She's not your Little Freak

Results may vary from those shown.... proceed with caution.

So this morning I was listening to my Thursday morning guilty pleasure, Wrong Number Flirting, and the mission on which Slutty Chelsea (the telephone decoy) was put upon was a bit different from the typical chick trying to find out if her man is a philandering man whore cheating.  Today's caller was a woman (let's call her L) who had been dating a chick (let's call her B) for about 6 weeks and was SO in love with her, but suspected that B still had her foot on the other side of the fence, i.e. she was still seeing men.  This was B's first lesbian relationship but had told the L that she'd never felt like this with anyone before, really cared for her, etc.  But thanks to a Blackberry and a bit of snooping, ole girl realized her new lady friend was still e-mailing her ex-boyfriend.  Enter Slutty Chelsea and her first lesbian challenge.

Slutty Chelsea calls B pretending that her girlfriend recommended B for hair coloring services.  Per usual, Slutty Chelsea goes on to play the "you sound hot let's meet up" card, to which B responds that she's flattered, but she has a BOYFRIEND.  Busted.  L comes back on the phone, hurt and asking for explanations, to which B replies in so many words "This was nothing serious..... I was just having fun."  And then her solution to the problem was an an offer bring a guy into the mix.  Aye dios mio.

As much as I laughed in my car at the whole scenario (as I do when anyone gets busted), a bigger part of me was pissed on behalf of L and all the other women who have had their feelings hurt by someone who was "just having fun."  Dabbling into the realm of bi-sexuality seems to be all the rage now. It's almost a rite of passage for women from 18 to 25 (or beyond).  Young women play around for a bit, then box up that phase in their lives and go on to marry Mr. Right and have her 2.5 kids, and might whisper about her exploits to her fellow soccer moms over one too many martinis.  No big deal, right?  Wrong.

The thing that pisses me off the most about the treatment of gays and lesbians by our society is that they are not seen as human beings with regular human lives and human emotions.  All our society sees is SEX, which for any heterosexual person is accepted as only a small facet of their life (unless you're a porn star).  ALL people have feelings, seek love, and avoid hurt.  B treated L like a game, something fun to do til she got it out of her system, while L was looking for a real committed relationship.

Does this sound familiar?

Let's change the scenario around.  Let's say L is a black female, and B is a white male.  B has only dated white women, but has always wondered what it would be like to shag a black woman.  So he engages L in what she thinks is a relationship, tells her how much he cares for her and how she makes him feel, and later she finds out that Becky has still been on the scene all this time while B used L as something to check off on his "Things to Do Before I Die" list.  Swap "black" and "white" for any sort of characteristic (fat, skinny, amputee, little person, visually/hearing impaired) and flip flop the genders..... in all of these scenarios, one person was objectified and treated as a novelty, while the other played with their emotions for the sake of experimentation.  People are not experiments, loved ones.

Going back to lesbians..... contrary to popular belief, lesbian women are not solely here for men's entertainment and sowing young women's wild oats.  Those girls you see tonguing each other down in the club are not the representatives for women who love being with other women.  I know lesbian couples who have been together for years, have homes, families, kids, LIVES together. They want love and happiness just like any other woman.  But they want that with another WOMAN, not your freaky ass and whatever dude you want to bring around to add to the mix.  Experimenting and dabbling is fine and all, but don't involve someone who is looking for a serious relationship and/or let her know up front what your intentions are.  There are plenty of other dabblers and Nicki Minja Little Freaks out there to accomplish your purpose.  There are also plenty of lesbian women who get off on "turning out" straight chicks and will enjoy using you just as much as you are using them.  Just let them know up front where you're coming from and let them choose whether they want to proceed.  Don't play with people's emotions and mislead them for your personal enjoyment, m'kay?  It's really a simple, universal rule for any type of relationship.

So ladies, do your thing, explore your lives, just make sure you're not committing woman-on-woman emotional crimes and doing the same thing to lesbian women that you don't want done to you.

