I guess I should preface this piece by saying that I used to be in touch with every single emotional blip that passed across my radar screen. I could easily discern the cause of my frustration, agitation, manic energy, by applying some Freudian analysis to what might be going on in my psyche, and voila . . . I would come up with a just cause . . . at least enough of one to satisfy me. That seems to have changed of late. For some reason recently I have been flying off the handle with little to no provocation, skipping around in invisible butterfly wings one minute, and then stamping and huffing the next. I have always been an emotional rollercoaster. This is nothing new. But what happened yesterday is just one more example of my need to plumb the depths of my unconscious and do some cleaning.

My friend Alan is gay. My friend Bill isn't. This needs to be said, because I seem to behave in a totally different way in terms of my physical self with Alan than I do with Bill (and other straight friends). Whenever I see Alan, I have this urge to hug him, kiss his cheek, hold hands, pet the hair on his arms, head, fingers . . . I always have urges to touch people a lot. Obviously, I keep these urges stuffed most of the time, because people are wary of being touched. But if I had my druthers, I would be able to play with any girl's hair, hold any boy's hand, give kisses with reckless abandon, and wallow in hugs. Intellectually, I believe in the healing powers of human touch. Emotionally, I crave affection because of the long=standing deficit caused by a rather cold mother. (see . . . there is freud at work with his bad self) With Alan, I can indulge these urges as much as I want to, without having to worry about the presence of the dreaded hard wiener asserting itself into my space. He remains as flaccid as a noodle through all of my cuddlicious exertions. And that is just how I love it. Bill, on the other hand, never receives the slightest touch from the hands of the snuggle queen. Why? Because he is packing heat that responds to the touch of a woman. I have lived long enough and been around the block enough times to realize that any time a woman touches a straight man, suddenly all roads lead to his dick. I fucking hate this. So yesterday at lunch, we started talking about this phenomenon and I totally lost it. I raised my voice, saying things about how it doesn't matter whether it is a "nice" guy or not . . . "nice" guys are just better at hiding their preoccupation with their member. Oh, but they still have one . . . don't let yourself be fooled. So, if you touch their face, hand, neck . . . there is an instant magnetic beam that tries to pull your hand to their Johnson. Once there, they will want you to rub it up and down repeatedly until some white stuff squirts out. And then, you might be safe to touch them again for a short period of time without the great phallic spectre asserting his presence again. For a SHORT time.

Goodness knows, I used to be one of those angry females. I have definitely had my share of bitterness towards the hairier sex . . . But I thought I had worked through most of it. After all, I have been a married woman for these past almost ten years. I only have to wrestle one trouser snake nowadays, and I have feelings for the man around it. Yes, it is true that there is to be no cuddling without copulation at the end of the tunnel . . . but I know that he can't help it. It is a biological phenomenon. I like a good shag, too . . . it just isn't a necessity that asserts itself any time someone looks too hard at my genitalia. I can laugh about it. See: HAHAHA. Why, then, did I get so angry when we talked about it at lunch yesterday? Why did I say that I like to touch Alan because I know that he is not scheming to get my hand from his arm to his johnhenry? Why did I tell Bill that actually, I feel sorry for him for being such a slave to his dick? Poor Bill did nothing. He just happens to be a straight male, who opened up a can of worms. I wonder, now, if I really feel this angry all the time, and it is merely repressed. I mean, I told Bill that the penis is an oppressor. I said that if you ever want to be close with a man, you know the whole time that he is just biding time until he can get to the real deal. Any time a man talks to you often, shows real interest in you, touches you, you can pretty much assume that he is hoping to sink the pink torpedo. Alan and Bill said that maybe it is just the kinds of guys I have chosen to date. FUCKING BULLSHIT. I have dated them all . . . white, black, yellow, punk rockers, sensitive artsy fartsy types, a couple of frat boys, older guys, younger guys, educated smart guys, nice but kinda dumb guys, I have been there. And guess what? You couldn't touch them without finding yourself fucking pretty quickly afterwards. Sure . . . they varied in how they went about the movement from touching a hand to touching a cock . . . but that move was always on the agenda. That is oppressive. It is always there. It is the subtext behind basically any interaction with a male. If I touch this student's arm for encouragement, will he think I want to fuck him? If I wear this short skirt so that my legs are in view, will every man in the room assume I want to fuck them all, one by one . . . a dick in every orifice? If I look in this guys eyes and smile, will he be saying to himself "yeah, she wants it." I know I sound really irrational here. People with no fire in their bellies will be muttering.."Gee . . . she sure is angry. Not all men are like that."

I wish I could believe it. I really do. I wish I didn't live in a society in which putting a cylindrical slab of meat into a hole over and over is such a preoccupation. I wish women were encouraged from the beginning to be healthy and explore their sexuality without having to worry about their reputation. I wish men didn't have to feel that sex is such a forbidden, uncertain commodity that they become obsessed with obtaining it. I wish there were no porn sites with titles like "Horny teen girls suck massive cock." I wish I didn't know that pretty much every man, whether he is "nice" or not, would be able to visit that site and get a hard-on, without giving a shit about the feelings of the horny teen and what might have brought her to the place of sucking that massive cock in front of the world. I wish. But my mama didn't raise no dummies. And so I guess I am bitter, still. I need to find a way to work through this. Bitterness is not productive for me and certainly is detrimental to the men around me. Well, I'm working on it.