When X = X, or,
When Is An Ex An Ex?

Some people have lately been admiring my system of defining stages of relationships, so I thought I would share it. It is especially pertinent at this point because I had the unique experience on Friday of being called urgently by someone I've referred to as an "ex" telling me that it was an inappropriate term to use. Not that we're dating again-- in fact I think our friendship (which was always the main relationship) just ended. But that is neither here nor there. I would like to make an open book of when and how I am going to claim someone as an "ex."

By the way, I think the reason "girlfriend" and "boyfriend" are so loaded in queer minds is that - without the white wedding option- those terms are the gateway to the courtship's end. Me, I'm part heterosexual (being historically more bi than lezzie, although currently a lesbian bisexual [I like femmes and butches]), and I am an activist who happens to know that you can currently get homosexually married in three different countries (and soon to be more, more, more!) so I know that girlfriend/ boyfriend is not the end of the line, and so I'm not as gf/bf termino-phobic. But most queers are, and that's why at the latter end of my queer relationship trajectory "THING" is used a lot. "EX" is loaded for people for the same reason gf/bf are- it implies to queers a history of having a committed relationship, whereas among the hets it generally just means you have a history, maybe you shared fluids or something. Quibble with me if you will, but that's how I see it.

I have two relationship plans for fuckable people, i.e. non-blood-relatives who are minimally attractive to me. If you are not currently in an open/ known (uh, by both parties) sexual relationship with me, and I'm attracted to you, you are potentially eligible to advance on the Friend/ Fuckwatch or the Fuckbuddy Program.

This is how it has historically worked for me.
WE MEET
A. WE BECOME FRIENDS, or,
B. WE FUCK

---

WE MEET:
A. WE BECOME FRIENDS
A1. WE'RE FRIENDS, WE STAY JUST FRIENDS
A2. WE'RE FRIENDS, BUT I LIKE YOU IN THAT WAY. I PUT YOU ON
FUCKWATCH. You are now on the Friend/ Fuckwatch Program (365 days' observation after meeting, to determine that kind of compatibility).
|
A2a. WE NEVER FUCK. Nothing changes. We stay friends. Yes that means you, I know you know who you are. We will never fuck, and yes you are still my friend.
A2b. WE FUCK.
|
A2b/1. It's not all that. Return to A.
A2b/2. It's all that. Skip to The All Important 3rd Date.

---

WE MEET:
B. WE FUCK
B1. WE HAVE AN ANONYMOUS FLING AND NEVER SPEAK AGAIN.
B2. WE MAKE A DATE. You are now on the Fuckbuddy Program (i.e. we will not be mistaken for "just friends" by anyone, including your exes). (See below for the definition of an ex).
|
The 1st Date (see my old definitions for sensual living to know if it was a date)
- this can be anonymous, or sharing first names and either e-mail or one working phone number.
B2a. There is only one date. No harm done, maybe we'll be taken for "just friends" after this. Maybe we'll even really be friends.
B2b. You make a second date.
    The 2nd Date
    - here you can find out the person's employment status, and/or other nonintrusive bits of information.
    - reveal your terminal illness here, if you have one.
    B2b/1. There are only two dates. No big deal. You can still sometimes skip to the Friend/ Fuckwatch Program here, after a brief cooling-off period.
    B2b/2. You make a THIRD DATE. This is the big one.
    \      
     \      
The All Important 3rd Date
- After advancing to the third date of the Fuckbuddy Program, you can only go back to the Friend/ Fuckwatch Program after a significant period of virtual or total noncontact after the last fuck, say, two calendar years. Don't waste your time trying to "be friends" because it was "not you, it was me" or something like that. Codependents (most of us are these at some point) do not do well with these "still friends" arrangements, with all the emotional responsibility of an intimate friend but none of the physical privileges of being sexual partners. So be on your most honest behavior on the third date (if you haven't been so far).
- on the third date you can reveal your relationship status(es), your safer sex and time/ space requirements, and how you feel about dating other people. My new standby rule is the "three freebies" rule, where you each can see one person three times without disclosure, but if you make a fourth date, you share the details from there on out.
- if you are a superhero, now is the time you should reveal at least one secret super power. No, it's not too soon.
        /
       /
      /
     /
After you make a fourth date, you become a
THING.
  {
   }
- The Post-Fuckbuddy Thing
Somewhere between the fourth and tenth dates is the zone where you can share a second working phone number (making you more than fuckbuddies), and if you break up you become EXES. Yes, it's a wide zone, but just so you know, if you are reading this, Mr. I'm Not Your Ex, we had more than a few dates. It was a Thing. Not a Thing Thing, but a Thing.
       {
        }
- The Thing Thing
Somewhere between one and twelve months the terminology question will arise, because you are calling it a "thing thing" to friends, and they want to know what that means. Although you can acknowledge that you are more than fuckbuddies, it is still appropriate at this time to skirt the topic and just use the words "girlthing" or "boything" or "boygirlthing."
   {
    }
- You are in an Entanglement sort of Thing Thing after two months.
Long-term emotional entanglements are my most special specialty. The Entanglement Zone is where people (ok, I) will sneak in the words "girlfriend" or "boyfriend." Secretly, to other people, but still. It is no longer funny to use the appellation "my special friend" even though your parents always use it. Processing ensues.
{
  }
- After six months you have a Post-Thing Thing: theTerminologically Challenged Zone.
You will not be able to avoid making SOME decision about the words "girlfriend" or "boyfriend." This is where you find yourself making derisive (but subconsciously longing) "husband" and "wife" jokes about eachother. If you have jointly purchased a piece of furniture without ever finishing the "girlfriend" or "boyfriend" discussion, my hat's off to you. You're beating amazing odds and should celebrate it with some kind of anniversary celebration. Like the anniversary of the first time you took off the latex. I think that's more important than the terminology landmarks. My best friend in high school and I had our favorite pick up line all figured out: "I want to catch all your diseases." When you really get there, that's something.

