Intimacy may not be for everyone

I hope Aggie's Intimacy Challenge is going well. Here are excerpts of a case study of a fellow who found intimacy so stressful, he attempted suicide:

Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle: For Some People, Intimacy Is Toxic by Richard a. Friedman, M.D

...

Everything seemed to be going well until, one day, the father got a call from his son’s girlfriend. She had not heard from the son for several days, so she went to his apartment and found him semiconscious in a pool of blood. He had taken an overdose of sleeping pills and slit his wrists.

After a brief hospitalization, where he was treated for depression with medication, he returned home and broke off the relationship. Soon after, he moved to Europe to work but remained in frequent e-mail contact with his family. His messages were always pleasant, though businesslike, full of the day-to-day details of his life. The only thing missing, his father recalled, was any sense
of feeling

....

And then I suddenly understood. He wasn’t depressed or unhappy at all. He enjoyed his work as a software engineer immensely, and he was obviously successful at it. It was just that human relationships were not that important to him; in fact, he found them stressfull.

...

I had a hard time explaining all this to the patient’s father. Finally, I came up with an analogy that I had some hesitation about, but since I discovered that both of us were dog lovers, I gave it a try. I explained that some breeds, like Labradors, are extremely affiliative; other breeds are more aloof and will squirm if you try to hold them.

If we found her...

Suppose she is blogging... Somewhere else... Under a new pseudonym... Sharing stories that show it's not all happily ever after?

And suppose we found her new blog...

Would it be wrong to start writing about it here? and link to her? Yeah, probably wrong, right? Some of the people who were mean to her check in here from time to time. And I know this will sound crazy, but what if we were the ones she wanted to get away from?

I suppose if she wanted us to find her, she'd give us a clue. Maybe link to us so it would show up in the tracking stats.

But it still wouldn't be obvious what we should do. Suppose she's back giving the intimate details that we love so much? On the one hand, I'd want to discuss it with the ESIs and our readers, but on the other hand, I wouldn't want to force her to relocate to another secret blog.

What do you folks think?

And Robbed Again!

Yes, the conspiracy is still at work. This time we've been locked out of the 2006 Canadian Blog Awards.

How do I know it's the conspiracy?

Occam's razor says you choose the simplest explanation that fits the facts. In this case, it's the only explanation.

Minutes: Emergency Meeting 27 Nov 2006

27 Nov 2006 Emergency meeting

Minutes by: I.O.
Redacted by: █████████

Venue: The Usual Place
Present: Agatha, The Chair, Coyote, Fourth Dwarf, The Independent Observer
Absent without good excuse but with attitude: Conch Shell

Emergency: ██████████████████

Coyote: ████ wants to ████████████████ with ████ ?

The Chair: Clearly ██████████████████

The IO: ████ might as well have a ████████████████ me."

Coyote: I'm not sure I want to ███████ ████ .

General discussion of ████████████████

Aggie phones Conch Shell, exclaims "Omigod!" CS tells Aggie to instruct the group not to make any big decisions.

The Chair: The ████████████████ drama.

The IO: I.e. █████████ same as always.

Aggie discusses her plans for more openness on her blog, which may involve yoga and the opening of chakras.
4D suggests Aggie reveal her true feelings about the other ESIs.

Aggie and the IO workshop an idea for the ESI blog based on 4D's draft post ████████████████

The Chair again raises the ████████████████████ ████ ████ .

4D: ███████ ████ up now.

Coyote: More than before. He surmises the change of ███████████████ a ████.

Some honourable bloggers: Can the ████████████ be far behind?

Consensus: We don't want to █████████████████. We would rather continue on as now, with varied topics and the search for a new muse, with Aggie yet striving to fill the role.

Despite the desire to avoid ███████████, we agree the possibilities are rich:
(*)████████████████
(*)█████████and ████████
(*)██████████ connection

Discussion: Have Bob, Minty or Lana █████████████ ? Will "████████████████████████████████████████████████ ?

Specious "theories" of ███████████ are proferred, met with open guffaws and eye-rolling.

Discussion: Who's hotter? "██" or ████? Consensus: Easily ████. Recap of ████ relationship with ████████████. The Chair wonders aloud why he ever wanted to ████ her. Robust analysis of ████████'s finer points.

Agatha: Hello? Sitting right here?

General apologies and rationalizations. In which Aggie's feelings are callously ignored.

Coyote: I revel in my inadequacy.

The Chair: I embrace my inadequacy as often as I can.

The 4D suddenly challenges CS's decree that we cannot make a big decision without her.

