, and climbed the wall to the big wat, sat on top of it and leaned against the pillar. a prostitute came up to me and wanted to know what was wrong. i was stairing straight ahead almost comatose and answered her in monosyllables. a girl. she's leaving. no, i'll see her again. because i just am.
she left, came back 10 min later, pestering me again, me starting to like it. took me to a bar, bought me a drink. took her home and had sex, found-out she's a he, sort-of. very pretty, but things didn't feel right, on a number of levels, and i lost my erection. later i cried, like convulsively in her arms. she took me back home, and i crawled in bed with you fighting back the sense of guilt i thought i should be feeling. slept like a baby, sure the whiskey we had helped, and the crying of course. woke up alone, but feeling bright, releaf spilling into the room as you opened the door. gets me thinking about the games we don't know we're playing, the hidden motivations we can't admit to ourselves, the incredible difficulty of saying what you mean, and hearing what others say.
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070301
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Ouroboros
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i
And that my friend, is a Deal Breaker.
I'm glad you told me, so so so glad. I don't care that you slept with someone else and didn't tell me- what really worries me and makes me feel very unsafe is that it was with a prostitute. Maybe you used protection, maybe you didn't, but what I want to know is if you know the percentage of thai sex workers with HIV/AIDS?
I was talking to a friend a couple weeks ago, and he was telling me how he realized he was an alcoholic- he was talking to an older friend who said alcoholism isn't drinking too much, the real question is when you drink, does something bad happen? When you drink, do you do something you regret later?
Maybe you are an alcoholic, maybe you're not. Labels, right? What matters is that I feel sad, really sad, because I see you making choices like this one and I wonder how I fit in, am I good for you, are you good for me.
Because I care about you and love you, but right now I don't feel safe.
I don't trust that you make decisions that keep you safe.
And this sucks, I want it to be different. Or I want to not care, but care I do. You live in my heart, but I most definitely cannot trust you right now, because of the decisions you have made and all that you haven't communicated.
I don't know what to do besides write this and share with you what i am feeling and thinking. I dont want this to be the end.
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070301
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Ouroboros
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he
funny that the thing i regret the most right now is having shared that bit of myself with you. funny how guys tell me that women just save that shit for later when you tell them about other women, that their all lying when they say they want to know everything. i'm curious about how you define our relationship when the fact that we may have to stop fucking is a deal-breaker for you. funny to me that i'm sending this message just to prove to myself that i don't fucking need you. i choose to have you in my life. your move.
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070301
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Ouroboros
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I do "want to know everything", I do want to know and I do not wish or regret you hadn't told me. Because whether or not you told me- it happened!
And the deal breaker for me wasn't "the fact that we have to stop fucking"- it's that you easily could have never told me. And that you wish you hadn't told me!
Sorry D, but for me that makes you unsafe, untrustworthy, and not a person I want close to me. Go ahead and make self destructive, rash decisions- drag your life down, but leave mine out of it.
I'm really angry with you- I wish it could've been different- but when we remet on the playa last year I promised myself I wasn't going to try to change you or save you. So this is who you are right now. And I choose not to have you in my life.
If you ever come to a point where you can understand where i am coming from, i would love to reconnect with you. till then, I wish you the best and hope you learn to understand that what you do affects the people in your life, and no amount of drinking or traveling or whatever changes that.
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070301
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Ouroboros
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he
the games, they're driving me crazy: can't believe we've been using a
chess metaphore this whole time. i'm offering my hand; i can finally see the
writing on the wall. let's call it a draw, stop the game for just a
moment, maybe start again later. was just talking to my friends: you know, the word on the street is right, everybody's always playing at something. i've learned to love it. that was, untill i started idealizing you. but
you're just human, playing all sorts of games you don't know you're playing,
trying to trick yourself into waddling out of your own shit, which deep down
you know you still like being in, otherwise you'd simply see the ladder
right in front of your face and climb out. but round in circle's we go. not
going to explain myself anymore, not for now, maybe later: you missed your
chance. i think you're scared, sarah, of what i can't be sure, maybe real intimacy. maybe the same for me. i think we aborted this mission long before it
was off the ground, probably made the decisions that landed us here back on
the playa, even though we still don't understand them. you promised yourself you wouldn't try and fix me? what a pretentious gob of horse-dung. try turning that lense the other way.