---

Note: Although "ex" isn't appropriate until after AT LEAST the fourth date, some kind of mediated divorce proceedings are a possibility at any time at all, if it is a lesbionic type involvement. Even that dried flower from the first bouquet you picked her on your first date can be negotiated in a notarized document. Not that I've ever gone that far, I'm just speaking from the point of dispassionate observation. (That's the lonely place I always try to pitch my tent on this blog.)

I'm Just Sayin'

It is telling something about me that my book hunting today involved my continued stalking of a discount price on Bondage Fairies Extreme and buying the new Barbara Weiden Boyd edition of Selections from Vergil's Aeneid. And Amazon.com's suggested reading for me was Pookie Believes in Santa Claus, which I'm not buying because I'm not yet done digesting Pookie Puts the World Right, which is currently thumbtacked to the wall above my desk at work (where the world has most definitely NOT been right).

Vote Precious Party!

The Council of Elrond Presents: GOLLUM FOR GOVERNOR. Finally a candidate with transparent motives.

Honestly, I even considered running for governor, just because of the mass peer pressure.

My New Favorite Place to Stalk Stockings

This vendor doesn't have the seamed garter stockings I need, but s/he does seem to be enjoying selling unflattering old nylons more than anyone should.

Deedeebon's Vintage Pantyhose Web Store's Gallery of Goddesses aka their "Ho Museum" (maybe the URL was supposed to be HoseMuseum.html and it's just a lucky abbreviation).

And check out this shop's "Sultry Canadian" hose, with a cover picture the vendor describes as "crime-scene-ish" -- on the $5 hose page.

Greetings from Hell

From:  Collin Korf - co2link@msn.com
Date:  Fri, 8 Aug 2003

All homosexuals (that's what you are) will burn in hell unless you
immediately give up your perverse lifestyle *choice* and repent and
be saved by Jesus Christ. Trust Him now and avoid everlasting
torment.
Collin K.

I work at a queer human rights agency, and we get our fair share of hate mail. I especially liked the ones written by kids using their parents e-mail (Subject: Burn in Hell; From: thebrownfamily). We used to keep copies and pass them around for fun. Then it got old. Well, sometimes something still comes in that is just irresistable. When this relatively articulate piece of vitriol (above) came in, my coworker M. responded:


To:  Collin Korf - co2link@msn.com
Subject: Greetings from Hell
Date:  Fri, 8 Aug 2003

Life sure is great here. We met this guy named Jesus that just
happened to be a fire fighter. He extinguished the flames in the
blink of an eye, and the whole place was rebuilt . He even managed
to add a swimming pool with all the excess water and he walks across
it for fun sometimes as we all clap. The trick gets a little old
after a while, so hopefully he will learn something new next week.
Hope to see you here soon.

