Crack

I was watching "Sex in the City" last night. It was the episode where Carrie falls into bed with Big while Aidan is out of town delivering furniture. Great insight into the chemistry of relationships and how the laws of attraction can be so confusing.

Of course, I had seen this episode before. But the parameters of my life were different then. The last time I watched it, I felt that I understood and sympathized with Carrie intellectually, but thought I'd never find myself in her position. I had my man, who I loved, and I didn't really need anything or anyone else. Not my problem.

Well, things have changed. I watched with new eyes last night.

Aidan...well, he's fantastic. Sigh! He's a little shaggy, but fantastically good-looking. He's a carpenter and good with his hands. He and Carrie have great sex and are playful and affectionate with each other. He's soulful and truly wants to care for her. She feels secure in his affection and attraction.

It dawned on me that Mo is my Aidan. He wears his hair a little long, but he is very handsome and has the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen on a man. When he gives me that sleepy kind of look, I'm a puddle. He has an outdoorsy, physical career as the head groundskeeper for an exclusive golf course and country club. He's fun in bed and can spend hours with me there, loving, laughing, and talking. He likes to touch me and he's gentle, which is very sexy in a man who is 6'2". I know that he wants me. He's wanted me for 20 years. When my relationship with X died, it's almost as if there was some sort of wire connecting us and the current let him know I was ready.

I'm secure and warm with Mo.

Big is a different animal altogether. Tall, dark, handsome, and sophisticated. Well-educated and professional. When Carrie and Big are in bed, it's intense, sweaty, and overwhelming. He's hard to pin down, but cannot resist his desire for her despite every effort. She is completely helpless to resist him. Nothing about this relationship is secure, except for the fact that they have memorable, addicting, and wild sex.

TR is my Big. He, too, is tall (6'4") and darkly handsome. He likes wine, art, and beautifully cut suits. He's a grad of my employer and the project manager for a large automatic door company. When he looks at me, it's almost like he's a bird of prey and I'm the prey. Sex with him, whether on the phone, by text message, or in person, is titanic. It's dark, dangerous, and elaborate. It feels forbidden, hypnotic, and just a little bit dirty. The things he says and does to me keep me electrified for days. He's too young for me, I'm too old for him, and the distance between us isn't all geographic. We have to keep our fascination with one another a secret from almost everyone because of all of the complications it presents. I can't get him out of my mind and I can't stop the effect he has on me. I'm addicted to how he makes me feel.

If Carrie is an addict for Big, then so am I for TR.

TR is my crack.

What I love/hate about Pennsylvania

I love where I live. For those who don't know me, I live in beautiful Western Pennsylvania, about 30 miles north and west of Pittsburgh. I guess you'd call me a suburbanite (yechhhh, I hate that word! It's so pedestrian. I really don't want to be pedestrian. I want to be all metropolitan sophistication. But we are talking about Pittsburgh here, so I'll be realistic). Urban dwellers would call me rural. Whatever. It's great here. You have your mountains (well, they're not the Rockies, but lovely rolling foothills of the Alleghenies), you have your rivers (the famous Three Rivers of the Allegheny, Monongehela, and Ohio. We residents of Beaver County get the bonus river, the Beaver, of course), you have your state parks and forests, you have your quaint river towns, and you have your bustling medium sized city. It's a great place to raise a family (why I haven't is a blog for another day), to own a home (you can't imagine how affordable homes are here), and to pursue a safe and quiet life. Sure it has it's drawbacks like the occasional blizzard, only slightly more average annual days of sunshine than Seattle, and roads that have more holes than baby Swiss cheese (we just don't have the sheer size and population as that other Democratic bastion of the Commonwealth, Philly, nor the political pull of the Republican rest of the state to benefit from the incompetence and corruption that is PENNDOT), but I've seen how the other half lives. I'm staying put.

But I have a love/hate relationship with the rest of the Commonwealth. Let me get Philly out of the mix right off the bat. We hate Philly here in Western PA (actually, to be precise, it's Southwestern PA). It's big, it's flashy, it gets all the press, it gets all the money. No one ever holds political conventions here. No LiveAid concerts were produced here. Let's be honest here. We're hugely jealous. But we also love Philly. The City of Brotherly Love (Ha! Ever gone to a sporting event there? What load of shit that moniker is!) is the only other place in the entire state that thinks the same way we do. If it wasn't for Western PA and Philly proper, this would be the reddest of red states. So, though we struggle here with our feelings of inadequacy, I love Philadelphia (and it doesn't hurt that TR is in Philly, adding to my hot...I mean, warm feelings in my...heart, yeah, that's it, my heart).

