I want to understand these things.

(I was going to make this be one of those rare non-relationship-related posts, but then I wanted to say that it was, which makes it not one anymore.  I didn't even try, really, but I thought about trying.)

The rational conclusions I am failing to make tonight is now my most viewed post of all time, which is especially surprising statistically since it's less than six months old, and my previous record holder is from 2009.  Blogger gives me access to some information, such as search keywords used to find my blog, but I never see any searches that would link to that particular post.  Searches for "if some men are doctors" would obviously link to the post about "some men are doctors."  But there is nothing for Rational Conclusions.  So I am assuming that, somewhere, someone has linked to me, and that someone is popular enough that the people who bother to click through are enough to significantly alter my blog statistics.  But it bothers me that I don't know.  Why that one?  It doesn't seem to be a stand out post in any way.  I mean, I like it, I guess.  But I wish I understood.

This is me being Not Discouraged

Sigh.  Onward down the list.

I remember looking through photography magazines in the bathroom at Looking Glass Photo, and studying the gallery exhibition notices and book publishings, and some times it seemed as if all the photos looked like mine, and I thought I must be boring and derivative and I despaired of ever breaking through.  Other times it seemed as if everything was shiny and sharp and foreign to me.  On those times, I despaired of ever breaking through.

Doom Girl: Not A New Thing.

I must remember that I love this little story, and eventually someone else (the kind of someone who edits journals) will love it, too.

EDIT (actually the second such addition, but I figured the first could follow the Five-Second-Rule, which isn't quite five seconds but basically says that if we can pretend it didn't happen it will be okay):

I might continue the "add to earlier posts rather than make a new one each time" trend.  I feel a little more serious that way.  Someone with long thoughts instead of short ones, although all I'm doing is grouping together short thoughts in the form of long thoughts, but back to the five-second rule, I'm willing to pretend if you are.

I am back to my list of prestigious journals because I am snobby, and also lazy.  I think these guys are worth waiting two weeks for.  Mostly because of this essay.  I have been skimming the essay archives of a few journals on the list, looking for something that might somehow resemble mine.  And this doesn't.  But it's strange and funny and not like the others, and makes me think that another essay that is Not Like The Others might also be loved here.

I wrote something pretty

Look:

I left him in November, in the middle of an ice storm—my first—it was beautiful and scary and not at all what I had expected. I didn’t know that the trees would turn into chandeliers along the Coralville strip, and I didn’t know how little I wanted the warmth of his back against mine while I slept. Except I didn’t actually leave.

Then I left him in June, and I did.

It was two weeks before the Fourth of July. It would have been our anniversary. Mike bought sparklers anyway. I have a contact sheet with pictures of him, in the blue light of a shadow, sitting on the pavement outside our apartment, tiny fires levitating above his hands. I never printed them.

Anyway, I think it's pretty. There may not be much else, content-wise, but I like pretty things.

Also I made my appointment at the Emma Goldman Clinic, and before I gave my address, the woman says, "you live at G's old house, don't you?"  (She sometimes brings us eggs.)  Perhaps my next t-shirt will say: IOWA CITY: NOT VERY BIG.

More notes about sex

1.  GodDAMN the socialization that makes me both ashamed of the hair on my body, and ashamed to shave it.  Because any decision is a Decision, and Means Something, even the fact that I am making a Decision emphasizes the fact that there is naturally hair, when one is supposed to encourage the idea that one is naturally smooth and hairless.  I am embarrassed, and I am pissed off that I'm embarrassed.

2.  I also have three pairs of underwear that are fit to be seen.  I don't like doing laundry.  Obviously, there is shopping in my future.

3.  Also, there is sex in my future.  That makes up for pretty much everything else.

4.  He said, in regards to my website, that it wasn't very vague.  I thought of this and did not say, you have no idea.

Sometimes I love placeholders as much as I love the real thing

I know where I'm going with the story!  This is very exciting.  This will not, actually, be the ending:

heat transfer, my skin slowly merging with the water around it, carried away into something else, something larger and more strange, warming in tiny ways something really far away, things out of my control, things I can never control, stop worrying and let it go yay I have a metaphor!

p.s. because it bears repeating

I have a boyfriend.

Yay!

In

When he told his best friend about me, he made sure to not say my last name, to protect my privacy.  Which is not only incredibly sweet, but personalized.  This isn't a bouquet of roses because girls like roses, this is the specific yarn I've wanted but never thought to ask for. 

He holds my hand in the street and changed his Facebook status.

I told myself that if he thought I was more engaged than I was, that wasn't my fault.  I told myself that it's been eleven days; I told myself it was too early to assume anything.  But that only means that I have succeeded at plausible deniability, and that's not the right standard to aim for.  Plausible deniability still means that I'm being cruel.  All I've succeeded in doing is finding a loophole to avoid the consequences. 

He deserves better than that.  If I am not in this with him, I need to get out.

I said, "Can I be your official girlfriend?"

I said, "I trust you.  It might not sound like a big thing, but it kinda is.  I wanted you to know that."