not trying to be mean, just too fucking sick of worrying about this to be
nice anymore. sick of the role-playing. sick of fakeness. sick of imagining
that every amazing girl i meet is the one. i remember writing in my journal
that i don't need ho's to complete my life: can't believe i'm still trying
to convince myself of this. it's so obvious, yet i have to write it down?
whatever.
this is my "yeah, let's just say 'fuck it' for the moment" email. you know
what i mean, ditto about all the reconnecting and whatever. read my
attachment, in which i finally bother to honor myself and...yourself enough
to tell how my side of the story goes. i'll edit it later and make it pretty
for me, you can just read this version. ditto for this version of me: this
is who i am; a talented yet clumsy, mature yet childlike, wild yet timid,
crazy yet sane, tall, big-dicked risk of a man who pays off like a roulette
table. if you want to stick to the 401k and mutual funds, be my guest, but
if you ever develop a less passive manner and an adventureous spirit, we'll
see about being real partners.
you crept in my heart too, a three or four times. i'll never forget what you said about my light: best comliment ever. whatever, i'm totally done, need a break. not going to think about you for a while. besides, the only way i can have you the way i want is to let you go and see if you fly back. unfortunately i have no ideal if anything more will come of this: i've hoped for something lasting but it takes two to commit in my book and you've demonstrated the extent of your commitment unambiguously.
you wish it could have been different, yada yada, yada. i wish i could
find an end for this fucking thing. how bout this: i've meant everthing i've
ever said to you, even the contradictory stuff. that's real life; unclear,
interpretable. i wrote that every point of view can be right or wrong, depending on how you look at it. now, i have nothing to loose: i can start to share the complexity of my feelings for you; the three-dimentional person known as s, who, if seen from the right angles, can make a world of sense, or none at all. see if you can do the same for me. I Love You.
bye,
d
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070306
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Ouroboros
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i
you are being mean
no, i am not perfect- i am human, i have my shit and shadow, and i may be afraid of intimacy- and i own my shit.
and i'm not going to apologize for having boundaries-
that's interesting what you wrote about my wanting to still waddle in my shit, other wise id have climbed out by now- don't you see- don't you see that you are intimately involved with that shit, with that self-destructiion in my life? you slept with a prostitute and didnt give a SHIT about how it couldve affected me- you only cared about if it would be ok for you-
i'm climbing out of the murky quicksand of being lovers/intimate with you. i dont want a 401k plan, but i most definetly don't want what you're offering- lies, roleplaying, fakeness, alcoholism, unsafe sex, manic/depression, manipulation, pretending, noncommunication, absence of love, absence of respect (eg: i dont need ho's).
the only flying im gonna be doing is upward and onward
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070306
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ditto
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my names ditto
whats your name?
you sound nice :-)
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070306
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Ouroboros
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he
i seriously want to call this shot a wrap, without having to make it any more ugly.
i'm going to paste that stuff in.
sorry i'm mean, that i didn't see what was needed, that i'm not more patient and less reactionary, and that i can't take my ego as far out of the picture as i would like. i'm sorry your feelings were hurt, this really sucks for me too. wish you hadn't felt unloved, or unrespected (i was quoting from my journal and preferred not to edit it). we live in different worlds right now, we're so far apart i think it's really special that we connected so magnetically. i'm in a place where i'm toying with words, which i think can be meaningless, and idealologies, which can be too. i could write pages on liberating myself from my views of women, how it can be momentarily useful to go with a stupid, phrat-boy, "bros before hos" attitude when you're still terrified of the opposite sex. guess i'm not anymore, so you're right, it's time to move on from that.