Discussion: Should there be minimal posting-frequency standards for continued membership in the blog? E.g. at least one main post a month or five comments?

More discussion: the ████ assertion that ████ does not really know us. ████ is wilfully blind. Maybe ████ should join the ESIs?

The IO: We used to be worried about whether our metablogging would ████████████████, now we worry whether not metablogging will ██████████████.

Discussion of 4D's sketching technique morphs into speculation about a certain Ottawa journalist’s apparent fetish for IT guys and her refreshment habits, as well as her exhusband’s alleged personality disorder.

Aggie: "Personality disorder" is just a polite way of saying "f*ing a*hole".

Discussion of optimal posting length. Consensus: one screen is plenty.

Aggie proposes Elgin Street Nostalgia Week for next April to mark the second anniversary of the blog.

Discussion of ██████████ blog, ████launch, ████, ████and likely sex life.

4D: Given her liberal application of ████████████████████, it looks like ████ is the ██████████ in any relationship equation.

Banter about Venus Envy. Agatha likes it because the sales people are attentive. The others either avoid sex shops or, if frequenting such establishments, would prefer to have a very distracted male cashier serve them. 4D used to buy condoms at Big Bud's but did not relish discussing his purchases with the 16-year-old cashiers.

██████ once bought condoms at Shoppers Drug Mart for a young friend, then promptly ran into a senior colleagueat the checkout. He winked knowingly.

Discussion of the lame XPress Blog Awards.

Oddly, the ████████ was sighted recently at the ████████ with a box of fishing tackle (insert witty remark here).

Uncharacteristically, 4D embarks on a philosophical flight of fancy: Just 'cause you're on a plane doesn't mean you're going toward your destination. The ESIs agree a more appropriate saying, given ██████ recent luck, would be: Just 'cause you're in a ████ , doesn't mean you're going anywhere.

The meeting drew to an unceremonious close.

Book Review: A Guide to the Mannerly Wooing and Winning of the Object of Your Affection

When I opened the door this morning, I found an unmarked manila envelope on the welcome mat. I've had bad experiences opening unmarked containers in the past, but this one looked thin enough that I figured any explosion would only take off the outer layers of my beard. But it was no bomb, instead it was:

A Guide to the Mannerly Wooing and Winning of the Object of Your Affection by Ms. Matilda Manners and Ms. Edwina Etiquette.

It is a well-packed little volume that purports to tell a person how to get themselves that all important first date with the object of their affection. There is an especially large section that our friend Agatha should read titled "The Object of Your Affection at Work". Here is an excerpt:

6. On Flirting

Anthing involving sexual innuendo is strictly off limits if your Object of Affection is working. There is an inherant power imbalance in the server/served, retail whore/customer relationship. You, the customer, hold the power: your Object of Affection must be nice to you or risk getting fired. Your Object of Affection cannot leave if they do not like you.

This guide is not perfect. For example, in the section titled "On Managing Your Peer Group and Your Object of Affection," the authors suggest that if you meet your OA at an event that your friends are attending it is only in a restrict range of circumstances polite to blow off your friends These circumstances include having "established some kind of prior agreement or code" allowing for the OA to take precedence.

Huh? If your friends are too stupid to know that an OA automatically takes precedence, the best way to show them the hierarchy is to blow them off on that rare occasion you have a shot at an OA. They'll figure it out.

I suspect the authors are a pair of hotties who find themselves in situations where there are OAs so often that they'd never spend time with their friends if they didn't set certain limits. They aren't approaching the situation from the perspective of a less-than-tall, more-than-slender, under-employed mineral-extraction-specialist.

That they are hotties is also apparent in the flow chart that constitutes the centre of the volume. Don't get me wrong, it is a major piece of scholarship in dating theory. However they have paths in the chart that lead to boxes that say "Politely request contact information (and then use promptly)". These boxes have only lines that lead to "Date". I can assure Ms M and Ms E that there is another entire module that needs to be inserted after the "Contact Info" box and that "Date" is not the only possibility.

Snog&Blog -- a short primer

Snog 'n Blog -- it's the new Kiss 'n Tell. And our recent back 'n forth in this area suggests a need to open discussion on some kind of further metablog standards for ourselves.

The intimate sexual confessional has been around a helluva long time -- anybody who cares to, may check out the Biblical Song of Solomon. More recently, we have the mutual erotic gotchas published by Henry Miller and Anais Nin in the '30s and '40s, or the differing intricacies of James Joyce or Lawrence Durrell, or the blunt force of D. H. Lawrence. Panting sexual description that shocked at the time, but these were actual literary works, covering more emotional ground than the kind of people who bookmark only the dirty bits ever give 'em credit for. I'd say this enterprise ain't interested in that. We ain't looking for porn, either. It's plain boring, often creepy, and way over-represented on the Web, already. Anybody who wants that sort of stuff has only to knuckle a few unimaginative terms into Google, or answer spam.

