Soul-Devouring Worry
¤ Excessive emotional revelations.

I was set to say that, until a regular reader swooped in Friday evening with a fat $30 donation.

So I went and bought a digicam, but through EBay, so no click-through. "Bulging biceps" pictures to come.

With his $30, there are now about $45 in May donations, and since that's more than the hosting costs, and I took a week off of blogging this month, I hardly have anything to complain about, now do I?

So if you are moved to donate, now or in June or whenever, feel free, but I will never beg, and will try to never bore with my infrequent mentions of it.

Today's blog features a semi-work story, a couple of depressing news items, and then part one (of two) of the big emotional arc Malaya visit story.  I feel better for having written it, and I hope you'll enjoy the read, and perhaps even find it inspirational or touching. Or at least you would have if I hadn't just ruined it by acting like you should, or I demand that from the readers.

So for work.  I managed to lock my keys in my car at work Friday Night.  Never much fun, but at least I realized it before returning with a pack of wolves on my heels.  As a matter of fact, I realized it about 3 seconds after I swung the car door closed, but since real life is still sadly lacking in an "undo" option I could only press my forehead woefully to the glass, gazing down at the shiny keys in the center coin dish.

I was late for work as always, and somehow while trying to grab my work shirt, hat, badge, money, water bottle, granola bar, and put on The Club and remove the detachable face from my stereo, I managed to stick the keys in the coin dish, rather than into my pocket as I had planned.  Not that this veritable waterfall of excuses brought me any closer to being able to get my damn keys out.  And since I was already late for work, there was nothing to do but trot off towards the employee entrance, misgivings heavy in my heart.

My car isn't real likely to be stolen at any point (since it's not valuable or a real popular model) and I knew the odds of anyone peering into it closely enough to notice the keys in the coin dish were pretty low.  At least anyone who wasn't going to steal it anyway.  But I worried nevertheless.

I have spare car keys of course, but they sleep in a drawer in my kitchen, and since the rats have yet to achieve flight capabilities, much less the ability to answer the phone or break out of their cage or figure out the way from my apartment to the stadium parking lot, and there are no more sentient life forms in my apartment, the spares were well out of reach.  Not to mention that my door keys were locked in the car also, so I couldn't have gotten into my apartment even if I could have flown there, rat-like.

If I had locked myself out somewhere else, I would probably have called my mom or dad to see if either of them could have driven to my apartment and gotten the key and brought it to me, since they both have spare apartment keys, though not spare car keys.

However since I was at the stadium I was in luck, since the AAA club operates a free service there after games.  They'll do battery jumps and help you with lock outs and other such minor stuff, so when I finished working around the 8th inning I hurried over to Customer Service, removing my badge and work hat so they'd think I was an actual customer, and made the request. They called up the Triple-A guy on the walkie talkie, and since it was a small crowd and not that late, he drove up in just a few minutes, and then took me over to my car.

The first thing I always wonder about them (cops, tow truck drivers, etc) breaking into your car for you is just how much proof they require, in advance, that it's actually your car.  Sometimes they'll make you really prove it by showing them the registration and making sure that it matches your driver's license photo. Or else they'll make you give them your license plate number in advance, or describe something in the car.  This is a lot less secure, since after all, you'd be sure to note those if you were scouting out a car to steal anyway.

The guy at work Friday night seemed to operate on the honor system method, where he required zero proof of anything, since after all, what possible reason could I have to want to break into a car if it wasn't my car? *cough*

Now possibly since my car is a relatively inexpensive little Saturn sports coupe and the keys were lying right inside it, as promised, he believed me.  And if it had been a new Lexus or something expensive, he'd have been more suspicious.  But I don't really think so, since he seemed quite oblivious to the prospect of anything illegal going on. He did note the license plate, but that's not going to do anyone any good other than give the rightful owner something to curse about if I had been a thief.

As always when a tow truck guy breaks into your car, it's depressing how easy it is.  It wasn't quite as depressing as usual this time, since he tried for a minute with a splitter and a slim jim on the passenger side, and couldn't get the lock.  He kept catching the door handle bar, but wasn't gaining entrance that way.

However once I pointed out that I'd left the driver's side window open a crack, he got another tool out, a sort of double-thick coat hanger thingie with a hook on the end, and with that he was able to reach in and pop the lock open manually from the inside in about 10 seconds.  I'm sure he could have hotwired the car in 30 seconds on top of that, or just done it the hard way with a screwdriver.