i'm spent, it's just too hard to explain myself right now. this is wearing me out. i'm not trying to say that i'm "over you" like i don't want there to be more later, but i'm totally over fighting. it's just little circles. no offense, but i don't need to prove anything to you. none of it needs to make sense to you right now. if, a little ways down the road, we can come at this from a different angle, i would really love to sit down, and have a heart to heart about what happened here.
i keep thinking about how you said i could teach you stuff: that seems pretentious now, but i would like to show you more of my mind sometime, and get a better taste of yours. but at the moment it's like we're speaking foreign languages.
yours,
d
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070308
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Ouroboros
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He wrote that:
I've been thinking about you a bunch, and I have a few things to say that I think you need to hear. But before I go on, I want to say that I'm writing this for my own piece of mind, because I feel I haven't told you enough of it, and even though you said "shoo," I still think you might want to know.
In Flagstaff, I remember wanting you to go because I was afraid you'd see how dorky my life can be. I was also afraid of falling back into old routines of being with a girlfriend, bad habits of dependency which consisted largely of being clingy. And here I am, writing my second email in a row to you, J would be smacking me upside the head.
I was talking to a friend last night, and he said that makes perfect sense why we never addressed the icky stuff, because our time together was always too short, too formal. Even here it's hard to say things that I think might offend you, but they need to be said. I can appreciate decisiveness, but I think you acted rashly. And so did I.
It sucks that it takes us breaking-up to finally talk. Because I don't think you communicated your most important needs to me until it was too late. You said that you needed me to listen, but never explicitly stated your boundaries unless I broke them. I'm not saying you didn't try when we were together, but in my opinion we never bothered to put ourselves in a situation where real verbal communication was even likely. We spent three or four days at a time together, tops. Maybe we just weren't ready for more. Were you? Did you ever come up to me and make your ground rules clear? Did you ever say "D, because I’m concerned with my health, I need to know about who you've had sex with, and how you had sex with them, since you last had sex with me." You needed to do this, because apparently that was the bottom line.
In Bangkok, rather than saying how you felt, you put it all on my shoulders, saying only that if I had a problem, then I needed to tell you about it because you're not a mind reader. I couldn't pretend not to be hurt, but it's hard to be the one to show weakness. I know you've been absolutely real with me, but I've cried and cried and it seems like when you told me about your feelings you waited until you were done feeling them. I know that's mature of you, and as I've grown I've gotten better and better at not just reacting, especially when angry. But learning to control your feelings can prevent you from expressing them to others. I left our room partly because I didn't want to be a patient on your couch again: however well-meaning you may be, I really don't want you to fix me. I also realize now that I left partly to see if I could get a reaction out of you. In stead, the next morning both of us put on a happy face. And then we said goodbye.
I understand you feeling like you couldn’t trust me after I sent you that first response: I felt like I couldn’t
trust you, and we both acted rashly. But if you think that me not being careful with me means I'm not being considerate of you, remember that consideration is totally a matter of opinion, and what is considered considerate varies wildly around the world. You need to accept that I was being considerate of you in my own way, which is different from yours. If you think that me not being good to myself reflects on how I feel about you, think again: I assumed that you were taking care of yourself, and treated you the way I wanted you to treat me. I do, however, think that people should be treated the way they want to be treated, and I'm working on it.
I think you didn't understand how independent my personality is. When I was a kid it was always "Where's D?" and for a while I tried to teach myself: "You can't take risks because it worries your mother." Well, my family and I are growing out of that. We’re constantly struggling with being ourselves, and owning ourselves, while simultaneously being considerate of each other. It's incredibly difficult, takes constant communication, and we still have huge fights. That's our style. That's my style, though my style changes all the time and I’m getting bored with confrontation. I've learned how to not to fight with my mom, and K and I are about half-way there. I don’t remember you and I ever having a fight.
In any case, this is all about independence. I try not to hurt myself and stop my own self-destructive behavour for my own reasons. I do things for me. Mother Theresa's great, Ghandi a Saint: but what works for me is learning how I benefit from benefitting my situation, which includes those around me. I wasn't going to have sex with you again until I was tested for my own piece of mind, because I care about you and I would feel bad if I hurt you. Yes, the things I do affect other peolpe in my life, but you can't take a fucking shower without killing a couple billion bacteria. It's called chaos theory, or the butterfly effect; everything affects everything, and you can never predict the long-term results. Still, I work everyday to be more aware of what my ripples do to the pond. I can do this only because I've learned to accept that I cannot do things for anybody else's reasons. My behaviour has to be my own. And I don't want to waddle in anybody else's shit either, which is why I liked what you wrote.