Have a nice weekend,

M.

Catnip makes everything better.

The girlcat and I have rekindled our romance with a big bag of catnip. I had forgotten what a difference catnip makes in our relationship.

The girlcat is one of those MyCatHatesYou.com centerfold candidate cats. She is a very intelligent tabby with piercing green eyes that are often narrowed in your general direction. She has drifted away from me, sleeping separately now for months, and lately sleeping on my suitcase in the closet. It has something to do with me getting a social life, and thereby sometimes staying out all day, all evening, and sometimes even overnight. So the distance has grown, gradually, imperceptably.

I finally realized it had been a long time since our last catnip overdose. So I bought a huge bag of it and poured it out into her toybox/ rolling box. We have had morning visits on the bed, complete with adoring lap cuddling, and gentle hand-cleaning. Kisses galore, every time we run into eachother around the house. I tell you, so many sleights are forgiven, so much affection is suddenly available with kitty drugs.

Check out the Catnip Pizza. I'm still not clear if tomato sauce is involved, and if that would then end up on everything the way catnip is now gently sifted over all my worldly possessions.

Some people apparently haven't yet heard of Aphra Behn.

My friend Melisa is inviting us all to get together to go watch Women's Will - an all-girl Shakespeare company- do The Rover by Aphra Behn, and so it bears reminding that Aphra Behn was a kick-ass proto-lesbian.

A 17th century professional playwright, poet, novelist, spy for the king, crossdresser, etc., also she wrote love poetry to women (from To the Fair Clarinda):

In pity to our Sex sure thou wer't sent,
That we might Love, and yet be Innocent:
For sure no Crime with thee we can commit;
Or if we shou'd - thy Form excuses it.
For who, that gathers fairest Flowers believes
A Snake lies hid beneath the Fragrant Leaves.

She was also opposed to the practice of slavery-- her play "Oroonoko : Or, the Royal Slave" served the abolitionist cause for centuries. Check her out, people.

Isle of Lesbos: Poetry of Aphra Behn

Queer Theory: Aphra Behn

A New Reason to Love Oakland: The People's Grocery

A coworker just sent this to me:

One of the founders [of the People's Grocery] used to be a gang member and decided to drop out of the gang and start up his own non-profit. The group now has its own grocery store and truck to distribute organic produce and products through West Oakland, one of the poorest sections of the Bay Area. They also employ 9 high school students from the local high school, which has a drop out rate of 70%.

And doing a tiny wee bit of research I've found out that the other founder is younger than me-- she's only 28! How hard does this rock?

Hallelujah, One Less Criminal Mastermind on the Payroll in the Pentagon

And the ever eloquent Rumsfeld offered CNN this on the cancellation on the futures market that the now-(again)-resigning Poindexter had proposed:

"It was pretty clear to me it ought to have been canceled, so I did so," Rumsfeld told reporters on Wednesday. "Even if it had been a brilliant idea, which I doubt, it would not have been able to function in the environment that it was created."

He's not sure, in other words, it might have been a brilliant idea.

And yet,

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, said Thursday Poindexter's decision to resign "was probably a wise one."

But then again, he implies, maybe not. Maybe he should have stayed and proposed some even more maybe brilliant ideas.

There is a special place in hell for these people, I have to hope.

In Other News: There's Also One Less Transvestite Criminal Mastermind Loose on the Streets of Oslo

Tipping my invisible Fedora in the direction of the New Yorker tower...

From the Department of Junior High Chemistry

Printed in last Thursday's SF Chronicle's CORRECTIONS column –which I read religiously, which is to say occasionally:

Clarification:

A story Tuesday about a congressional hearing inaccurately stated that adding sodium bicarbonate and citric acid to water causes an explosion. Sodium dropped into water is extremely explosive, whereas sodium bicarbonate and citric acid in water is merely effervescent.

–and refreshing!

I imagine all the disappointed young mad scientists' faces, peering squinty-eyed through the sites of their emptied super soakers, baking soda boxes and piles of lemon rinds at their feet, waiting for the varsity football team's equipment storage shed to erupt.

I know, I know, exploding school buildings aren't as funny as they used to be. But in my day they were pretty funny, and that's speaking as someone whose own elementary school exploded to bits one day over winter break because of a gas leak. That was a LONG winter break.

