With the third post up, I think it's time to announce The Vagina Monoblogs to the world. My contribution to the Vaginismus community, The Vagina Monoblogs is a site dedicated to resources and information about, and personal accounts of Vaginismus. Maybe the response from this will eventually allow me to create the book I want to, a collection of stories from survivors and sufferers, to sorta let to world know we're out there, and this does exist, and you can't ignore us, and hopefully to raise money for the cause. But, baby steps. Today, a blog. Tomorrow, the world.

On with it.

"Tue December 21 3:10:50 EST 2004
nak
suede
no time for hate, unless you do something worth such emotion.
just scared.
those photos scarred me for life."

~Nak, from Ian's Pit, the bastard child of Frank's Pit

I can't be sure what he's talking about, but chances are they're the slightly, uh, nude pictures of me formally posted on the pictures section of this site, now dead and gone in a burst of pre-new-years cleansing. Seems to me now that was way too much a plea for attention, and, from now on, I'll save the naked pictures for those who actually want to see them, instead of for the sake of shocking ex-teachers, etc. All naked pictures requests will now be processed by mgmt.

Imagine that. Constructive criticism from the pit. Thanks, Nak.


So let's start thinking about resolutions. December seems to have been my big month for experiencing/accomplishing new things, having been fired and in a (minor) car accident towards the beginning, performed my poetry live (and for TV) at the Lisbon Teen Center Coffee House (an altogether unsatisfying experience) in the middle, and just now gotten in some practice pressing the "delete this blog?" button. Also, finally getting around to changing the name of this place, and took my first college exam(s). Not an altogether bad month, and we haven't even gotten to Christmas yet.

Of course, the quality of my writing seems to have taken a steep decline, but that, I suppose, will work itself out. I'd get more practice writing if I had a computer that wasn't as slow as the leader of our fair country and an internet connection to match. Maybe if my job at iWorx prooves profitable, Zack and I will get ourselves a nice desktop and a cable connection. And I have added a half-page to the Tracy/Trish story since I sent it off to Casey for review...but he won't get to see that until he sends back what I already sent him, hint hint.


It seems to me that my posts are becoming more and more like newspaper articles, with all the pertinent (or, in this case, halfway interesting) information in the first paragraph or so, and the rest just sort of rambles on to make the posts look long and impressive. They do this in the newspaper so that the editor can lop off an article at any point to fit the space he has, and still have all the important details. My posts, like this, can just be cut off any.


(on with it)

C LABRACK: you starting to get tired of competing with GTA?
FieryGwenivere: yes. yes I am.
FieryGwenivere: and if you just assumed that, you're very insightful. I don't remember mentioning that to you.
C LABRACK: it's not that insightful. I've just always noticed zack playin them more and more. plus, so many great ones are out right now. and finally, I know a lot of girls who have the same problem around here.
FieryGwenivere: Well, it's more insightful than, uh, Zack.

Casey knows all about the feeling of being second to various technical entities, whether it's someone else putting you second, or you doing it to yourself. But I've discovered, just now, an entirely different, but related, feeling.

Let's say Zack's been playing San Andreas for a while, or I've been playing for a while, or we've been taking turns for a while. Let's say I'm thoroughly bored by now, and let's say I'm at that point where I really feel like I'm going second to a video game. I start to say sort of bitter, hinting things, and he gets it. He's heading towards a save point when he says it-- that totally fucking innocent phrase of malice. The one harmless evil with which I have no chance to complete. He looks over at me and, without a the slightest detectable amount of agenda in his tone (except that provided by my ever-suspiscious mind) asks, "So, what are we going to do after this?"

And what can I say? "Well....we're gonna put on some TV that neither of us will really like, and that most likely only one of us will even somewhat like, and we'll eat snack foods we're not really hungry that are designed to rid us of our sex appeal by our mid-twenties." Well? What would you come up with? "We'll sit and talk?" We've been married for a while now, and certainly spending every available moment with each other for much longer, and nowadays, before we can sit and actually have a conversation, there has to be some supply of subject matter. (And, not surprisingly, the only subject that's been in supply lately has been fucking GTA.) So let's face it-- we're broke, pre-twenty-one, newly married and living in Brunswick fucking Maine, and we can't fuck, or, due to the stress of the whole non-fucking state, function sexually with any mutual pleasure at all, about 80% of the time. San Andreas is about the best we could hope to do.