But I don't like that you waited so long to share it with me.
When you and I talked about our relationship, it seemed like we had no rules for each other. I assumed that to be the case, and I never even thought about you having specific parameters: I assumed you would state them if you did. Our conversation about deal-breakers would have been the perfect opportunity.
If you want to know anything about me, all you ever have to do is ask. I don't volunteer enough information, sure. But it takes two to tango, and when I dance, I sometimes need the girl to lead.
We barely know each other, and in Bangkok we really hadn't gotten past the honeymoon phase; we we're still being too nice. It's unfair that you accuse me of not telling you things when you didn't start telling me about your problems until they overwhelmed you, and sent us tumbling.
I also have a few things to say about the trust issue. This is, in fact, very important to me, and something I grew up with. My mom was really fucked over by my dad, in many ways, and on the fidelity issue she always said that the lying bothered her more than the cheating. I never lied to you, probably never will. I never mislead you, never misrepresented myself.
Sure, I've got plenty of issues, but I've also learned plenty since that first year we met, particularly about not relying on others to fix them. I have to fix ALL of my shit myself. But that doesn't mean I have to be alone; I learn from friends, family, and lovers. Even strangers teach me all the time about who I am, and who I can choose to be.
I am a very empathetic person, and I'm sorry I hurt you. But I'm not like my mom, or you, and I really didn't get the memo about you being concerned with who I have sex with. I suck at memos. I'm literal to a fault. I didn't even know you gave a shit about me leaving the hotel room until you sent me the page from your journal. I wish you had just told me. I couldn't tell you what was happening with me without crying again, and I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to feel like you were the rock I was always leaning on, didn't want to cement our roles and prevent you from being able to lean on me.
So, I did it my own way, and maybe I'll die for that, but it was my choice. You don't know the half of it, S: I've taken lots of risks, and very few of them have to do with sex. When I was a little kid, I used to slide into vehicles on my three-wheeler. I love to play around with things that might poke your eye out or burn your house down. Hell, for a lot of people, most everything done at burningman is in the same category as sex with a prostitute: unneccisarily dangerous. For me, doing risky things has helped me figure out that I belong on this planet.
But I no longer need outside reinforcement for my existence. I want to be here, period. I still want to take chances, because to me it can be fun, and chance is a part of life, a reminder that even though we're unique, we're not precious people cast in god's image; we're just creative critters with bad habits.
Already, though, I've found myself losing interest in the riskier manouvers, and that's why I'm glad this has all happened, because, basically, I've been freaked the fuck out the last few week thinking I have aids. I'm planning on my next serious sigh of relief at the clinic being my last, because this shit has got to stop. It took a lot of random humping to convince me, but I'm a good-looking guy, and I don't need girls to prove it any more.
Now, if I could just teach myself how to make out with girls without always wanting to go all the way with them. Well, for the moment, that lesson has starting with flirting. The last week, I've been enjoying actual flirting, just for its own sake, with absolutely no pressure to move further. Later, i'll move up to kissing, just for its own sake. Kissing that I can rest assured is leading absolutely nowhere. Kissing with the belief that I don't need it to go anywhere, because, weather i'm on my fifth beer, my first, or none at all, I'll genuinely not want it to. I'll have taken off the standard-issue glasses and taught myself to see the longview.
I'm hopeing to have you in it.
