Note: This was just a generic conversation. Not about anyone in particular. No need to be paranoid.

Found myself in a conversation with OddlyFamiliarGirl last night about sluts. Specifically, my own standards for deciding if a person is a slut or not.

I'll be the first to admit that my thinking is pretty old-fashioned and conservative regarding the subject. I mean, behavior that most of the, especially younger, population would consider acceptable, I'd reject. This is a problem for me, obviously, being so out of tune with a lot of the girls I'd otherwise be attracted to.

Because, I think I've mentioned this before, I don't like sluts. To me, they rate just slightly better than whores, and that's not saying much. Snot may be better than shit, but do you really want either poured over your pasta?

As an aside, my definition of whore has changed. It doesn't have anything to do with profession, nor does it require intent to cause pain. To me, a whore is someone who cheats on their significant other, or someone who is involved in that cheating from the other direction.

So, let's say I was sleeping with a married woman. That would make us both whores, assuming that I knew her situation.

Anyway.

Trying to describe slutty behavior is a lot tougher. It's not nearly so black and white.

I think that a lot of it comes down to frequency. An occasional one-night-stand is different than a lifestyle. Or you can get into the gray area of friends with benefits. I know some people who've tried to make that work. It seldom does. Sooner or later, it will become lopsided and therefore untenable. But friends with benefits aren't sluts, I don't think. It depends on whether you're really friends, or whether you just pretend so you can screw with an ostensibly clean conscience.

Another determining factor I use is intent. I like for there to be some, I mean. To go to bed with someone, knowing that it's just about the sex and there's no intention or desire for anything more later on? Well, to me that's dangerously close to slutdom.

This is why sex on a first date can be, while societally ambiguous, much more acceptable to me than a lot of people might suspect. You meet a person, you get along with them, there's attraction, and most importantly you want to see them again. Why not have yourself some sex on that first date?

But, on the other hand, say you go out with someone, you find them physically attractive, but during the date you find that there's just nothing there and that you have no desire to see this person again. Take them home and screw them anyway, and that pretty much makes you a slut, in my book.

One point that was made to me last night, one that I couldn't really deny even though I wish I could have, is what I'll call the me factor. What that means is, if the sex is with me, then my mental definition of what makes a slut tightens up, usually just enough so that the girl I'm with evades that label. This is juvenile and self-centered of me, I know, but I am a guy, so don't be too surprised.

I guess, if I had to sum my feelings up, I'd say that it can't be just about the sex. There needs to be something more, even if that something is only a hope or an expectation. Sex is supposed to be the icing, not the cake.

It was a pretty good conversation. I'm not sure that I ever managed to fully describe my thoughts on the matter. But, I know it when I see it. And, when I see it, I know that don't like it.

This morning I was thinking about my parents. Specifically, their ages. When I was born, my dad was 23 years old, and Mom was 22.

Weird.

I guess that the bulk of my formative years started when they were both around 30. The vast majority of my memories of them came from times when they were younger than I am right now.

Weirder.

Now, I know people who, right now, are parents around the age of 30. And they can barely manage their own lives. I don't see how they're supposed to be able to raise children when they can't even get their own shit together.

Hell, I know people in their late 30s with kids they have no business raising. And I know a lot more people who don't have any kids but they act like kids themselves. Immature and selfish and whiny and so full of a sense of entitlement that it makes me sick.

I was going somewhere with this. I really was. Just got a touch of writer's block at the moment.

I have to be careful. This is a fairly pivotal point in my life.

I'm in real danger, I think, of reverting back to how I was in my 30s. I wasted my 30s. I felt safe and secure and fucking content, but I wasted them. It wasn't until 2003 that things changed. That I changed.

These last several years might not have been safe, or secure, but I was never bored. And there were quite a few moments of genuine happiness in there, sprinkled atop the misery. And the hope, the hope was beyond awesome.

I miss the hope.

Amyway, this last week, for the first time in a very long time, I've felt safe. Except for the occasional bullshit which I hope will eventually taper off to nothing, I can live my life without fear.

Problem is, I don't think it's really living. Lack of fear is one thing. Lack of hope or ambition or desire is a totally different thing. Contentedness is not an option for me. Not anymore. I can't let it happen.

I want joy, or I want misery.

I do want to live. I just need a new definition, I think. New meaning.

On the other hand, I was a much better pool player back then.

If somebody held a gun to my head and said that I had to move back to somewhere I'd lived before, my second choice would be to go back to Juneau. Alaska.

My first choice would be to let him pull the trigger.

I just really liked Juneau. Of all the places I've lived, I think it fit me the best. The perfect mix of city and country. Of hippie and intelligencia. And it bugs me that I haven't been there since 1997, AKA a gazillion years ago.

