Category Archives: Dating

Of Walls, Waits, and Wistfulness

It was a warm and spring-like evening when our heroine sat tapping away at her keyboard, clad in unsightly short shorts and a 15-year-old concert t-shirt that never would live to see the streets again.
Tom Waits wailed in his gravelly splendour as a breeze softly batted the bamboo blinds. She peered over the rim of her glass at the words before her, unsure where the fuck any of it would go.

But with the right music on the right night with the right drink in the wrong clothes with the tapping toes, well, who needs luck? She shrugged. Continue reading

Why I Don't Follow You On Twitter

I tweet incessantly on Twitter. Most of us know this by now.
I also, inexplicably, will hit 1,300 followers probably before the weekend is through. I follow little over 300, quite a few of whom don’t follow me. Whatever.
So why don’t I follow you? Well, it’s not about you, is it? It’s about me getting the most out of the experience for me. It’s about me enjoying my time on there. Not making you happy in Nantucket or whatever. This is my gratuitous fun time, nothing more. Continue reading

The Trouble With Writing

I have this longstanding love/hate relationship with writing.
I love the articulation of thought, the solving of ideas, the expressing of inner qualities.
The trouble with readers is, what they see is what they get.
You people, you read my blog and you somehow think what I put up here is some finite guide to the divinity of Steff, or some such.
Unfortunately, it’s not. Continue reading

The Daunting Power of Love

Our young protagonist, involved in an unlikely affair with a considerably older woman, one that all outsiders would state an “obvious fail”, just shrugs at his dubious confronters and says, “I know what I’m doing. I’ll be all right.”
skeletonsdm060207_228x304And me, there on my sofa, I scoff and chuckle, “Oh, sure you will.”
Because I know. I know that, no matter how old we are, love makes bitches of us all.
Whatever your age, power status, social stature, or financial means, when love comes knocking and your heart starts racing, almost every one of us knows the cloying struggle between terror and exuberation.
My god — someone I like? Someone I need to be vulnerable for? Someone who’ll require me breaking free of my thou-shalt-not-enter comfort zone? Someone else to be responsible to?
I know all about the terror and the desire to run. Been there, done that. Yet it happens every time.
Why? Because I’m too fuckin’ smart for my own good. Continue reading

Tube or Not Tube, That is the Question

It’s Monday and my weekend has vanished. My place isn’t a complete disaster, but I won’t be inviting any company over just yet.
I’m all right with that, though, because I enjoyed my downtime. I caught up on some TiVo and accomplished a few little things. Most importantly, I met cool new people and had some fun in the sun.
It was such a contrast to the holing-up and hiding I’ve been doing so much of for so long. Oh, sure, call it “me time” and it seems so deliberate and purposeful. Most of the time, though, it was really just hiding. Not because I was scared of anything, but just because it was easier. Continue reading

In Vino Veritas: Turning Points

[One of those into-and-almost-done-a-bottle-of-wine postings. Bear with me here.]
So, Mission: Get a Life is underway.
Making friends, for me? Not very hard. Not if I am myself. If I’m relaxed, content, sociable, people warm to me quickly and easily. And why not? I’m a good person. Better yet, I’m funny. I even make the aesthete’s basic requirement of being “smart” in the broad yet defined “non-Wikipedia” kind of way.
Bonus: I’m brutally frank. This makes me unpredictable. I still regularly shock my best friends of 15+ years, because I’m unflinchingly honest — always. Fortunately, I’m often (definitely not always) tactful, so it’s a little more easily swallowed. Even my employer calls me “honest to a fault”, but she laughs when saying it, and I notice coworkers will actively eavesdrop when I speak, so it can’t be that offensive. Yet. Continue reading

When Waiting Can Be Worth It

The trouble with being a fast-food nation is that it’s become the norm to want what you want the way you want it, when you want it.
We’re led to believe that every single day is so important — which is why we need the iPhone, the laptop, the netbook, the fast car, the microwave — that to waste a single moment or wait a single day is tantamount to a national disaster.
And it’s easy to fall into the expectation that because there’s never going to be another today that tomorrow just won’t do, especially when it comes to relationships.
We often don’t have a lot of patience anymore, particularly in love. Me, I’ve never really had it. Continue reading

Doctor, Doctor, Gimme the News

Sex, even mere hanky-panky, is a workout.
All that squirming and groping and thrusting makes your whole body (if you’re doing it right) tense and flex. Maybe even throb a little.
Injuries can happen in sex. Hell, people die shagging when their hearts give out. From orgasm to aneurysm, just like that. Continue reading

My Own Private Dichotomy

Fear is not my friend. I don’t care what the bookstore’s self-help section says.
Fear is a bitch. A mean, driven bitch.
I am not a fan of fear.
I bought that book. Twice. Feel The Fear and Do It Anyways. Sometimes I do it anyways. But I always feel the fear. Ever-present, always-niggling fear.
Fortunately I know that I’m apparently invincible. Continue reading

Arousing — Er, Awaking the Beast

I’m at my breaking point, I suspect. My resolve isn’t very resolved anymore.
I have this incredibly awesome gift most people would KILL for. When I’m not sexually involved, I can flip my libido off like a lightswitch. It’s why I’m so content to not date. Because dating just toys with my resolve. Once I’m on the business end of a kiss? Whew.
Sooner or later, however, Requirements will need to be met. Continue reading