"Bring Me That Horizon, Really Bad Eggs, and Johnny Depp in a Corset"* -- or --
The Slacker Stalker Review of Pirates of the Caribbean

First of all, apologies to the stalkers of this site for my blogless week. I am experiencing a certain amount of brain damage from lack of sleep caused by the evils of Cyberskin. Now for your review.

Somebody once told me that Johnny Depp is the rare male actor who is a lesbian icon: his role in Pirates seals this fact for me. His strong androgyny, his heavily mannered/ put-on swish/swashbuckling, the eye makeup and hippy hair with a twisty moustache (that I know is the envy of so many butches)... Basically, even for the most man-hating of dykes, Johnny Depp is a good argument for not doing away with the Y chromosome.

But most of all I liked Pirates because it has pirates. I liked pirates before I started volunteering at the amazing pirate-tastic 826 Valencia / pirate store/ tutoring and learning lab in San Francisco, which inspired a pirate-themed bellydance performance I did last Halloween, and where I encountered the book about girl pirates, Booty, which inspired the pirate-themed spoken-word queer cabaret-style show of the same name that I produced earlier this year. Pirates have a lurking, growing presence in my inner and outer worlds. I'm always happy to hear lines like the one in this movie:

Piracy itself can be the right course.

...on a big screen aimed at small impressionable young US Americans. I think my inner pirate used to be nurtured by things like the now-defunct Lesbian Avengers, whose icon/logo is a bomb, and the original open mic. incarnation of Sister Spit, whose icon/ logo was a pirate. But I digress.

The LMS Rating: This movie meets the lesbian movie standard. There are three female characters (our lovely heroine, her maid, and the woman pirate) with speaking parts beyond the strumpet-slap "take that"-s. Our heroine has two different tactical non-boy-related exchanges, one each with the other women. Mind you, there's not much to the conversations, but for an action movie for children, it's a stunning contribution to the world of female-to-female dialogue on mainstream screens.

The Gay Character: This movie has a pair of gay characters (the pirates who are clearly life-partners, with parasol fetishes), and several explicit homoerotic moments (an old drunk sees Johnny Depp's character and says "ah, my first love!" -- my friend I was seeing this with both thought we could've done without knowing that detail, ew-- and some flirty threatening between male kidnappers and male captives), and substantial amounts of crossdressing, with at least two each of very emphasized instances of male-to-female and female-to-male. All the research I've done on pirates supports the idea that pirates attracted genderqueers to their ranks, and reputedly enjoyed breaking all kinds of gender and sex taboos. I'm so, SO glad this movie didn't make pirates just big mean drunk rapacious criminals. They were that too I am sure, but also lusty rebels relishing life amidst danger, and playing hooky around the edges of all kinds of laws, not just criminal laws.

The Jesus Figure: of course, Jack Sparrow, Johnny Depp's character. Did ANYONE think he was going to really hang, though? At least they didn't have his rescuer cut the damn hanging rope so he could scamper away and sword fight his way through the throng. They did something more creative, bless their hearts. The makers of Xena would be proud.

Other notable moments: the cgi moonlight-illuminated-skeletons intermixing with the shaded live actors-- amazing. Really, I thought it would be hokey, and it was beautiful, creepy, and used without a lot of underlining, which made it all the more stupendous. Lastly, whether you are into S&M or not, EVERYONE can enjoy the heroine's line:

If you like pain, try wearing a corset.

(*the Slackerstalker paraphrase of the movie's ultimate line, which you can imagine being delivered by the captain's first mate [the one with the "you were my first love" line], sneaking up on the slurring, swaying Johnny Depp.)

Please Join Me in Mourning

King Karl the Pufferfish of the Pirate Store at 826 Valencia (a writing lab for kids where I volunteer). Karl was cantankerous, jumpy, and defensive, but a very, very good listener. As long as you brought food.

Read here the Pirate Store blog where Karl's death announcement is currently posted.

Gollum as Advice Columnist

"I have had a crush on one of my friends for a very long time. I really want to date her."

For all you other bi-curious women out there, Gollum has some advice for you:

Ask Gollum!