My third choice would be Seattle. It would have been Omaha except there's this one whore there that I never want to see again.

Las Vegas would trump everything except that (a) I've never lived there before, and (b) I don't know what is going on. StupidGirl is being evasive and shit. I don't know why.

Would I move to Las Vegas even if there was no StupidGirl waiting for me?

I don't know. Maybe. Probably. But it wouldn't be as fun.

Places I'd never move back to include Memphis and New Orleans. The latter is a nice place to visit, but that's all. The former is a racist shithole of a city. I hated Memphis.

Oh, I'd also never move back to St. Louis, mainly because the same whore that keeps me from Omaha might show up in St. Louis. Plus, it's not really that different from here, nor that far. I doubt that St. Louis would be allowed by my hypothetical gun-wielder.

What I really want to do is move to this one particular little town in Arizona, to see if I can figure some things out. Maybe my answers are there. They're sure as fuck not here.

I can already tell that this isn't going to work.

I'd decided that I'd just do one of those entries where I just started typing, and see what happens.

Problem is, I have a specific topic that I want to write about, and I kinda want it to be a good entry. I have so few good ideas that I allow myself to write about - I don't want to waste an idea with random finger movements.

I had a dream. In my dream, something bad happened, and it caused me to give up. I gave up on everything. Work. Family. Friends. Love. Life. Everything.

I cast loose all of the ties that bound me, and I literally walked away from it all. I lived an anonymous life after that. No friends. No job. Certainly no love. And none of the obligations that come with those things. I touched nobody, and nobody touched me. I may as well have not existed at all.

And you know what?

There was actually a certain appeal to it.

Once I woke up, I felt all of the weights and responsibilities come back to me. I felt all of the ties cinch themselves more tightly around me.

They choke me.

Happy Birthday to HatGirl!

HatGirl!

Yay!

There was a time, not a specific time but a period of time, when it happened. Over the course of something between days and months, it happened.

It was a couple of years ago now, when things changed. Suspicions became knowledge. Inklings became expectations. Hopes became certainties.

Yeah, that's right. Certainties.

Patience was validated. The long and winding journey became irrelevant, and only the destination mattered. I could see our destination, smell it, almost touch and taste it. It was just up ahead. It was going to happen. We were going to get there.

Just a little bit further...

It became much more than wishful thinking. I hate it when people dismiss it all as wishful thinking. I know the difference. I fucking lived with wishful thinking for years. I'm an expert on wishful thinking. I know the difference between it and certainty. I really do.

Years.

Memories and hopes were all I had, but they kept me going. Wishful thinking kept me going.

Until a period of time, a couple of years ago, when I became certain, certain, that all my wishes were about to come true.

Just a little bit longer...

Damn.

Back then, that's when everything changed. The potential for pain became the potential for utter destruction. But that didn't matter, because I was certain that everything was going to be fine. Great. Wonderful. Perfect.

Damn.

For years, memories and hopes were all I had. They kept me going. Then I found certainties, and it felt like nothing could stop me.

Now, all I have are memories.

I fear that they won't be enough.

Last night I was thinking about stupid questions, mainly because I was asked one.

The cliché is that there are no stupid questions, but that's a stupid cliché.

Here are some types of stupid questions that I've thought of off the top of my head.

1. You already know the answer, but you don't want to hear it.

2. You don't want to know the answer.

3. You want to argue with the answer.

4. You won't listen to the answer.

5. You won't believe the answer.

This list isn't meant to be all-inclusive. I'm sure there are more. Feel free to leave other examples in the comments.

Lately I've taken to not answering stupid questions.

Happy birthday to my father, on what would have been his 69th birthday.

"69, dudes!" -- Future Bill & Ted

I want it to be effortless again. Writing, I mean. I don't know if I can ever go back, though. Everything always seems so forced these days. Or I'll write a little and then second-guess everything I've written. Like it's not good enough, or accurate enough. More often than not, I'll delete it all and hope that I'll do better the next time.

I get so tired of repeating myself to myself. I keep asking myself for explanations, and I keep saying the same things over and over. It never gets through my thick skull. I either don't understand the answers or I don't believe the answers or I don't accept the answers.

Probably that last thing.

It's the same crap I went through for years, trying to answer a different set of questions with a different set of answers.

I imagine myself, in a week or a decade or a century, lying on my death-bed and reflecting on the life that I've had. Or not had. Whatever. I try to envision what I'll think. I rehearse the answers that I'll give myself, when I ask myself if I've had a good life, if I'd do it all again, if it was worth it.

I've said all this before. There's nothing new. I'm stuck in a groove.