Typecasting

Writing the post yesterday about the various members of the cast got me thinking. People often comment that someone is, or is not, their type, so I decided to try and work out mine. Then I hit a slight problem. The only common trait I can think of is that the majority of the cast are smaller than me, height-wise at least. But I have dated or been with plenty of people who were taller than me. I then decided to go with something more general, and decided that all of the cast are female, but events in my past have demonstrated that my inclinations are, or at least used to be somewhat more flexible than that.

There are very definite reasons they are no longer that flexible, but that is a story for another time and a much more morbid and depressing post.

So maybe hair colour or length? Nope, the cast range from long blonde hair to short dark hair, as have my past relationships. No real tendency to either, though longer hair is more common in my past history I suspect that is because longer hair is simply more commong than shorter. As for colour, again anything could apply. Having spent several weeks with one girl who had rainbow hair, produced by the application of dye, and also time spent with someone who had simple, plain, naturally coloured hair I think I can rule out hair colour.

Eye colour? Definitely not. Type of looks? Cute, sexy, innocent, and many others have featured in my past. This was where I began to pick up a few hints as to what may be going on. While I found them all attractive, I found them attractive in different ways. Tomboyish looks tend to end up in somewhat rougher sex than delicate, feminine looks which draw almost a romantic mood from me. So now we have a hint. I began to think back again.

The only common factor that really could be discerned is that all of the girls in my past, and my present, are relatively healthy. This is not to say that they were all athletically slim, muscled girls, many were far from that, but none of them were at extremes. I have no stick-figures, or beach-balls in my dating history. Anyone I have dated is capable of getting around on their own feet quite happily, and none starve themselves. So, that was something.

I thought through it again. My entire dating history has varied, but in each case I have fitted myself to another person rather than shaping them to me. Sure I may be convincing, probably about a quarter of the first dates I have been on have ended up in sexual activity of some kind, and of those that did not the majority of second dates have, but each time it does not seem to be because I try to pressure the other person involved into sex, but because I try to come across as a person who is right for them.

So a little voyage of self-discovery is beginning, where I will be trying to find out what I actually want out of life, and who I actually am when I am not pretending to be anything for anyone.

Cutting and Self-Harm

Self harm is a topic which is now being mentioned more often, but is often mentioned in a similar way to leprosy. There seems to be mostly pity for anyone who practices self-harm, rather than sympathy. It often seems that there is more actual sympathy for addicts, or people with eating disorders. These do all have similarities, which is why I mention them together.

All of these are coping mechanisms, addictions, self-harm, eating disorders, all usually begin as methods to deal with stress or misery. My own started around the time of my seperation from my wife, a particularly stressful time as I also could not find a job, and was for a short time homeless before I could face asking my parents to let me move back in. I managed to avoid starting smoking, which came much later, and avoid any other substance addictions. After all affording them was a little difficult.

What I did find though, which did help me cope, was that I could hurt myself. The insides of my forearms are heavily scarred, some of these scars are from other events but many are my own doing. I was extremely careful at the time, not wanting to risk causing any serious damage to myself, so I made sure to sterilise any blade I used, make sure it was sharp and smooth, and so on. Pretty much in the same way that a heroin addict might sterilise a needle.

As to what exactly it did, that is hard to say. In a physiological context I could point out that pain and injury releases adrenaline and endorphins, a very definite rush. In a psychological context it is a control method. The pain and injury, and the scars or wounds left behind, are signs that there is still some little bit of your own life that you are the one in control of. I will admit that this is not sensible in any way but that does not stop it from being at least partly true. It is an addiction, and it does help to cope, but as with any addiction once the need for the coping mechanism is gone the habit often remains.

I finally stopped at the same moment as I decided to stop cutting my hair. Part of the reason I am so concerned about people cutting my hair is because of this, it represents the fact that I have decided that part of my life is over. I had a lot of help before stopping, but when I actually did it was something I chose to do on my own.