NASA Conspires to Halt Gay Rights Movement with Weapons of Cyberskin:
Or, They Know an Army of Lovers Will Never Get Out of the Barracks

The defense department has to be involved. There is no way this product has innocently found its way into the bedrooms of activist queers all over the world, stopping their militant advance toward freedom as they become stupid and subservient to the pleasures of Cyberskin. It is the footsoldier of an eldritch evil, not unlike the Ring that nearly seduced poor Frodo. I had my first experience with it last night, and it has completely wrecked my focus for work, all day. I’m an activist queer rendered passive and content by its high-tech magicks.

What is this new, real (or realistic) evil? Cyberskin ([tm] or Futurotic [tm], AKA Ultraskin, EroSkin, truskin, soft touch, softskin, thermal plastic, or just the palsy-sounding cyber) is a silicone-and-PVC-mix NASA-made insulator that has a distressingly flesh-like texture. Cyberskin’s main diabolical properties are that its atom bonds are hyper-resilient: it warms with body heat, stretching and then “remembering” its original shape; and it has both the softness of skin and the rigidity of erectile tissue. You see, Cyberskin is made using “the Aerospace 601,” a computerized injection molding machine, which makes varying densities of CyberSkin, creating anatomically perfect replicants of various body parts (you can feel the “bone” within the boner).

According to my research, Cyberskin products are nefariously expensive. They are moody, and high-maintenance. They can become moldy if not kept in an airtight, antiseptic, dry container. They can become very sticky-- sticks-to-walls-sticky-- if you handle them for a long time without washing them. They cause erratic, possessive behavior. OK, in me at least. Putting me in touch with my inner Gollum.

I know Cyberskin must be destroyed, but yet I have an unfathomable, ferocious protective urge towards it… Soon NASA will be producing counterrevolutionary hypnotic robotic pleasure-queers out of the stuff. I am distressingly intrigued by the vision of a post-cyberskindroidal world.

Good Vibes’ evil selection of Cyberskin products must be destroyed. Do it now, before another activist becomes compromised.

For My Thirtieth Birthday I Will Treat You To

Pretty Pictures of Hedgehogs, Wedgwood, and the wily Vrsic Pass.



Because I have so many substantial things I want to write about I just can't choose.



Hedgehog to cure depression.

Immodest hedgehog.

Modest hedgehog.

I love this Wedgwood pattern enough to tattoo it on my behind. Which in fact might be happening soon. Ok, not my behind, but somewhere.

Ooooh. Lookit the salad bowl. I'll never be able to afford it, but it makes me happy to dream.

Yes I drove the Vrsic pass this May, and yes it makes 51 curves like these on a sharp elevation. In the alps. Built by WWI Russian POWs, who left many of their own buried in the snow up there.

Here's a cool aerial view of the tiptoppimost summit point.

Here's some views of the mountain peaks neighboring the pass.

And here's the view of the mountains the pass traverses from a distant point due south.

In case you were planning to attempt to pronounce the name of the pass, it's one of those special Slovenian words with the accent on the consonant cluster. "VRR-sheech."

You can't escape it by going south, they keep accenting the consonant clusters all the way down the Balkans to Greece, near as I can figure. The only way out of the clusters is over the Vrsic and into boring, plainmouthed Austria.

Again With the Punk Credibility Problems



So it's been repeatedly pointed out to me that I have lost all punk cred for my fancypants misspelling of moshpit (though I swear I picked up "mochepit" being pen pals with Francophone punks at a formative age). Then in the ensuing debate about the difference between moshing (a group dance) and slamming (more of a solo thing) I had to start talking about the slamdance move "doing the pogo stick." Well, my research shows that people DO talk about "doing the pogo stick" but it truly is more punkily-correct to say "pogoing."



From the History of Punk Rock in the UK at www.punk77.co.uk:

It's all very well doing this moshpit type of street violence or pushing each other around like kids in a playground. But it just don't look so good and is only for the uninspired or faint hearted. So come on you Punks lets see a bit more pogoing at the gigs!

Another Dispatch From Femme-bottomville
     On Bad Top and Happy Bottom Barometers

You know when you're with a good top (because you are trying to pant out your phone number between squeals of delight), you know when you've got an unhappy bottom (she's packing her toys and going home), but how do you discern when a top becomes abusive or inept, or a bottom becomes a total lump of orgasmic joy? We gals aren't taught a lot about spotting hot girl-on-girl live abuse coming at us, or expressing satisfaction from within a rollicking sex scene. I came up with some barometers based on my own experience, and discussions with friends.