They didn't call that car theft movie "Gone in Sixty Seconds" for nothing, you know; it really is that easy to steal a car under most circumstances.  I have a Club on my steering wheel, but those aren't too hard to beat either.  The real key seems to be to have a kill switch that's hard to find, a kill switch timer on your ignition (as my car has), or to drive a crappy car no one will ever steal.

I don't mention car alarms here since I don't think they have any effect.  Everyone hates the sound of them so much and they so often go off for no reason that by now they are completely ignored.  Everyone would just assume it was malfunctioning or someone was borrowing a friend's car and couldn't remember how to shut the damn thing off, and that's assuming they weren't like me.  Me? I hate noisy car alarms with such a passion that I would be in full support of legislation allowing any offended party to beat a car with a baseball bat if the alarm went off for more than 20 seconds at any time.  Or I would at least laugh and giggle at the prospect of a car with one being stolen.

But then again, I feel pretty much the same way about screaming babies, so it might have more to do with my lack of tolerance for loud, annoying sounds than it has anything to do with car alarms, per se.

A couple of depressing news items.

¤ Here's a collection of quotes from various Bush Administration people, with sources and dates, talking about Iraq's/Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction.  You can see over time how the quotes are changing to damage control.

What WMDs? Those WMDs that were the stated reason for the Iraq Attack, and that we now know don't exist.  Those WMDs.

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. Dick Cheney, Speech to VFW National Convention, August 26, 2002

If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world. Ari Fleischer, Press Briefing, December 2, 2002

We know for a fact that there are weapons there. Ari Fleischer, Press Briefing, January 9, 2003

Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, January 28, 2003

Cal Pundit has a nice post on this topic, in which he lists the current Administration excuses for there being none of the WMDs they so long promised us.

1. Lots of people: Dammit, it wasn't about WMD, it was about liberation.

2. Ariel Sharon and Richard Perle (among others): Saddam surreptitiously moved the WMD to Syria before the war.

3. Jim Lacey: Saddam's underlings never built any WMD, but they hid this from Saddam out of fear.

4. Kenneth Adelman: Saddam didn't have any WMD but launched a massive disinformation campaign to convince everyone that he did.

5. Donald Rumsfeld: Saddam destroyed all his WMD before the war.

Whether or not you think any of this matters depends largely upon how you feel about the war.  And CalPundit covers that in another post, in which he talks about when lying is necessary for the greater good, and whether or not this was such a case.

It's becoming clearer and clearer, as this Guardian article summarizes, that the Bush administration flatly lied about the reasons for going to war. There was no WMD in significant quantities, there was no link to al-Qaeda, and there was no threat to the United States.

So were those lies OK? The evidence of the polls is that no one really cares. If you trust George Bush's judgment and believe that Gulf War II was the domino that will eventually bring peace and stability to the Middle East, then the lie was justified and it causes you no lost sleep.

¤ Well here's a country to stay the hell out of.

MBABANE (Reuters) - Swaziland's absolute monarch has singled out women wearing trousers as the cause of the world's ills in a state radio sermon that also condemned human rights as an "abomination before God".

"The Bible says curse be unto a woman who wears pants, and those who wear their husband's clothes. That is why the world is in such a state today," Mswati, ruler of the impoverished feudal nation of about one million, said late on Thursday.

Well, good that he's dealing with such important issues. What sort of pedigree does this fine fellow possess?

Mswati is Africa's last absolute monarch. He is currently married to nine wives, with a wedding pending for wife number 10, and has chosen an additional fiancee after reviewing videos of topless maidens performing a traditional Reed Dance ceremony.

This seems to hopelessly archaic now; the mad dictator ruling through fear and murder, raving about imaginary things, legally raping dozens of women via enforced marriage, etc.  And it is, but think back a few hundred years when most all of the earth's population had to live under the control of scum like this.

Almost makes you glad you are alive today, eh?

ackground information, for those of you who don't read this every day, or may have forgotten.

I need that damn cast of characters page done so I can just link to it for this sort of thing.  Bah.