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070308
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Ouroboros
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he
don't stop thinking about me. i'm sorry that i'm such a spaz, that i go back
and forth all the time. i'm just so disgusted by trying to play it cool
that i just write whatever i'm feeling at the moment, and my feelings have
been all over the place the last week. i just re-read my humble pie email to
you: were today me to advise one-week-ago me, he would say just send that one. i can't believe it's taken me a week to see how fucked up it is to leave your lover in a hotel room and go fuck someone else, no matter what the
"terms" of the relationship. i really don't think i did it to hurt you, but i
didn't take you into consideration either. god how i wish i had of just told you to stay, rather than feel sorry for myself. i could have said "sarah,
you're not giving us enough time, let's get the fuck out of bangkok and go be
together." but no regrets, right? i'm learning so much stuff the last
months, you've been such a big part of that, and i wouldn't trade these
lessons for anything.
anyhow, i'm going to send this now, before the old ego gets in the way.
should i be embarrased to admit you're on my mind?
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070309
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Ouroboros
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I
Leo with Sagittarius
Both of you are born under fire signs and you both love a bit of drama and a liberal quantity of challenge in your lives. You are also both more interested in the future than in the past or present. You are much more likely to enjoy life together if you are not bogged down by too many mundane responsibilities.
You need a lot of room to pursue your dreams. There is a childlike quality in both of you which allows you to enjoy life. With your optimism, enthusiasm, and belief that the future can always be better, you could inspire each other to creative work and the development of talents.
But you may need to work to be conscious, when it comes to the issue of loyalty. Sagittarius, although perfectly capable of loyalty, doesn't like to have to explain a ten- minute absence. Mistrust can drive Sagittarius out of the door immediately. Leo, although generous and warm-hearted, doesn't like to be made a fool of, and can react with anger if there is any whiff of betrayal.
Try to be aware of each other's feelings. Fire signs are enthusiastic and affectionate, but they can also be unintentionally insensitive, especially to those closest and dearest to them.
------------------------
Yeah- maybe things would be different if we had left bangkok asap. but it all feels like a long time ago, and here we are now, in april 2007. The above astro.com paragraph made me laugh at how right on it was. Im sorry I was reactive or if I hurt you in any way. I met a Sagitarrius today who reminded me of you- and I couldnt put off writing you a minute longer, because I have been wanting to, been thinking about you, but not knowing what to write or say. I wish nothing but the best for you d, and I know that you are out there, traveling and being fantastic and doing amazing things and connecting with people and living your life fully.
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070410
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Ouroboros
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cause I know he's out there, bounding around, seducing beautiful women, writing talking processing, getting high on life, drinking to come down, sleeping waking and keep on going
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070410
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unhinged
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joseph_and_i
but i know his games better than he thinks i possibly could. he got his issues from his daddy just like the rest of us. and the inferiority complex i got from mine helped his ego out quite nicely for awhile.
i don't want to help anymore; i always feel like i am on the short end of the stick.
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070410
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Ouroboros
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First, your responces during our fight always seemed reasonable, and even if I took offense to them, they soon made sense in hindsight.
Second, I still care about you, and like you. Months ago, on a dusty road somewhere, I stopped and wrote "S: A tiny girl, who can fill a room."
Forget the numbers. I told myself to think of the 5 things I most wanted to say to you, but instead wound up picturing my hand on your cheek, touching your face.
D
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070416
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Ouroboros
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He came to LA a couple days ago to see his best friend at USC. We saw each other briefly. He gave me a (stolen) gift of a kangaroo carrying a babbying in her pouch. The words that went with it were "take care, taking care". He meant it as a "ooooh i'm reformed and if you give me a chance i'll take better care of you since you told me that's what is expected in a relationship with you even though i don't really agree and sitll don't see why you would be upset that i left our hotel room to fuck a prostitue in thailand but here's a tiny stuffed toy to make it up and make me look good". And I keep it as a reminder to take care of myself better and a reaffirmation of he and I equaling downward spiral of irresponsibility.
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070511
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unhinged
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maybe the games are well known
and the motivations are obvious
but i want to pretend
that i mean something more
than a drunken rush of hormones
cause with you
it was supposed to mean something more
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090306
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Caroline 452
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i'm trying to think of something to write and i can't even formulate thoughts.
and i certainly can't call you back.
not tonight.
especially not tonight.
and there's still sunday to get thru.
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090306
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