• Effective and Ineffective Bad Top Barometers
  
  1. Effective barometer: Hostile personal criticism about your or her other lovers' physical attributes (especially if you later see her preening and pointing out her own physical gifts). A good top ultimately is compassionate about a body's frailties.
  Ineffective barometer: Dirty talk or use of cuss words / degrading talk in general. Listen for tone: if it's coy, playful, affectionate, targeting your behavior, and suggestive without being really threatening, it's one thing. If it's *hostile,* targeting things you have no control over, and threatening, be sure to check yourself for safety boundaries.
  
  2. Effective barometer:  Expressing doubts about whether you are worth her time. This isn't topping, it's adolescent manipulation. She should keep that question in her Inside Head Voice.
  Ineffective barometer:  Giving you a run-down of her schedule of planned social and sexual activity. Some tops are just really overscheduled and use the iteration of their time management choices to create personal space. It might be a little self-aggrandizing, but it's not a manipulation or a rejection.
  
  3. Effective barometer:  Feigned dramatic revulsion when you reveal a wound or vulnerability.
  Ineffective barometer:  Actual reactions of distaste, usually followed by clarifying questions about what you've just revealed. Hey, everyone has their squick zones.
  
  4. Effective barometer:  Real expressions of hostility about something remote to the occasion at hand but directed toward the bottom (like, spanking harder and harder while getting verbally angrier and angier about last month's PG&E bill-- or last month's girlfriend).
  Ineffective barometer: Real expressions of sadness about personal loss or misfortune. Don't be a dick to your dick-- tops need to cry too.
  
  5. Effective barometer: Childish ploys for attention about the top's areas of insecurity. I include financial insecurity here. Tops can be so fragile-- especially butch tops who are given the responsibilities of masculinity with only a fraction of the privileges. There are those who are completely broken by their circumstances, and they shouldn't be working on their wounds by creating them on you. They should just get professional help-- from a therapist, a paid domme, whatever. You don't need to try to heal them.
  Ineffective barometer:  Urgency about knowing your health and/ or relationship status. Don't be suspicious if your top needs to know these safety parameters in order to play. If you don't feel like talking about it, just say so, but try to respect her safety concerns if you want her to respect yours.
  
  6. Effective barometer: Excessive control issues-- good tops actually *have* most of the control they want. They are *in* their power and confident, know their boundaries, and are *not* seeking to prove something, to you or themselves or anyone else, by establishing control over you.
  Ineffective barometer:  Checking in with you incessantly. She might be recovering from a bad experience with an incommunicative bottom. Tell her if it's turning you off.
  
  7. Effective barometer:  Not owning anything resembling a date planner.
  Ineffective barometer:  Not having e-mail. Also, not sharing all her contact digits and coordinates. Bottoms can be stalkers too. Or so I've heard.
  
  8. Effective barometer:  Consciously or unconsciously violating an express boundary established with or by the bottom. Safer sex, disclosure or privacy, pain or intensity preferences, safeword use-- anything.
  Ineffective barometer: Expressing concern about a boundary that has been set. Concern doesn't mean the top intends to violate it, so don't take a question about boundaries as a violation of boundaries. Unless you've set boundaries about asking questions about sets of boundaries (ya freak!). 
  
  

• Effective and Ineffective Happy Bottom Barometers
  
  1. Effective barometer: Reduction to lizard brain activities (grabbing random things to chew on, ripping fabric, falling onto the floor -and maybe not noticing she's fallen, biting, scratching, etc.).
  Ineffective barometer: Departures from bed to see if there's anything to eat in the kitchen. She might just be hypoglycemic, you never know.
  
  2. Effective barometer: Very inarticulate loudness.
  Ineffective barometer: Very articulate loudness ("holy cow does that vibrator remind me of the last time I was in Prague!"). She might not have good bringins-up about what is good pillow talk. She might just be nervous.   
  
  3. Effective barometer: Preternatural silence and stillness while sweating with a racing pulse, especially if uncontrollable twitching is involved (and the person doesn't have a history of epilepsy or high blood pressure, and isn't experimenting with dangerous mind-altering substances).
  Ineffective barometer: Actual brain death. 
  