It's what lies between these liberal urban bastions that disturbs me. It's the part of Pennsylvania that I call Pennsylbama. It sits between Pittsburgh and Philly like a big mushroom cloud, filled with beautiful scenery, scenic farms, and a population of about 300 made up of KKK harborers, NRA fanatics, Bible thumpers, Lyndon LaRouche followers, and Santorum worshipers. It has pristine roads, enough government pork to equal the Swift Premium yearly output, and a stranglehold on the power structure of the Pennsylvania Legislature. I detest these priggish, hypocritical, power hungry idiots.

A perfect illustration of the Pennsylbama mentality is the Intelligent Design court case currently making the national news: http://www.timesonline.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15286567&BRD=2305&PAG=740&dept_id=226967&rfi=6. Once again, we have to go through the whole battle of religion in the classroom. Because, have no doubts about it, that is what this case is all about. They couldn't get the religion in the front door, so they'll try the back door, any door to force it on us and our children. Because, you know, that's just what Jesus would do, wouldn't he? Lie, dissemble, distort, or use government force to get us all to jump on the "values" train. I grew up Catholic, so obviously my religious training is lacking because I haven't yet read anything about Christ and his life that explains these people's unnatural and unhealthy fascination with aberrant homosexual behavior, sex with animals, keeping women barefoot and pregnant, and the evils of caring for those less fortunate that are espoused in the handbook of this crowd written by the icon/hero of Pennsylbama, Senator Rick Santorum. It's stuff like this that makes me hate Pennsylvania.

But every once in a while (about once a century), the cosmos align and the PA Legislature does something that brings all the disparate parts of Pennsylvania together into one big howling mob of pure hate. And the only something that could actually do that is to direct all that energy at one target: their own greedy, boneheaded, arrogant selves. How have they managed this seemingly impossible feat? Why, they passed themselves a whopping 16 to 54% pay raise and then did an end run around the state constitution's requirement that the raise not take effect until the next term by using the current state surplus to put the money into each legislator's undesignated funds (WAMs - Walking Around Money) immediately. I must say that I am impressed at the Legislature's obvious desire to bring all the people of the Commonwealth together behind one cause: http://www.timesonline.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15278336&BRD=2305&PAG=461&dept_id=478663&rfi=6. Just imagine, teacher's unions, business leaders, NRA members, religious groups, white supremicists, the Urban League -- all united behind one cause: throw the bums, Republican and Democrat alike, in Harrisburg out!

This is when I looooooooove Pennsylvania.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Some of the events of this past weekend have left me contemplating change. And the nature of change.

My Steelers lost a game they absolutely should have won against those hated Patriots and, especially, the detestable Tom Brady. By three lousy points, no less. A large part of this loss was due to stupid mistakes and penalties. I was completely speechless that a team that was largely unchanged from one year to the next could go from nearly flawless play to almost total ineptitude. The offensive line was riddled with holes. Ben scrambled on almost every play and getting out of the pocket was pretty much impossible. The defense started hot, but allowed too many Brady passes too many times. And Randle-El? What the hell was that? He fucked up as many times in one game yesterday as he did the whole last season. I was horrified. And wondering how, when the personnel essentially remained the same, this team had transformed into the one I had just watched.

I witnessed a much happier transition this past week that illustrated for me the positive results change can bring. Anyone who has been around me this summer knows that I have been mesmerized by that bastard Mark Burnett's "Rock Star: INXS." It's the anti-American Idol. It has people with actual talent. Not just singers, but musicians who write, arrange, market, and perform. And it's not stupid pop songs (I can deal with some pop, but spare me the Celine and that ilk). Music by Nirvana, Franz Ferdinand, the Killers, Squeeze, David Bowie, Pink Floyd, Queen, Foo Fighters, Rolling Stones, Bob Marley...it was a feast for the ears. With the top drawer production values and brilliantly manipulative editing for which Darth Burnett is justly lauded, this show to choose the new lead singer for INXS was an exceptional ride leading up to an immensely satisfying ending. The final five singers were all vastly talented veteran musicians who, no matter the show result, got great international exposure and an invaluable seminar in being a rock musician. Despite the massive amount of talent arrayed, there was only one perfect choice and JD Fortune won the spot. All I saw on the show, all I've read online, and all I've seen on TV since indicates to me that this is a change that will be and has already been good for all involved. It's encouraging to witness such positive change and I, for one, will be buying the new INXS CD to add to my INXS collection.