Public Snooping... just don't do it

This is how snooping SHOULD be done.... and in that outfit, too. He might be less mad.

One of my new guilty pleasures has become Thursday morning's Wrong Number Flirting on a local radio station.  Basically it's the telephone and radio version of the "sexy decoy" on talk shows.  A female who suspects her man may be cheating calls in, tells her story, gives some background, and one of the radio hosts plays the role of "Slutty Chelsea" and calls dude up with a somewhat plausible story and tries to get dude to hook up with her and/or admit some other fact that his girlfriend/wife suspects he's hiding.  For example, last Thursday's guy was a math tutor and his girlfriend suspected that he was cheating with his female pupils, so Slutty Chelsea called pretending she needed "late night tutoring sessions."  Another week it was a baseball coach and Slutty Chelsea calling as a MILF in need of coaching for her son.  Or my favorite was the woman who suspected her fiance had been engaged before and her ring was a hand-me-down..... Slutty Chelsea called claiming to be a friend of the girlfriends, and not only did dude try and have a date with her (because he thought he remembered her) he also admitted to being engaged before and that they only reason his fiance got the second-hand ring is because they were both fat and that was the only place he could get a plus sized ring.......*ouch*. 

As entertained as I am while I drive Mini-Me to school each Thursday morning, I also delight in the loathing that I have for the women who call in to set their dudes up.  They're usually whiny, insecure, passive aggressive little nags who flip out when someone is prettier than them.  For many of them their only "evidence" that their man may be dipping out are the fact that he interacts with women and "acts weird".  I'm not much of a fan of snooping in the first place, but if you must do it, do it in private.  These women, however, choose to investigate with thousands of people in central region of the state listening in. And this is even worse than the talk shows, because at least the guy consents to going and sitting on Steve Wilko's stage, and if he doesn't have enough sense to know some bad shit is gonna come of it, that's on him. But to just blindside a dude and take your snooping to the public domain by tapping his phone conversation via a popular radio station......cuán patético. 

My favorite part, however, is to hear the guys' reactions.  Some of them are, in fact, low down dirty dogs who get busted, and it's funny to hear them fumble through an explanation.  But for the innocent guys, I like to hear them go OFF on their girlfriends.  Sometimes they try and make it seem like dude is an asshole for getting pissed, stressing that there's nothing to be upset about because he "passed" and isn't "in trouble", but I think they are perfectly justified in being pissed off to the highest level of pissivity.  Not only does he have to deal with an insecure, whiny chick who's probably already cracked all his passcodes and checks his pockets daily, he's now got to deal with the world knowing that his woman just tried to throw him under the bus on a crowded street.  She's taken what should be a private matter and made it very, very public, and didn't even have the she-balls to do it herself.  They act like they can't understand why he's so mad.  I'm a rather private person (despite what you read on here and Twitter), so I perfectly understand and sympathize...... in fact, I can often be seen driving in my car screaming at the radio "Yea, dumb ass, that's what you GET!"  I laughed allll the way to work one day over a woman who ruined her own engagement surprise.  Ha ha, bitch.  Ha.

Whether you're an advocate of snooping or not (I'm not), or believe it's justified when you find something incriminating (I don't), this is just entirely the wrong way of going about it.  Relationship problems should not be aired to the general public in graphic detail, whether that's on a talk show, radio show, blog or Twitter (and yes, I admit I've been guilty of such in the past, but I've checked myself).  You shouldn't need the mass media market to back you up.  I can't stand that show "The Marriage Ref" because I don't think you should leave it to Madonna and a live studio audience to work out your marital issues.  You should just grow a pair (ladies, too) and confront your mate one-on-one, not hide behind some show and let them do your dirty work that you're too much of a wuss to do yourself.  The very fact that there are thousands of people like me who eagerly listen and laugh at what otherwise should be a serious issue should deter, not encourage you.  These women have reduced themselves to cheap forms of frivolous entertainment and unwittingly dragged their dudes right in along with them.  So yes, they deserve to get thoroughly embarrassed and read the riot act in public, where they put themselves in the first place.