Considering how long we've mulled our own search criteria, and how difficult we're finding it to uncover someone similar to the 5th Muse, (You're good in your own right, Aggie, but quite different) our needs seem more subtle and complex.

We've already mentioned that the Muse never really blogged sex, per se, anyway. She was (and probably still is, somewhere) more about chronicling a very personal interior landscape, hoping to understand herself (and, at one point not too long ago, hoping to finally find a date that didn't appal. The two were linked) Her talent is in emotional confession of a sort that is raw, sometimes painful to witness, but that doesn't actually reveal all. It was highly open to interpretation, and interesting because of that, a quality that attracted our metablog in the first place.

Her abilities in this sort of edgy emotional striptease -- I've labelled it 'breathtaking', for too many reasons, too many times already -- seem to have made it hard to find a parallel. We've quite often thought the Muse's own analysis of her writing was way off, but, boy, she leads a rich and strange interior life, and she put a unique slice of it out there. It's about emotion, selective revelation, and relationships. We're real relationship junkies...

Unreasonable demands

A number of demands have been made on me as the new muse that I deem to be unreasonable.

1) That I disclose details of my sex life. The 5th Muse rarely disclosed details of her sex life except to complain that she wasn't getting as much as she'd like because of M's asexual issues.

2) That I blog more. Yes, the 5th blogged a lot. But, she also took breaks when she was busy.

3) That I talk more about my relationship problems. Unlike our original Muse, I'm not aiming for the happy ending. But why are problems so interesting? Do you really think you can learn from my problems? Aren't you interested in hearing about all the things that are going well?

Perhaps we could hire a muse...

Remember in our early days when we were looking to fit out a van for metablogging and we spent all that time on eBay? Maybe it's time we went back there for a muse.

Here's an auction we missed:

Let me be your fantasy imaginary psycho girlfriend for a month. I am 29 years old, 115 pounds, with natural purple hair and a fascination with death. I am certifiably insane (copy of certificate available upon request). The details of this auction are listed below... [Link]

Misreading: I think Musie still wants to blog

There are unreliable narrators. Then, there are unreliable readers. In this case, I think we have been unreliable readers in our readings of the 5th Muse's so-called last post.

There is enough ambivalence in her latest (and perhaps last) to drive a truck through. The woman is dying to blog. When Musie says she is "leaning towards elsewhere", can't you all see that she just wants some reassurance? She wants us to beg her to keep the narrative going. Just as I would want all of you to beg me to keep blogging if I ever threaten to take it off-line.

But, this isn't about me. It's about Musie. Let's talk about the negativity. All the great bloggers out there have encountered it. Remember when Dwarfie got slammed by Lana and Minty? That took the wind right out of his sails. The lcp took quite a few knocks, too, at one point. And, Musie herself weathered some harsh comments and commentary. She says she wants to protect R and the Chinchillas from the negative energies of cyberworld. I think she just wants to protect her happy ending. Sure, turn off the comments if they are nasty. And, we'll delete anything too nasty over at this end and reactivate the ethics committee.

There will be plenty more happy endings to look forward to. I say, blog on, hon!!

Healing Well

The news is that Agatha's finger is doing well. She has her stitches demurely covered with a bandaid that made me jealous until she gave me two.

Aggie is good with sharing.

She would have given me more, but I don't cut myself often, and there's no sign of any more rat moles.

Speaking of the rat mole, I now have a tidy anchor-shaped scar on my forehead.

When it throbs, I know that Lana and her minions are plotting something.

Addio, buona fortuna. . .

Our Muse has broken her silence to say goodbye. She says it's time for a new narrative, and really, she's right. A fairly classy wrap, I think, all things considered. So long, ma'am, and good luck...

Sign of the times

Turn right at the fallen statue
Past the spent shell casings
That litter the flats
Till you see the charred bones
That don't seem real
Until you smell
The unmistakable smell
Of burning flesh
If you reach an olive grove
Stroked by the sun
And hear the quiet cooing
Of those who sleep without fear
You have gone too far

Our dog is back on top

Several of us had the opportunity to participate in a delightful soiree on Sunday. The evening consisted of a wide variety of performances.

The Chair playing his hurdy-gurdy with the first act, a trio of old-timers playing favourite songs from their youth. After this the Chair became the master of ceremonies, introducing the other acts with his usual wit and charm.