I met Mo for a drink Friday night. It's been essentially 20 years since we were together with no one between us. He hasn't changed at all and he's changed immensely. The old chemistry is definitely still there. I knew that going in simply because every time I've run into him in the past 20 years, it was still there even in the most awkward (I was with the X) and mundane situations (in line at the donut shop). But I forgot how intense that could be. I felt rather than saw him walk into the bar. It was like a movie. I turned, he saw me, and the crowd of friends I was with just melted away. Or faded away. Or were intimidated away. Because he walked up to me and just basically deliberately blocked my view of anyone else. And that's when I saw how he had changed.

I was always the one in control in our past relationship. I controlled when and if he saw me. I controlled how far our relationship would go. I controlled it all and he let me. He let the whole thing be about me, from where we would go to what happened in bed. I could see right away that he wasn't going to let that happen this time. He was very intense and a little aloof (contradictory, I know!). He wouldn't leave and go to another bar to talk (I can now see the mistake of meeting him at the Corner Grill. X is going to get an earful). He wouldn't let me reliquish eye contact with him. When we did finally leave, he would only come to my place. He controlled everything that happened there, from when and where we would touch to when he would leave. He insisted on getting all my phone numbers. And this is where I got a secret little thrill: he refused to give me his. He just looked at me and said, "This time, I get to be the one in control."

Which brings me around to how I've changed just in the past couple of weeks. I actually enjoyed having him be so assertive. I think I may even understand it a bit. All of this time with X, I wanted it to work so much and I was so afraid of not being what he wanted, that I tried to hold it all together through sheer will power. Eighteen years of clinging on for dear life had left me feeling that I had no control over my own life. And I didn't because I gave him all the power. Now that I have let all of that go, I feel I have control of my own fate and I'm liking it. And because I feel good about my direction, I can surrender a little and find it thrilling. Giving up the need to control has led to being more in control which has led, in turn, to a willingness to let go.

What a weekend! Oh, and TR called again last night. I was out of control.

Change is good.

Oh. My. Gawd.

I just got a phone call. At work. At my old extension from my former position here at the University. Thank God it got transferred to my current extension.

It was Mo. He heard I was single. He wants to have a drink. I'm meeting him tonight.

I hope I don't hurt him.

Phone Sex

I am discovering that the biggest drawback to being single is sex. Or lack thereof.

Not that things had been all that hoppin' when I wasn't single. Don't get me wrong. Dear X was more than satisfactory...when we actually did it. Which had been less and less often the last couple of years. In fact, I have only had sex six times in all of 2005 and two times it wasn't even with him (it happened after the big denouement in early August). Suffice it to say, I'm horny.

As a matter of fact, I'm hornier now than I have been in years. And I can't attribute it to sudden singleness. It started months ago. I wonder if this is a function of being in the throes of menopause? If so, three cheers for menopause!

But my options are few. I live in a very small town, surrounded by other small towns, in which I am well known. Professionally. So I can't very well start trolling the local bars. Not that I really want to, knowing what I know about the candidate pool around here.

There is a guy. I've known him forever and we had a pretty hot and heavy thing, on and off, for several years. When we met, he was a local guy living in Florida. My sister Patty lived in the same town and was friends with him. I'd go down there every year for a month or so and Mo and I would set each other on fire and then I'd go home. He's back in PA now, still single and currently unattached. The last time I saw him (about a year ago) was at Patty's restaurant. We ran into each other at the bar and had a nice flirtatious chat. Apparently, there is some kind of weird electricity or chemistry between us still because the bartender and a couple of waitresses asked Patty if I had something going with him. My friend Karla, who I was having drinks with at the time, came right out and said it was a good thing X wasn't there as the atmosphere between Mo and I was smoldering.

I sure could handle some smoldering. So why haven't I contacted him, you say. Good question. The big problem: I don't have his phone number and he isn't listed. I never asked for his number because I was with X at the time and, well, it wasn't really a name and number I wanted written in my address book for X to find. So I talked to Patty and told her to urge him to call me if he came into the restaurant. I also have his mother's phone number. She knows we are old friends and would probably not think a thing of my calling for his number. But I am reluctant to be that bold. That's a last resort. I may go to his old high school's football game. I am told he attends every one. A distinct possibility but not a sure thing. I'll need a good excuse to be there and I currently have none. Whatever happens, this is obviously more of a long term project and there are urgent needs to be satisfied.

So, let's look at the short term. And that means TR. Ah, TR! Remember how I said I'd had sex twice that wasn't with X? It was the one night (and morning) I spent with TR. A former next door neighbor who now resides in Philly. He was in town for a visit just as everything blew up with X, with the result being X ran away to Boston for a long weekend and I was left alone, devastated and feeling quite old and unattractive. You have to understand that there is some complexity and delicacy in the issue of TR. Because he was/is friends with both of us. But TR and I have had a little closer relationship than his with X. That's because, for about four years, he was my Friday night date. And that doesn't mean what you think.