  4. Effective barometer: Marriage proposals, or, stalking proposals. (Just don't take her up on anything. ANYTHING. said in flagrante.)
  Ineffective barometer: Prior marriage (or commitment) confessions. Really, don't take this as a complement or an insult. She's just got too much on her plate already and this is how she's telling you.
  
  5. Effective barometer: Offers of specific sexual services.
  Ineffective barometer: Offers of specific housekeeping services. Even if she is a service bottom, it's not a good sign if she's thinking about *your* hygiene at this point. Then again, with some clarification, it might be some kind of personal kink for her.
  
  6. Effective barometer: Nonsensical profanity (unless of course your safeword is a piece of profanity, which means you have a stupid safeword).
  Ineffective barometer: Profane personal criticisms. (See note on number 2. Bad bringins-up is sometimes just all there is to explain it.)
  
  7.  Effective barometer: Stopping you to tell you explicit instructions or ask questions about what you like: yes this is a good thing. This means she's enthusiastic and comfortable with you and doesn't fear top-down reprisals for helping you help her get off (or helping you help her get you off)-- if you want, you can quickly reassert yourself by making a thrilling counter-proposal/ counter-inquiry (the Socratic method can be a turn on for those brainy types)-- but absolutely do take competence-promoting feedback as a good happy bottom barometer. Only bad bottoms fail to give any guidelines for their own pleasure (giving or receiving) preferences.
  Ineffective barometer:  Stopping you to tell you about her abuse history. Abuse survivors getting triggered in sex play is par for the course in this community where one in five is supposed to have survived rape. Stopping doesn't mean she's happy or unhappy with you as a person or as a sex partner, but it does mean you should (without you grumbling- AT ALL) take time to talk. Negotiations about boundaries can start there, from scratch: that's when you'll find out if she's happy or not.
  
  8.  Effective barometer: Wetness in combination with any one or more of the above.
  Ineffective barometer:  Wetness or dryness alone. Sometimes a gal is just plain dehydrated-- from sun, or alcohol consumption, preferring 24 ounces of espresso to water as her daily liquid intake, etc.-- or she's just not genetically descended from the fountain-people as some are. Think of it in terms of normative male anatomy where a guy can ejaculate but not orgasm: while always (always) honoring requests for "more lube!", and monitoring the slickness of the roads, don't *just* go for the juice-- go for the radiant smile and twitchy fingers. 

So You Think You Can Outsmart Tokelau



Tokelau is one of the few (83) countries of the world with a federal law against same-sex consensual private sex between adults. They also have a free web domain referral service. So you might think of taking advantage of their islander good naturedness and get www.slackerstalker.tk for your blog, ha ha, associating their little suffix with practices they officially punish with ten years in jail. But you would not have outsmarted little Tokelau, no ma'am! Because when someone enters a ".tk" address, a phone rings. A modem picks up somewhere in a dusty store room on one of the 127 islands that compose Tokelau, and prints out an order for a certain computer to be connected to another site. The next morning a nice lady collates the orders and photocopies it twice, filing one copy, faxing another to her boss, and mailing the original to the office of web page referrals on one of the other atolls. All of the letters are date stamped and one by one child laborers trained in Javascript enter the order for the user contacting the website at ".tk" to finally be granted access to its assigned site. Then I'm sure they beat the children for taking too long to enter the code. Well, you want to go to Tokelau to prove me wrong?



Lonely Planet on Tokelau:

Want to get away from it all? Head off to Tokelau, where there's no capital city, no airport, no harbour, no cars, no banks, no guns and no tourism.

Ah, 1987



So, Merriam-Webster's dates "mosh" back to 1987, and says it is a variant of "mash." I find this unsatisfying, but look at the definitions for yourself-- they don't vary much. The only question is if moshing is a synonym for slamdancing, or if slamdancing is more violent than moshing. I think in 1987 I would have cared.

It Has Been Called to My Attention



By a concerned reader that I have egregiously misspelled "mosh pit," less commonly spelled "moshpit," but never by anyone but me spelled "mochepit." I have now been given my new obsession for the week, stalking the origin of the word "mosh," in the hopes of finding out why I internalized a French spelling of it. I vaguely remember hanging out with some French Canadian punks at orchestra camp in 1990. I think I thought I was a real punk for a while around that same year. The origin of my misspelling may prove more interesting than the origin of the word.



What moshpit move are you?