(And, for you fucking skeptics {the ones I keep so well-armed}, I relate to you that this isn't a direct effect of marrying too young, or rushing a relationship, or not going to college straight of high school or not travelling the world, or not stopping to do what everyone warned you you ought to. This is the reality of vaginismus, plain and simple. So I'm gonna hurry up and shut-up the wannabe pricks.)

So it's not a matter of feeling like I'm being put second to GTA. It's a matter of feeling like there's no reason why I shouldn't be considered second to GTA.

So, here we are, post-that-actual-circumstance, and I gotta say the only slight upside is that my website is getting some attention.

...oh, god.


On with it.

Lost in a sea of cyberspace is a post I wrote when I changed the title of my blog, explaining a little better why I feel the way I do about myself, and about The Fish Guy, and it put out there, with almost robotic indifference, that I was fired from my job, and that whether or not that had anything to do with my alleged (well, kinda alleged) affair with The Fish Guy, I do not know. Another thing to which I have robotic indifference: the marathon run-on-ishness (-acity? -itude?) of that last sentence.

The Andover College computer system, while refreshingly new and quick, has a rampant problem that it seems to me would be pretty easily fixable: almost every clock is fifteen minutes off or more in one direction or another. I didn't even know it was possible to set your computer clock wrong nowadays, like you'd need a tech degree to turn off the clock's communications with Greenich or Iceland or wherever that master clock is. Damn, it feels like this is something I should know.

I love the feeling, though, of the new Dell keyboard beneath my fingers. I've had it up to here* with my damned laptop-- I don't go anywhere with it anyway, not having wireless internet at the trailer, and the battery is never charged. I'm fully ready to trade in for a nice, sturdy, there-when-you-need-it-desktop, which begs the question, "So why not use the nice, sturdy, there-blah-blah-blah desktop you do have, namely Zack's?" I answer with utter confidence that there is some reason, involving a brutal accident while his motherboard was cruising down the internet superhighway at waaay beyond the speed limit, and a drunk hacker rammed it off the road, or something. I feel details and coherence are not my forté, at this exact moment. But I'm almost entirely sure if just aced the first in-room test I've had this semester, and I did it faster than any of my classmates, so go, me!

Oh, that's right. Nearly none of you know I'm in college now. Well, I am. Let's not make a big "thing" of it.

I'm taking one class but really more closely related to two, as (don't tell) I am writing almost all of the speeches that Zack has to give in his concurrent Public Speaking course. Despite my efforts, he refused to let me stand outside his classroom today while he was giving his speech (having finished my test and exited my class so early), and in fact interrupted himself in front of the whole class to come outside and tell me to go somewhere else. Ingrate.

Any moment now, his class should be done, and he will find me here in the computer lab, and I will yell, yell, yell at him. At least, I think it should be any moment. Damn computers clocks.


On with it.


*here. This exact spot.

Best and worst commercials currently on television, early holiday season edition:


Best: Old Navy commercials featuring a randomly placed chorus of carolers, trying to bring solace to women who fear the oncoming holidays. When they sing, to the tune of a christmas carole, "The holidays will hit you..." and then the solo line on the adorable girl who sings "...Like a brick!"

Worst: Fucking elves trying to drive that fucking Pepsi Hoiday Spice truck. I don't like elves (when depicted as little versions of big people) , I hate pepsi, and Spiced soda? Listen, Pepsi People, Dr. Pepper is a done deal. Get over it.


On with it.

The true test of being over someone-- not using the edit menu's search tool to check for your name in it every time you visit their online journal for whatever little reason.

A supplementary bit of knowledge: They were probably over you about two weeks after the last time you were mentioned. (This is void when it's clear that they're using a pronoun, a group of people, or a non-entity in place of your name. Trust me. I know these things.)


True sign of not being over someone: falling in love with, and obsessing over, literally anyone in order to distract yourself from them, including:
A- Some stranger you see on a weekly-ish basis, who's name you don't know, and therefore you refer to as some funky nickname like "Mr. Muttenchops" or "The Tuesday Guy." These names might also involve Dairy products, for those of you who get my meaning.
B- Straight, underaged girls that you have on-and-off friendships with.
C- The guy who works in the fish department at your pet store. No, I'm talking in universal terms here. Really.