As a regular at these soirees, I usually do a solo performance of some kind, but for once I took a back seat and did a whistling harmony and counter melody accompaniment for two folks who do lovely Kate Bush covers.

Conch Shell was there, but like here, she stayed in the audience.

Then there was Coyote. He read a selection of some of his more popular poetry. He started with two of his emo poems, then went dramatic with Yelling for Stella (dedicated to me of course), and closed with a breathless Straight Eight.

And after the show, it became obvious that our furry friend doesn't need an online dating service. He just needs to get out and read his poems in front of eligible babes. One little honey sat down next to him and started telling him that his poetry held thoughts she had but didn't know how to express. While her boyfriend was in the same room.

I'm told that another woman who may or may not be attached poetically said, "that Coyote is just my type. I'd like to jump his bones."

Emergency: supplemental report

"Ah..." said Agatha, over the telephone.

She's far too collected to ever raise a flap, but I sensed a certain strain untypical of her for a Saturday evening. When she told me that she had inadvertently slashed her hand, and that an ER was in the cards, I told her I was coming with her. Her 'thank-you' sounded relieved.

It was a measure of her condition that she also asked me to drive. Now, Aggie's auto these days is a 60s-vintage Mini Cooper. None of this recent revisionist Teutonic crap -- the noisy little original, with wheels the size of tea saucers, a pair of cranky side-draft carburettors, and a general mass suited to go-kart tracks, or being beaten up by Swatch Smart Cars in back alleys. In (naturally) British racing green. Perfect, actually, for coyotes that drive by chinning themselves on the steering wheel with their front paws, shifting the stick with our right hind paws, and tap dancing between the, uh, petrol, and the brake with our left hind paws. Clutch? Coyotes don't need no stinkin' clutches. We don't need no stinkin' cops, either. We not only don't have a valid operator's license, we don't even have pockets to put one into.

Wth a blip or two of the throttle (in vintage Brit, one never revs, one blips) we roared smokily off to the ER, Aggie clutching a sizeable towel around one hand, and the weekend Times of London in the other. She knows the state of Canadian health care, and she's a planner. I considered asking for details of the accident, then thought better of it. I considered asking details of the wound, and thought better of that. We chatted about other things.

The intake nurse had her seen-it-all, Saturday-night game face on, but it was early, so the regulars weren't out of the bars yet, and seating was plentiful. She said the wait would be only two hours. We settled in with the Times, Hockey Night in Canada, and a little anthropological observation. With aid in sight, if not yet very close, Aggie amused me greatly with her adventures at IKEA. We yukked it up so hard that a couple of possible heart attacks began to look askance at us. We were, frankly, obnoxious. Lucky for them, they were ahead in the line-up and could escape

We waited for the predicted two hours, knowledgeably discussing the other intakes: "I bet he's gangrene," and, "Ooh, d'ya think she's a prussic acid overdose?" -- that sort of thing. We noticed that that women with large stomachs and labour pains got quick preferential treatment, and approved. Then the PA quacked, sending Aggie to Urgent Care. Where she stayed for another two hours, as Saturday night reaped its Darwinian toll. The waiting room grew feistier, and more festive.

Two female cops brought in a handcuffed guy with no shirt. Shirtless Guy was impressively fat, and otherwise unremarkable. But I was fascinated by the cops. I couldn't help scoping ring fingers, and facial expressions for signs of recent decree nisis. Was it possible that the tall blonde amazonish one might conceivably have an ex-husband who is a firefighter...? She gave me a fishy stare, kinda brushed her Glock with her hand. I thought better of asking her about it and hastily lowered my snout into the Times personals. Coyotes don't got no IDs in their non-existent pockets either, and I wasn't aiming to cause trouble. Aggie needed my moral support. Or at least her car keys, still in my hot paws.

It was well past the witching hour, and both hockey games had long ended, when Dame Agatha sauntered back in. A glance at her spoke volumes.

"Ma'am, unless I am highly mistaken, you have been behaving extremely saucily with a very young medical intern or three, have you not?"

The answering smile was pure, vintage Agatha -- mysterious, demure, ladylike -- positively Mona Lisa. But I'd seen the complacent micro-smirk that preceded it. Our Aggie was definitely well on the mend, already. We broke into howls of laughter, then beat a hasty retreat into the night. The third possible heart attack, in the queue behind, seemed, perhaps, relieved...

And maybe that intake nurse had seen a thing or two more than usual. Certainly she'd had the night cleaning staff wet-mopping around me pretty regularly....