So handle your private business in private, loved ones. If you are so immature as to have to get a third-party to trick your mate into revealing information, maybe you need to rethink whether you're mature enough to handle a real relationship in the first place.

Where I Wanna Be......?

"I would rather be able to appreciate things I can not have than to have things I am not able to appreciate."

~ Elbert Hubbard

When Donnell Jones' "Where I Wanna Be" first came out, I was really pissed.  I liked the song in the abstract, but the lyrics greatly upset me.  I was 21 years old, recently married to my one and only boyfriend, and had two kids ages 6 and 1.  I just thought Donnell was the biggest asshole in the world.  What the hell is this "finding where I wanna be" bullshit?? WTF do you mean that if you love someone you need to leave before you cheat on them?? I felt outraged on behalf of whatever woman was the inspiration for that song, and I'm sure I'm not the only high school sweetheart that felt a little..... threatened.

But then, like with so many other things, I grew up.  And hindsight is a mutha.

High school sweethearts are like puppies.... everyone ooohs and ahhhs and "that's so cute!" at them, but don't think about how they piss and shit all over your house and chew up all your furniture.  The idea of high school sweethearts is nice and all, but in reality you may not only be selling yourself short, but selling your relationship short.  Before you start mentally composing your "Nuhh-uhhh!!" comments telling me about how long you've been married to the captain of the football team for which you were a cheerleader, or how your grandparents got married at 12, just wait for my twisted logic and hear me out.

We often cannot appreciate what we have until we experience and appreciate what we don't have.  And this is where the utility of dating different people comes into play.  Every relationship-- even the crappy one with the psychotic stalker -- is instrumental in your growth as a person and as a potential companion.  You get to learn what you like AND what you don't like, what behaviors are normal and which are extraordinary, and the successful and unsuccessful ways of interacting and communicating.  The ability to compare and contrast is invaluable whether you realize it or not.  I realize it in hindsight because I was not able to compare and contrast, and neither was my ex-husband, because all we knew were each other.  He didn't know how tolerant I was, or how well I could cook, or how phenomenal good I was as a lover, because he had nothing to compare it to.  And I didn't know how I deserved to be treated by a man, because I had no way of comparing.  Our relationship existed in a vacuum, as do most high school sweetheart relationships. 

When I started seeing other people, it was like a whole new world opened up within myself.  You mean to tell me I'm NOT a crazy psycho girl that my ex always told me I was, but am really actually a pretty laid back chick?  So I really AM a fantastic oral advocate (he tried to tell me I wasn't) and can turn a man on at the drop of a hat (he tried to say.... well, never mind... he had some "issues")??  And yes, I can cook my ass off?  Oral sex in and of itself is enjoyable?? No, dudes aren't supposed to sit back and watch their woman fix shit around the house??  All of these things weren't revealed to me until after I had something to compare my first and only relationship with.  And yes, I'm sure there were some positive things about him that I didn't see til I started dating............. I just can't think of any right now.

There is also something to be said about the power of choice.  When you're dealing with toddlers, one technique parenting "experts" tell you to do is to give them the ability to choose between two options when in actuality they'd really rather do neither.  If Suzie doesn't want to put on her sweater, you make the situation a little more tolerable by giving her the choice between her red sweater or her purple sweater.  People, starting before they can even communicate, like to feel like they have control over their lives, and choice is one way of exercising that control.  Being able to choose Option A between A and B is a lot more satisfying than just only having Option A.  It's the psychological benefit of that choice, that control.