People not in this group:
A- Your husband.


So...today was the first day I actually found "The Fish Guy" to be very physically attractive. I've probably talked about this phenomena I call "work crushes" before-- they are the epitomy of attraction based on convenience. Nothing has to be right with these people, really, it's just got to be not terribly wrong. There are a few things in common with the work crushes I've had in the past:
A- They're all within five years of my age.
B- They're all of a gender that I find attractive. (either male or female.)
C- None of them are so horribly bad looking that I'd rather defecate into my own toaster than look at them for too long. Assuming I was going to use the toaster again.

The Fish Guy, who replaced "The Cheeseman" in Linda's timeline of distracting male figures, is tallish (+), strongish(+), not darkish or handsomeish(-,-), but I have come to discover that underneath his glasses (+) he has blue eyes (+), and he looks (as of today) really good when he has the half-amused, half-dismissive smile on his face that only I seem to evoke in him (+).

Were I to not spend roughly 28 of my 40 working week hours in the same general area as The Fish Guy, I would not give him a second glance. But work is boring. And boredom, I have found, breeds wantoninity. (copyright)

I feel constantly compelled to point out that Zack is fully aware and accepting of my two man system (One to be my all, my everything, the person who completes me; the other to let me do all that fun unrequoited infatuation bullshit that I was such the honor student at during my school days.) and he is as aware of The Fish Guy as he was of The Cheeseman and of the brief but mentionable mini-crush on The Underaged Girl, all of whom replaced someone I shall now award the moniker of "The Wifebeater", which is a private joke between me and The Wifebeater himself. "The Wifebeater" is the one who I am not over, but I am notably more over him than I was, let's say, three or four months ago, with the help of a barrage of aptly named sidekicks. I no longer have to refer to him as "him" or as "someone", "everyone", or "no one!!!". I dub him THE WIFEBEATER!!! And, thusly, can stop it with the previous nonsense.

That's gotta be something, right? Someone mark this spot.


Anyways, "The Fish Guy" is a new challenge. I must get him to fall desperately, incredibly in love with me despite the fact that he knows that I am married, and therefore:
A- He can not have me.
B- If he could have me, I would be a horrible person. And why would he then want me?

This challenge is new, and did not pertain to The Cheeseman or The Underaged Girl because:
A- The Cheeseman did not know my name, just as I did not know his, and he certainly had no idea I was married. (Incidentally, the flame died, I think, when we found out each other's name. He is Brad. I even know his last name, sadly. It begins with an S.)
B- The underaged girl, I didn't want to manipulate into loving me. Much. She was so...underaged. And straight. And, really, too good to be toyed with the way I toy with, well, let's just say it, men.

I made a breakthrough in this case today, as I leaned over the trash can he was filling through a syphon with dirty fishtank water, when he made a joking reference to a crush he thought I had on another co-worker. Clearly, he understands the nature of the flirtatious crush situation I so covet-- it's not malicious. It's entertainment. Now, I merely have to make him realize that he is the recipitor of my, uh, "affections", and then I have to dangle that fact in front of him like season tickets to the Bills (he's a sports fan...there, I said it.) until he wants much, much more than I do, and, ultimately, converts to some weird religion where they devote themselves to some girl they could never have, and live a life of silent agony. But not before he slams be against the goldfish wall, takes my head between his hands and half-mumbles, half-screams "I must have you" as he kisses me passionately, and I push him away. "I'm a married woman." I would say. Then he'd have to realize how completely and utterly devoted I am to...Zack. Yes. Zack.


On with it.

No other way to say it: we need more Americans like Andrew Veal.


Also, I can't help but be amazed by the irony of his last name-- Veal. Young, destroyed by a senseless slaughter more or less carried out by the Texan himself. Goddamn.


On with it.

Best and Worst Commercials currently on Television:

Best: Starbucks Frappucino featuring Stacey Rumplestein and the four black men singing a capella. If you haven't seen it, you can catch it regularly during Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network.