For anyone else who may self-harm, remember that as with any coping mechanism or addiction you need to be careful not to put yourself at serious risk. And I do recommend getting real help, whether from a professional or someone else. There are all sorts of ways you can try and cut down on the addiction, such as wrapping rubber bands around your wrists.

The big problem now though is the fashion self-harmers. A large part of the reason I have an intense dislike of emos is the impression they seem to be insistent on giving that self-harming somehow is required to be in their clique. Accept someone who does it, without showing revulsion, yes, but actively encouraging people to cut themselves is just twisted, and not in a good way.

Now to emphasize my view. I will not condemn anyone who does it any more than I would a smoker, or alcoholic, how they deal with it and how it affects others is what will tip the balance. Better than any of these methods is to get real help to deal with things, or to just deal with it alone, and no addiction should ever be taken up whether as a coping mechanism or anything else.

Everyone Has a First Time

As the title says, everyone has a first time and I am curious about yours.

Not when you lost your virginity. Frankly first time sex stories are usually fairly dull, and useful only to be told in person while under the influence of alcohol. Even the more interesting ones are never that special.

No, my curiousity today extends to alcohol. Recently I have caught myself drinking more than I usually do, and this is not a good thing. I am not drinking enough to get drunk, which takes rather a lot, but I am starting to drink more often on my own when I get stressed or depressed. This got me thinking about the first time I got drunk, and by extension got me wanting to know everyone else's first time.

I am a nosy old git sometimes.

But I will be fair. If I expect you to tell me about yours then I will tell you about mine.

Mine started when I woke up in a nice, clean hospital bed on a Tuesday afternoon, with a saline drip in my arm. No trace of a hangover, or anything else. In fact really the only problem seemed to be that my clothes were missing and I was in a hospital gown. Slowly as I lay there bits of the story came back to me, others I managed to piece together later.

I was fourteen, had just sailed with sixty other people on a three-masted ship with no engine to Denmark and back over the last nine days, and we had hit port a day early. Apart from nearly colliding with an oil tanker, and a mild storm, the trip had been quiet and uneventful. It had been a pleasant voyage, and the captain suggested that we should all attend a bar he knew of in order to celebrate a safe return. This seemed an excellent idea to me at the time, as I thought it would help me accept that the girl I had been sharing a bunk with (no full pentrative sex had occured, but just about everything else had) would be going back to her home town, a good six hundred miles from my own.

To the bar we went, with the last of our spending money. In my own case my left over money was in the region of sixty pounds. I discovered this was more than enough to allow me to get very, very drunk. According to other party-goers I managed to get through twenty to thirty double whiskeys, as well as spreading the joy around. After this I must have thought that it was a good idea to gather up my bunk buddy in my arms, and start back towards the ship, intending on a passionate and prolonged farewell.

This did not go entirely to plan. Somehow we did make it back to the docks, though how is still a mystery to me. I only know that we made it because a few of the more responsible drinkers apparently assigned themselves as our body guards, working on the sensible presumption that otherwise we could well turn up dead, or not turn up the next day. I selected a pier, and began to tug the object of my affections towards the end of it where our ship awaited in the shadowy, unlit darkness.

I then, according to witnesses, vanished with a splash.

Into the North Sea, off the coast of Scotland.

In Midwinter.

I woke up in the hospital the next morning.

Reason I am talking about this is that is pretty much how I feel right now. I just found out, after weeks of waiting, that not only did I not get the job, but that a decision I took today has placed me in direct opposition to my manager, and everyone else in my office, at work. It is a similar sort of feeling to that moment which flashes back to me now and then, stepping forwards onto what should have been solid ground, feeling uncertain but relieved at the potential of safety, then suddenly nothing there except freezing water.