While human beings are just slightly more complicated than sweaters, the same concept applies.  I have a friend who is dating a woman he originally dated back in undergrad.  Since then he's been married, divorced, dated woman locally and across the country.  But he said that they now finally realized and accepted how good they were for each other.  Dating (and sometimes marrying) other people gives you an appreciation for what you have now. I'm not saying that before you settle down with the person you potentially want to spend the rest of your life with that you have to go out and play the field one last time to be extra sure. I'm saying that the experience of dating more than one person (not necessarily simultaneously) at some point in your life (hopefully before you meet your soul mate) helps you to be more comfortable with your ultimate choice because you have a better awareness of what your likes and dislikes are, as well as how your mate stacks up in the grand scheme of things.  And also just because you actually have a choice.

So back to Donnell.......I get it now.  Perhaps he went out and dated a few skeezers chicks and realized that his original lady really was the one for him (tho good luck getting her to come back.... that's a whole 'nother issue) or perhaps he realized she wasn't The One, thus saving them both from wasting a lot of time together (and making him, not Usher, the artist behind "Papers").  But at least now he KNOWS [insert GI Joe quote here].

You're staying with WHO??

As I've previously mentioned, I'm dating a man who has a child (I called it "Brady Bunch Dating").  Dating by itself is tricky, but dating when you have kids presents it's own set of unique issues.  We've been over the weekend coordination hurdle trying to get our visitation weekends on the same schedules so we didn't always have a kid (or 2) around every weekend.  We've done the group vacation thing involving last minute negotiations with a baby momma who threatened the week before the trip to punish his son for doing something relatively minor by not allowing him to go with us.  We've listened to each other's tales of woe and frustration dealing with our respective other parents.  Overall it works pretty well, but it has its challenges.

 

Recently I have been faced with a challenge that has tested my ability to focus on priorities over feelings.  Back in December my beau's son's mother had another baby (no not his, thank the Most High) so she was unable to make the 3 hour round trip to their meeting spot on his visitation weekends with a baby in the car.  Whereas many fathers would just say eff it and take the loss on the visitation time, he decided to be the bigger person and instead drive the entire three hour each way trip to where his son lives and just stay the weekend in that city.  Okay, yes I miss him while he's gone, but it's not as bad because I have my own kids on the same weekend (after a year long battle).  But the problem is his accommodations while he's there.  Hotels twice a month would be a ridiculous expense on top of what he was paying for gas.  Originally he was supposed to be staying with a cousin or a fraternity brother, but they all flaked out on him.  The only other person who offered to help was a friend..... a female friend. 

 

Now, from a logical, rational standpoint I said to myself that I was quite sure he was being truthful when he said that she really is, and always has been, just a friend. (No Biz Markey)  But you ladies (and I'm sure guys too) know that feeling.... that icky stomach feeling.... that uncomfortable I-just-don't-like-it feeling?  I think it's called..... um, let me see...... jealousy/insecurity/possessiveness/take-two-steps-back-away-from-my-toes-ness.  It's a natural emotional reaction.  However, where the road forks is when you decide what you are going to do in response to those feelings. 

 

My choice was to put on my big girl panties and not say a damn thing.

 

I know most women would be like "Aw. Hell. To the. Naw." The issue actually was brought up by his son's mother who didn't understand how I could possibly let it happen (to which he responded "And that's why you're not my girl.")  For most women, the thought of their man going every other weekend to stay at some chick's house with his son when you don't know her, never met her, don't know what her angle is or intentions are, is a little too much for most women to bear.  And I'm a woman too so I'm not above those feelings myself.  What I am above, however, is doing anything to interfere with or complicate his time with his child.  Fathers have enough stress to deal with trying to be the best parent they can be given the limited time they have with their kids.  I can't stand when girlfriends/new wives come in and make things even MORE complicated because of how a situation makes them feel.  Guess what, sweetheart?  It's not about you.  You, unfortunately, don't come first, and you never will.  

 

So though I really don't like it and wish it were different, I've shoved those feelings down into the sub-basement, kept my thoughts to myself, and stepped out on faith a little. I really admire and respect everything he puts up with and overcomes to be a good father, so who am I to make things even more difficult.  It did make me feel good the other day when he let me know he actually noticed and thanked me for it, and asked me how I felt about it.  Because even though there's nothing to be done about it, I appreciated being able to get my feelings out. 