The premise is this, for those of you who do not have cable or do have better things to do: In an office, you see Stacey walk from her cubicle to the office refridgerator, out of which she takes her Starbucks Frappucino. When she takes a sip, she's surrounded by a group of black men dresed like a Barber Shop Quartet. They ever-so-politely stop the people who were about to bother her with their insignificant needs in the following song:

"This is Stacey Rumplestein.
It's Stacey's time to clear her mind.
So, step off Bob. Expense reports can wait.
Larry, she's not interested in a second date. (No, no, no no noooo)
This is Stacey's tiiiiiime."

The promise of a group of charming singing bodyguards stopping people from annoying me in the course of my work day almost makes me want to brave my life-long hatred of coffee.


Worst: McDonald's commercial featuring an unusually cruel, and seemingly delusional, black woman denying her Chicken Selects to a group of imaginary children. I don't know this one by heart, but one line that really stands out at me is when she says "Momma loves you, but you need to back away from my chicken." speaking, of course, to the Kitchen sink. It's a sad world we live in.

I haven't seen it too much, but it annoys me. It's part of a series of commercials in which this same Lady is constantly eating her Chicken Selects and denying anybody else a piece-- another in the series features s a geeky white guy in an office yelling at people in the lunch room who aren't really there. A mother who's imagining her children and a boy who sees dead people...these are less wholesome commercials and more the bastardized plots of some recent horror flicks.

This is really a disappointment, because McDonald's, I think, had really hit a home run with those "da-da da da-daaaa, I'm lovin' it"commericals. Everytime I heard any group of notes that sounded even vaguely like those, I went out and bought a ten piece nugget and fries. Indeed, my pants size is in direct correlation with McDonald's Dow Jones rating. Use this information wisely.


On with it.

I saw Andrew -- Rich Kid-- the other day, drove out to Lisbon and we went for a walk down by the river and talked. The nice thing about people you don't see very often is that you get a chance to revisit in conversation all the greivances you've long since exahausted with your everyday friends. I chose to treat him like the kind of friend I am selfish with-- there are those I am selfish with, and those who are selfish with me. Rather than going through the almost impossible torment of maintaining a give and take relationships, I've decided perhaps it's best to have give relationships with certain people, and balance it out with take relationships with others, assuming happily that they've got a giver on their other end to complain to about how I'm always taking, thusly continuing the cycle. If I'm wrong, well, hell. It's not my fault they broke the chain.

I have -the- most beautiful give and take relationship going on right now involving what, perhaps, is the only remaining venue for truly give-and-take relationships-- e-mail. The starry-eyed Meg Ryan to my cynical Tom Hanks, Nissa gives me something to look forward to at the end of my day-- sometimes a long tale full of excitement or incite, sometimes just a great line or two to play over and over in my head throughout the following workday. And always an excuse to hunker down on this here reclined, get all cozied into my laptop, and be the writer that, god help me, I truly am. Some of my best work is e-mail.

I should point out, for the sake of accuracy in reporting, that I think Nissa is beautiful. I love her voice and the things that she says and the way she looks when she says them. I can be brazen in the admission of this for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that a month-and-a-half long hiatus from this little watering hole of mine has all but gas-chambered my readership, but a better reason is that I'm married. Marriage gives me a more defining idea of which things are just doe-eyed admiration and which are true and pertinent. Or at least, that's what I've got them all believing. In reality, Nissa could drive through me like a wrecking ball if not for some pitiful focus I have on a wedding band and a man who I still find truly beautiful. Oh, and she's straight. There's that.

Still, there's nothing impertinent about her.



I was driving along 196 on the way home from dropping Andrew off the other day, and stopped at the intersection with what becomes Maine Street at an impossibly long light. Looking over, I see a car pulled to the side of the road in the opposite direction with two police cruisers behind it, seemingly from two different towns, or perhaps one was county. The car is an only somewhat beat-up 60's mustang, or one of those cars reminiscent of a 60's mustang, primer-grey in color. The driver is a young girl, her hair back in a ponytail, her head hanging and hard to see. Two cops were leaning on the back of her car, ostensibly discussing what to do with her. I couldn't help but be reminded of dreams I always have where I do something bad and it just keeps snowballing until it seems as though my whole life has gone wrong, then the feeling of relief when I wake up is incredible-- one such dream of mine, the first, was when took my parents car for a drive, back when I was, oh, I don't know. Way too young to drive a car, anyway. In the dream, it was all a terrible feeling of panic, as taking it out around the block somehow became me getting lost in it, trying hard to find my way home, all the time having no idea what I was doing and always fearing a glance from anyone around me who might turn out to be authoritative. When that happened, when they would approach, I think it would be the fear and anticipation that finally jarred me awake. There, safe in reality, my conscious self would reassure me that it was all a dream, and within fifteen minutes or so, I would be asleep again.