Image: www.hungryhugo.co.uk

Emergency - No Meeting

Last evening (ie. Saturday night) after the Ikea Incident , I had an accident that involved running with scissors that resulted in my index finger looking like the above photo. It was an EMERGENCY.

I thought about calling an ESI Emergency Meeting, but instead, I called Coyote, who I know is level-headed in these kinds of situations. He very kindly drove me to the ER while I held my bloody finger in a towel in the passenger seat. Some people gave us strange looks when they saw Coyote's pointy little snout peering over the steering wheel. However, he seemed to fit right in with the motley crew in the ER.

In the ER, we waited and waited and waited. We watched the hockey game and commented on how ridiculous the 15-second-delayed closed captioning was, and how annoyed we'd be if we were hearing impaired. When the hockey became tiresome, We watched the deadpan-faced intake nurse interview patients: "You slid off the roof?" "How many feet?" "How did you land?" "On your feet?" Then, we commented on the fellow who walked in with a bottle of coke in a mixing bowl, and agreed that it is a myth that Coke is good for nausea.

Finally, they called my name and I followed a series of yellow dots to Urgent Care where I waited for another couple of hours in an examination room. I walked around a bit and checked in on some of the patients. My wounded finger was not considered to be top priority. The guy who fell off the roof spent some time in a stretcher in the hall after a fainting spell. The barfing guy was just noisy and annoying so I stayed away from him.

Close to midnight, a sixteen-year old intern named Matt came in to examine my finger. He said, "Hmmm. I don't know if you need stitches or not. These are the kind of decisions I guess I should be making myself." I assured him that it was ok if he wanted to get another opinion. He brought in an old geezer doctor who said to Matt, "Yes, definitely stitches. Three of them. A digital square. Do you know how to do that?" Matt said he did. Then, when the doctor left, Matt confessed that my index finger was the first he'd ever stitched. He added that he was proud of the work he was doing and was excited about how the stitches were turning out. I congratulated him. Then, we talked about the tetanus shot I would get later, and he explained what "lockjaw" was, which just sounds nasty.

Finally, I was ready to leave. Coyote had his nose in a newspaper, and didn't complain about the wait.

Lessons learned: 1) Coyote is good in an emergency. 2) Don't run with scissors.

Coyote and Dating

Coyote should not listen to any ESI pressure to enter into dating world. Dating is an evil construct, based on regressive, repressive outdated courtship rituals. Don't go there, Coyote!

Lavalife and all those places are spaces for people who think they are too busy to get away from their monitors or who just generally have screen addictions. Do you really want to hang around with these types?

In addition to the lavalife stuff, there are a plethora of "dating advice" sites and quizzes out there that are completely obnoxious, and promote relationships that last forever. That's not very postmodern, is it? And talk about heterocentric! We're still in the middle ages with all this dating propaganda.

I also think some of these sites give bad advice. One site advised young men to use this pick-up line: Carry an empty chair to a woman's table and say, "Is this seat taken?"

Now, I would likely tell the young man to bugger off if he used that one. I dare you to try that one, 4th Dwarf! Or, Chair, you could use this line, and replace the word "seat" for "chair". That might be appealing to the ladies, especially if you asked it rhetorically: "Is this Chair taken? Why yes, I believe it is!"

But back to the dating thing, Coyote. The goal should be good old-fashioned shagging, not dating. Don't date. Just shag. Shagging is good for you, you shaggy dog, you!

So Long to the Rat Mole

"The technical term is basal cell carcinoma, but I think you might as well call it a rodent ulcer," said the surgeon at our first consultation.

"Rodent ulcer?" I asked.

"Uh huh," he said and went on to explain that yes, it's "malignant" but almost never metastasises, and it's no big deal to remove.

I nodded calmly, but in my head, I was thinking, what kind of medical marketing genius came up with rodent ulcer as a euphemism? Might as well call it a rat mole.

Anyway, the pesky thing is gone now. It was interesting how few people seemed to notice the growing scabby thing on my forehead while it was there. Many more people noticed the bandage, but I suppose when you use it as display space that is only natural.

First, I went with a post-it note that said "You should see the other guy." Later I realized I could save myself $2.50 on a birthday card. I was surprised at how many people read "Happy Birthday, Jim!" on my forehead and assumed I was Jim. People who actually seemed intelligent in other ways.

"I'm not Jim," I politely said when they wished me a happy birthday. "If I was Jim, this would be written backwards."

Back to the rat mole, it's gone. The stitches come out on Friday and the biopsy results will be a few weeks.