X is a high school football fiend. He goes to a game every Friday night in the fall. Totally understandable due the quality of high school football in Western PA. But I like to go to "my bar," the Corner Grill, on Fridays. Since TR was in the midst of his divorce and he hung out there on Fridays, I went and hung out with him. He kept the riffraff away from me and vice versa. X, TR, everyone at the bar, and I joked about our Friday night dates. We had a lot of fun together, did a little harmless flirting, and talked a lot. We got close.

During TR's last visit, I made excuses for X's absence and we went for a booze cruise on Paul and Karen's vessel. We laughed, cruised the Ohio, and drank oodles of frozen mudslides. When we got home, more than a little drunk, we started to talk. I spilled it all and cried like an idiot. It sounds more creepy than it was, but...well, you know what can happen when you're drunk, upset, and a good looking man a decade younger comforts you. It was completely mutual, very hot, a little confusing, and just what I needed.

I didn't regret it when I woke up. I was a little apprehensive as to whether he would in the cold light of day. But when his eyes opened, I knew he didn't. In fact, it was even hotter the second time. I still shiver just thinking about it. But that was almost two months ago.

We've kept in close touch. We email. We flirt a little in the emails (don't want to be too graphic as we both are using work networks). I call or text message him during Eagles games and he does the same during Steeler games. I fantasize about our one night and wonder if he does the same. Until one night when I find out that he does.

And how appropriate is it that the night in question was a Friday? During a Steeler game? I was little buzzed sitting at the bar and we were texting each other, teasing about football, when he made a passing reference to our "night." I let him know how often I thought of it. There was at least a 20 minute pause before I got the next text message: "Give me a couple of days but think of me ******* your *****. How you **** for me." Whoa! OK!

Three days later, I got another text message: "I want to *** you for hours and give you the ******** you deserve. I'll call you tomorrow night." Whoa again! I spent the next 24 hours tingling with anticipation.

How did I get to the age of 47 without ever knowing the joys of phone sex? We've done it twice now. In fact, we did it just last night. I didn't know until now how much I like being talked dirty to or how much I like to talk dirty. I didn't know until now how exciting description can be. I didn't know until now that imagination can be a close facsimile to the real thing. I didn't know until now that the telephone can be the best sex toy ever.

At least until I can have the real thing. One way or another.

The Disadvantages of Being Female

I have been making my new nest. It's very small, but I like it a lot. I've very much enjoyed rearranging my old stuff in my new place. I've really enjoyed picking and ordering new furniture. I like my new stuff much better than what I left behind. Just one problem...

I ordered the new stuff online. My new TV/entertainment center has arrived. All good. Except it's too large and heavy for me to carry up the two flights of stairs to my new place. No way am I asking the X. A conundrum.

I don't mind assembling said new furniture. I'm a pretty handy girl. I've done wiring, laid ceramic tile, refinished hardwood floors, put up and finished drywall...I can do it all. Except, apparently, one thing. I cannot put this stupid furniture together with pure muscle power. It just dawned on me last evening that I no longer own a cordless drill. Which means I no longer own a cordless screwdriver. It's pretty hard to screw this stuff together using only my puny arms. Another conundrum.

At least I have finally found a good reason to have a man around.

Yes, I am a slut for the blues

I love the blues. Just like I love rock and roll. Those are two of the most important things you should know about me. You can get me off topic and out of a conscious and coherent train of thought by playing something I love in either genre. If you can say there is a bright side to anything that came out of Hurricane Katrina, it's that B.B. King and New Orleans blues were permeating the media and rock musicians (bless their altruistic, drug-addled hearts) broadcast huge charity concerts in its wake. I've been wallowing in it all like a pig in shit.

I have also recently become single after 18 years in an exclusive relationship. Not a marriage, because I don't believe in that, but as close as you can get to it without a ceremony, legal sanction, shared bank accounts, and a ring. I'm just beginning to digest and absorb my reaction to this state. Thus the inspiration (along with some encouragement from IRL and cyber friends) to blog.

Let me say right from the start that this isn't going to be one of those sob sister kind of things where I get all touchy feely exploring the existential implications for a mid-fortyish, still somewhat thin and attractive, menopausal, career woman alone in the world (although that sort of describes me). I'm not that kind of woman. Nor will I go all militant feminist on your ass. I'm not that kind of woman, either. What I will do here, I hope, is just be me. I'm not quite sure what that is exactly, but that's my aim. I like politics and arguing about them, I like reality tv, I like books, I like sex. That's probably what I'll talk about most. But I could talk about anything. At any time. That's your only warning.