What Mainstream?

Come take a trip down memory lane with me.  No, you don’t have a choice (except to not read this entry).  It’s like when your friends plunk you down on their couch and make you watch the videos from their family vacation.  No matter how much you protest, you know you’re sunk.  In other words, the sooner you shut up and just do as you’re told, the sooner it will be over.

When I was a little girl, I never did ordinary girl things.  My mom dressed me in dresses she made for me, and I hated it.   I never played with the big doll someone gave me, except to strip her naked.

OT:  Larry O’ is hosting Countdown tonight, and I’m lusting freely over his caustic wit and his wry smirk.  However, he is talking about the idiot ex-governor, Sarah Palin, which is a bit of a lust-killer.  Idiocy and vapidness have never turned me on.  Oooh, Shannyn Moore, a progressive blogger from Alaska–she’s hot.  I love her voice.

Ahem.  Back to my naked dolls.  That was a theme in my childhood–naked dolls.  I had a few Barbies, an Oscar Goldman action figure with an exploding briefcase (the one I had, the briefcase, that is, was busted), and a Dorothy Hamill doll.  They were all given to me by someone outside the family.  All I did was chop off the hair of the girls, even Dorothy Hamill, color one of the Barbie doll’s hair black (presumably to match mine.  I had short hair back then), and make them all have sex together.  All of them.

That should have told me something, but it didn’t.  Instead, I stuffed down the shame I felt and continued to furtively make my dolls have sex in the privacy of my own bedroom.  Ahem.  Sorry.  I had to throw that last bit in there for the rightwingnutters who would be aghast at the idea of a seven-year old girl making her dolls have sex.

I never imagined getting married.  I never imagined having children.  Hell, I never imagined living past the age of, say, fifty.  I never imagined going to college, and I never imagined being in a long-term relationship.

I assumed that I would do all that because that’s what you do as a female in America (except the college part, perhaps.  That was the product of being born to a Taiwanese family).  I would grow up, go to college, get my MRS., procreate, and…something.  What, I don’t know, but I knew with grim certainty that this was my future.  I found no joy in the thought, but I accepted it as my lot.

Fast-forward to college.  I was in my second year, dating the man I thought I was going to marry when I realized two things.  One, women were damn hot, and two, I didn’t want children.  I shelved the former because I was already grappling with being Asian and a woman–I didn’t want to add bisexuality to the mix (and it was always bisexuality.  I like cock way too much to be a lesbian).  As to the latter, however, I had to think about it because it struck me out of the blue.

It knocked me for a loop to think that I might not want children.  In my family, becoming a mother was held up as the number one priority in a woman’s life.  To admit, even to myself, that I might, just might not to want to have children was heresy.  I chewed it over.  I talked about it with no one.  This was back in the late eighties/early nineties when such a statement was looked at with suspicion.  I examined the issue from every angle, and I came to the simple conclusion:  No, I did not want children.

Whew!  That was, in the end, an easy decision for me to make.  I am the Queen of Indecision, and I had no doubt in my mind that I didn’t want children.  Foolishly, that’s the answer I gave when people asked me about having children.  Why foolish?  Because I got many reactions, ranging from the condescending, “Oh, you’ll change your mind when you get older” to the incredulous “Really?  You don’t want children?  How do you know you don’t want children?”  to the angry, “You must think I’m an idiot, then, for wanting them.”

I got unsolicited advice:  “You should have kids because you’re so intelligent.”  My ex’s mom told him that we should have kids because, “You’re so smart (my ex), and she’s so beautiful.”  My immediate reaction to the latter was, “Hey, I’m fucking smart, too.  Smarter than he is!”

I had no idea that my decision not to procreate would create such a shit-storm as really, what does it have to do with anyone else?  It’s about me and my womb and what I will do with said womb.  Over the years, I began to realize that my womb was not my own, as I had previously imagined.  No, it was communal property, and everyone had a stake in what I did with it.  I mean, really, that’s what anti-choice is about, and it’s what rubbing a pregnant stranger on the belly is about.  Deep down, the belief is that a woman doesn’t own her own womb, therefore any decision she makes with it is fair game for criticizing and nitpicking.

Well, to all y’all, lo those many years ago, bite me.  I am now three years past my birthing prime, and I have not procreated once.  So you see, I did know myself better than you all did.  Ha.

Ok.  So I didn’t have kids.  I didn’t get married.  My process in realizing I didn’t want to marry followed a much different path than my no children realization, but I don’t feel like detailing the marriage one right now.

So, now.  We’re up to the present.  It took me many painful years to realize that I was very different than the norm in countless ways.  I hate shopping and love sports.  I don’t consume much popular media other than to gawp in horror at what passes as entertainment these days.  I have no desire to live with someone, marry someone, or birth any babies.  I am agnostic (neither a believer or an atheist); I am bi; I am tattooed (though that is pretty much the norm these days); I am Asian; blah, blah, blah.  You know the whole litany by now since I have hashed it out so many times.

So, I need to take this further because I’ve been stewing on some other things.  I don’t see myself with one person for the rest of my life.  I have always been somewhat, ah, adventurous, but I considered myself a primarily monogamous person.  I have been in an open relationship, and it was for my partner’s benefit, not mine.  I thought that if he would just give up his polyamorous ways, we could settle down and live happily ever after (ignoring the slew of other issues we had, of course).  I was so focused on his polyamorous nature, I sucessfully ignored my own less-than-monogamous nature and my own commitment issues.

You see, though I walked away from religion twenty years ago, it never completely left me.  I still had the dictums drilled in my head:  Nice girls don’t want to have sex with as many people as possible.  As I wrote about in my now semi-famous entry, Chocolate, Cocks, and Carnal Consumption, I got into some trouble for not resolving my internal issues concerning my carnal nature.

I was told that nice girls don’t look at strangers on the street and imagine what they’d be like in bed.  I was told that nice girls don’t long to be with a couple at one time–or more than a couple, if truth were to be told.  I was told that nice girls don’t want to have sex multiple times a day in as many positions as possible with as many people as possible.  No, only a whore and slut would want such things.  Like making my dolls have sex in my bedroom, I would do much of my sexing on the sly.  I stopped myself from having even more sex because of the guilt factors in my brain.  I really regret one such instance because he was so fucking hot, but I was in a relationship that wasn’t at the moment open, even though it would soon be.  To that bartender from the 500 in SF, I just wanted to let you know that I still think about you from time to time, and I regret not following up on your invitation.

Back to now.  I am tired of carrying around the strictures of my extinguished religion in my head.  It’s especially virulent when the subject is sex, and I am really fucking tired of that.  I have spent too long trying to adhere to some nebulous, abstract ideal in which I never believed.  It’s time for me to decide on my own what works for me.

In addition, it’s time for me to embrace my inner hedonist.  I have spent my life trying to deny that I am a sensualist, but I cannot any longer.  That lusty, bawdy, rapacious, sensuous, voluptuous, sybaritic, passionate, juicy part of me that I try so hard to tamp down will no longer be denied.  I am single with no dependents, so why the fuck can’t I fuck anyone I want, as long as it’s ethical and consensual (and sensual, to boot), hotter than hell, and it’s exactly what I want?  Who knows?  If I finally stop trying to restrain that part of me, maybe it’ll free up energy that I can focus on my life goals instead.  It would, indeed, be a win-win situation.