Halloween Costumes and Traumatised Tricksters

Well for a last-minute attempt it cannot be considered all that disastrous. I could not get a waistcoat, or a better shirt, or a rapier. I was stuck with a longsword instead but it will do. The cane incidentally is part of my collection, and was a very expensive Christmas gift from a particularly masochistic ex-girlfriend. It has a decent weight to it, but is just the right shape to leave nothing more than welts and bruises. Have to be careful about the glass crystal on the end though, the metal setting it is in caused rather more severe damage when someone took offense to my rather gothic outfit a few years back.

In fact that was another Halloween, when I had some rather less reputable friends than I do now, when I was actually the good boy of the group. In a way anyhow.

I may not have mentioned before but I have studied various different ways to use weapons, my own body, and other people's bodies in order to inflict harm. I have also spent a long time learning about how bodies, nerves, joints and muscles work. This is all rather off-topic though.

Every Halloween so far I have ended up in some form of fight. I have never in my life started a fight, and I try to stay out of them, but this is where my luck of the devil comes in. I will explain that another time.

This Halloween it seems is going to be peaceful, no one trying to egg the house or throw bricks at it for once. I should be able to just stay inside here. mix myself a cocktail, and relax.

Another Little Piece of History

I have decided to post a little more about my past, going further back now. In a way this was how things started. I apologise for the depressing tone, and content of this post, but it is an event that is very closely connected to who I am now. It may or may not explain a lot to people, I honestly do not know, but it is something that happened to me.

Let us go back in time, to meet a very insecure, very lonely boy aged fifteen. Just starting to study for his GCSEs, never had a real girlfriend, and with no actual friends. The closest he has are a couple of people who will talk to him. Of course they join in with the standard bullying he suffers, but they at least talk to him pleasantly enough when there is no one else around.
This boy has decided, on this particular day, to go up to London purely in order to have something to do. Just for once he is doing something for himself, other than simply sitting at home and teaching himself how to touch-type, program, and in other ways make a computer sit up and beg on command. He is not going to spend the day reading, as he usually does, he is actually going to get out for once and see what happens.

So he gets to the train station, and gets on the train, and starts talking to the passenger seated next to him. She gives him her name, and they chat for a few minutes, seemingly just clicking with one another. They decide to spend the day together and do so.

In fact they also end up returning to his house afterwards, since his parents are away for business and they got on so well. It is not as if he particularly cares about school the next day, nor as though she does. They walk back from the train station holding hands, pausing occasionally to exchange nervous, first kisses. She is the same age as him, and their conversation has revealed that they are both virgins though she is on the pill for other reasons, related to her hormone balance.

They stop on the way back, taking a detour through an old graveyard. It is dark and both of them are enjoying it, their hands roaming a little more than they perhaps should. Then things start to happen.

Afterwards they are both sore, not from the sex as such but from what accompanied it. Both of them releasing their anger about the world on each other, enjoying the feelings of violence and pain that accompanies the pleasure, somehow fitting. Their clothes are largely torn, or scattered over the ground, but she finds his shirt and pulls it on. The shirt is just long enough that she looks dressed. He hunts down his trousers and pulls them on, even though the zip is broken. And together, limping a little, nursing various cuts and bruises, bites and scratches, they walk back to his house.

Four more times that night they have sex, discovering all sorts of things. After the first time they are gentle and the sex is accompanied by winces and yelps as their sore bodies press together. They cry, they hold each other, they rant against the world, they say all sorts of things that both mean for the moment but which may mean nothing in a day.

For four months this continues. They see each other, she introduces him to her friends and to what they call their coven. They begin to meet more regularly, him slipping out to go up to London and making sure he is up before dawn so that no one in his house knows.

This is his little secret, things do not hurt so much at school any more, the bullies begin to avoid him when he not only ignores their verbal jabs but also their blows. Standing up after being hit and not showing the slightest sign of pain or even upset.

Her friends, and she, are teaching him about things. All sorts of things. What bodies can do to one another, about their beliefs and the things they can do with those beliefs. Some of those still stay with him to this day though in altered form.