 

I'm not saying you have to blindly go along with any story your man or woman throws at you using their child as an alibi, which isn't cool either (but happens).  Just don't over complicate an already tough and complicated situations by always demanding that your feelings come first.  You may win the battle in the short term, but in the end nothing good comes of pitting your man against his child.  Not his child's mother... his child, because that's who ultimately gets affected.

Say it with love, say it with meat

I'm all about fairness and equality (even if fairness and equality aren't always about me), so in that spirit I want to share a little info about the guys' response to Valentine's Day.... yes, I am talking about Steak and Blow Job Day (or SBJ Day for short).

SBJ Day is on March 14th and is considered to be the complementary holiday to Valentine's Day just for the guys.  It's your opportunity to really show your appreciation for your man that you should be showing all year long, but that doesn't stop V-Day from being celebrated.

SBJ Day is about exactly what it says..... no flowers, candy, gifts, cards, jewelry, stuffed animals.  Just a steak. And a blow job.  That's it.  You have to admire the simplicity of it really.  I guess you could fret over which cut of steak you'll buy, or just which Superhead inspired "technique" you will use, but honestly, I don't think he'll care, and it's just another unnecessary layer of complexity that we women tend to put on everything (yea, I said it). 

The origins of the holiday are somewhat ambiguous.  It was founded some time around 2002, probably as a joke, but not surprisingly it actually took hold.  Go survey 10 people in the grocery store, and I'm sure an overwhelming zero percent of them know about it.  But I know about it, dammit.  And now you do, too.

 

And because I'm such a proponent of fairness and an advocate of properly "showing appreciation", here are a few helpful ideas to make your SBJ Day experience a success: 

Steak Recipes-- Steaks is a pretty basic food to cook, but can go horribly wrong if not done right.  Here are 3,008 recipes for beef steak to choose from, ranging from the basic to the complex.  Here is a guide to how to choose a good steak and a guide to choosing the best cut of steak for various recipes.  Or if your skills in the kitchen are lacking, you can always take him out for a steak though it is much harder for you to serve it to him naked. 

Alternatives for Non-Beef Eaters-- The name of the holiday just says "steak", but not what KIND of steak. If your man doesn't eat beef, here are some alternatives that are still with the spirit of the holiday:

• Fish steaks -- Fish steaks are cut perpendicular to the backbone, as a opposed to fillets which are cut parallel to it. Salmon, swordfish, halibut, turbot, tuna, shark, sturgeon, and mahi mahi all make for good steaks.  Here are some fish steak recipes for your non-bovine eating man.

• Vegetarian "steaks"-- Thanks to advances in food science (or magic), there are a wide assortment of vegetarian "meats" including the vegetarian steak. Or you can grill him up a portobello mushroom which is considered the "steak of the mushroom world". 

BJ Tips and Tricks -- Um, yea..... not gonna put myself out there and give away my personal secrets.  I will say though that the key to a good BJ is effort and enthusiasm and no teeth.  If you approach it like a chore, it will be received as a chore.  Ladies, it's not that bad, and if you are over the age of 23 still turning your nose up and saying "eww, I'd never"..... shame on you.  Grow up, put on your big girl panties and handle your business (before someone else does for you).  However, if your oral advocacy skills aren't quite up to par (or just need a refresher course), Sunny Crittenden's BJs 101 is a pretty good primer.

SBJ Day Cards-- not really necessary (since the name is not SBJC Day) but may be a nice touch, something to send to him early in the day in anticipation of what to come later (no pun intended, but feel free to use it).  Remember, the most important sexual organ is between the ears.  And the verses on the cards are actually kinda funny.

So there it is.  No sense in feigning ignorance now.... you know what you need to do.  So ladies, get your marinades and your lip gloss ready and show your man just how much you care.