Looking over at this girl, all I could think was that she wasn't going to wake up from this. I looked at her, couldn't look away, trying to determine her age. I was trying to make myself believe she was something like 17 and the car was her's or a friend's, but I knew it couldn't have been true. The way her head was hung-- something like shame or confusion, but neither, something deeper and stranger. And from what I saw, all that time I couldn't look away, what I saw of her face and the way the police were talking, she couldn't have been more than fourteen. Staring harder and harder, I realized finally what it was I'd been trying to put my finger on: She looked just exactly the age that I feel, most of the time.

And the light turned green.



My latest incarnation of that dream is that I'm driving from the back seat, leaning uncomfortably through the two front seats to hold the wheel. Sometimes with my feet. I pull it off okay, but the whole time I'm totally panic-stricken, and it occurs to me somewhere in the middle that I have no idea why I tried to pull it off at all. Without much effort, an analyst might say that this is a dream about transition: feeling like I should still be youthful, and sitting in the back of the car, but forced to take the wheel and be the adult, however unprepared for it. It is about the anxiety I feel in every day life, now that I'm a pseudo-adult. I'm at an age few of my friends will ever have to really experience-- their version is an age where they've got this perfect transitional phase: being out on their own but still financially and collegiately backed by their parents. Still having a life centered around the safety and order of school life, but each year they've got a few more options, a few more variables. The traditionally educational part of college, I've found, is secondary-- this is to adulthood what pre-school was to childhood. They're learning the ABC's of balancing their checkbooks and buying their own underwear. They've still got people collecting their crayons and making them put up their chairs at the end of the day. They're not learning secondary education or accounting or bio-chemical engineering. They're learning to use the fucking potty.

Me? I'm working a shit job, bouncing checks, and straining over the center console to grab at the wheel with my big toe. But I wipe my own ass.

On with it.

I will write again, maybe, one day. When I can write a sentence without fearing that one person will see through my clever disguise of generalizations. When one person will be able to read the sentence "I do not love these people anymore..." and not translate, too fluently, "I do (not!) love you anymore. (really.)" When one person will be able to read what I put before me and think of it as something I believe fundamentally to be true, and not just some poetic representation of the lies I haved lived and the love I have lied for the one, the two, the many (the one) that got away. I will write again, perhaps, when I no longer live in the paranoia that that one person will think I truly am writing about everyone who I ever loved, everyone who I ever touched, everyone who I ever called "everyone", and not just one person. I will write when one person takes what I have to say at face value.

That one person turns out to be me.

Or at least, one of the "one person"s. I have to write in such riddles now that I can't fucking translate myself, and when I can, it's too clearly. You see what you were missing? Exactly.

Yet, one too many people have asked me recently if I am writing, and I have replied one too many times, "No, I am not." "Time" has been my excuse one too many times.


This whole fucking thing is more of a poem than a coherent thought. One of Kevin McPhee's shitty poems.




The stupid thing about women is that we truly believe in truth. We think that the solution to harboring countless hours' worth of heartaches is to go to our assailant and confess. We think that if loving someone makes us act like enough of an asshole that they don't love us back anymore, the grand and perfect way to remedy this is to tell them that the reason you're acting like an asshole is because of how much you love them!

This is such incredible genius SHIT! And I will now write a poem for it.


---

You loving me made me love you.
Me loving you made me do
What I wouldn't normally do.
And I acted irrationally
Like there was a rash on me.
And now you do not love me anymore.
And now my heart is sore.
And now my heart will pour:
I love you! That is why
I have sat and cried!
I love you! That is why
I have hurt on the inside!
I love you! That is why
I've stared up at the sky

And had the same appeal to you
As a Lifetime Movie Double Feature
You've made my skies blue
And I've become a leech-er.
I am a student of boo-hoo,
And you, you are my teacher.

So, please, love me like you did back then,
So we can do this all again.

---


See? Now, when someone asks if I've been writing, I can say "yes."

On with it.