And then after the fourth month, he suddenly stops hearing from them. Any of them.
A few days later he receives a letter. When he opens it he realises almost immediately what it is, though his first thought is wrong. He thinks it is just a goodbye letter, and in a way it is. The girl has said goodbye to everything, for reasons that he can understand. He has no wish to follow, despite the fact that his heart feels broken, and for a long time he becomes little more than a hollow shell, or so he feels, going through life and just trying to get by. He has no interest in anything other than getting through to the next day and hoping it will hold something that will bring him out of his fugue.

Years later he realises that he has healed, put himself back together and recovered from the hurt he received, though changed for the experience. He still has the scars she left him with, physical and emotional, but they are just scars now rather than open wounds and he can carry on. It took learning to hate someone he once loved, being abused, being homeless, and various other tragedies to do it but now he is able to deal with things again and he turns the tables.

Bloody Annoying Complications

Bloody bastard fucking annoying inconvenient pissing emotions!

I really need less of these. Please excuse the language.

So Miss Complicated, who I have obviously mentioned before, is now pouring out her worries and woes upon me. She is, as I have said, funny, cute, witty, intelligent, and generally my type. She is also the only person I have ever found who can engage me in a geniune debate about politics. This is actually an important skill for someone to have.

The problem is that all of her worries and woes are pretty much identical to the ones I had at her age. Seriously, this girl looks like she might actually be turning out the same way I did except as a female equivalent.

For anyone wondering this is a bad thing^TM. Anyone questioning this would best be informed that I have grown into a person with massive, massive phobias of commitment and being alone, not to mention all sorts of other quirks and personality traits which I would be much better off without.

Unfortunately I remember being at the same stage as she is, and someone trying to do for me exactly what I am trying to do for her. It failed miserably, and this is going the same way. Have to make an effort though.

So to summarise, at the moment I am highly messed up due to having actual feelings for Miss Complicated, which I am sure are due to her unnattainability. I need a simpler life.

What Would You Do for Money?

This post by chitty of the very good Riding The Slipstream is the inspiration for this post. Basically the actual list was something that was being discussed around a pub table a few months ago, and I was the only one who was actually honest about realistic prices, but there you go. Of course these are all circumstantial, depending on all sorts of things, including the person involved. Travel expenses are extra, obviously, and prices can and would vary hugely. This is just what came out of that pub discussion.

• Erotic writing: £1 (per 250 words)
• Kiss: £2.50 (price of a pint or shot)
• Dirty talking: £5 (per thirty minutes I guess, plus price of call, variable)
• 'Making out': £5 (again, per thirty minutes or so, though I don't plan to use a stopwatch)
  
• Manual sex: £10 (for a woman, probably double for a male)
• Plain escort: £20 (so long as I'm not paying expenses)
• Oral sex: £20 (for women, no idea for a male, I'd have to decide at the time)
• Cook for a meal: £25 (plus ingredients of course)
  
• Counselling: £30 (per hour most likely)
• Massage: £40 (that's for a full, proper massage)
• 'Modelling': £50
  
• Penetrative sex: £50 (again, women only, male would have to be decided at the time)
• 'Deflowering': £100 (simply because paying for that seems so strange, so whoever's doing it probably comes with problems)
  
• Fight: £100 (depending on situation, obviously)
• Organise and run a cocktail party: £200 (plus costs)
• Butlering/waitering/similar: £250 (per day, but that includes dinner jacket rental)
  
• Stripping: £500 (I'm crap at it, and find dancing in public hideously embarssing, just walking around naked at a party or something would be infinitely easier, so cheaper for fewer people, or if I'm not expected to dance)
• Duel: £5 000 (more if actually to the death, and dependent on weapon)

Well, I think that covers everything that I can think of at the moment. Maybe I should get business cards printed up.

Though I will point out that this is not, nor is it meant to appear to be in any way, my profession. I doubt I could make enough money off it if it was. Its just an estimate, in the same sort of feel as the 'what would you do for £1 000 000?' question.