Anyway, Malaya is my love, a woman I met through this site when she mailed in to comment on one of my stories.  You can see her very first mail in the February Mailbag.  We traded a few emails, and then moved to ICQ, and then to phone talk, and after wanting to spend time together since at least early March, we finally got to meet just a couple of weeks ago.  I flew up to see her after having to back up the visit date twice, due to delays she suffered as she was trying to finish purchasing and moving into her new condo.  She was living at home with her parents after being overseas for her work for more than a year before that.

This is the very short version; I'm not going to recap the whole thing now.

Anyway, we were very eager to meet each other, both very horny but much more than that; hoping it would be the start of a really great long term relationship.  Comments like, "once we're in love" and "spend the rest of my life with you" were thrown about like dice at a craps table, pre-visit.  Neither of us had ever felt like that before beginning a relationship, neither of us had ever lived with anyone else, and neither of us had ever been in love, so it was very new to both participants.

So pre-trip we were very eager to see each other, and hoping everything would go very well.  We'd talked at great length about nearly everything, knew each other very well, had only a few deepest and darkest secrets left to share, etc.  What could go wrong?

Funny you should ask.

Almost nothing went wrong with her -- nearly everything went wrong with me.

Malaya was fine and comfortable with me the entire time I was there.  Unfortunately that was not the case for me, and I got a huge case of the nerves that lasted for about three days.

The visit began very auspiciously, with Malaya meeting me in the airport in a long black trench coat, which of course just made me wonder what she was hiding underneath it, since we'd talked at length about sexy clothing and what she was going to wear for me.  Which of course was her whole idea.

She also had on black high heels and black Matrix shades with dark purple lipstick (which I love) and she looked very cool and desirable.  She was very nervous though, pacing around, unable to hold still or hold my hand for long, having trouble breathing she was so nervous/thrilled/excited, etc. Conversely, I was quite calm and happy to be there, eager to see her and hold her hand, give her a hug and a peck on the cheek, etc.

Once my luggage came up we headed out of the terminal and waited by the passenger pick up area for a bit, making small talk, until a limo pulled up.  Yes a big stretch limo, blackened rear glass, the whole deal.  The chauffeur opens the rear door for us and takes care of the luggage as we slide into the cool, dim interior.  There was a back seat, a sideways seat along the length of the stretch, and then a front bench seat facing towards the trunk. Along the right wall was a long wooden bar with all sorts of champagne glasses, a mini-fridge, sparkly lights around it and the whole back of the ride, etc.  Really cool, and the first limo I'd been in for many years, so I was impressed.

I shall not share the details of the ride home, suffice to say that Malaya was completely in charge (as we had agreed pre-visit).  She spent 15 minutes slowly undressing me, mostly with her lips, while simultaneously teasing me by not letting me do much of anything to her, other than see that she was actually wearing a full on Catholic schoolgirl outfit, with the pleated skirt and starched white blouse, black nylons, the whole thing.  And she also proved that she was not at all shy, and that she really was as good with her technique as she'd promised me during various steamy phone chats.

Though I didn't really realize it at the time, it was during the 45 minute ride back to her condo that I started to realize how nervous I was.  I didn't feel really nervous, no shaking hands or anything, but I wasn't at ease.  Of course me being somewhat nervous was definitely the only reason I didn't have an orgasm during the limo ride, but not in a good, "hold off so it'll feel better later" sort of way. (She wanted me to come, and certainly provided sufficient stimulation, but my body wasn't responding as I expected it to.)

Once home we retired pretty much directly to the bedroom, where it was more of the same: Malaya doing amazing things to me, me lying back and loving them, me simultaneously feeling nervous and unsettled, me failing to respond sexually as I wished to.

I'm skipping a lot of details since I do think *some* things should be kept private, but this went on for about the first three days.  We went through all of the motions, or at least tried to, but my body was not doing at all what my mind wanted it to be doing.  The net result was that I felt terrible and inadequate, and she felt like a failure and rejected, and it didn't help that much that I was constantly telling her how great it was and how much I liked her and how stunned I was at my body behaving so weirdly.

I suppose this is really opaque, so just to try and clarify; I was not impotent, but we were not able to properly complete our fooling around, and it left us both very restless and unsatisfied.

My uneasiness carried over to other things and I felt queasy, totally unable to consider eating without being sure I would puke it up immediately afterwards.  Malaya was depressed and sure I hated her and wasn't eating either, and tears were shed on both sides, mostly during long late night talks about what the hell was wrong and why this was such a nightmare when we both wanted it to be so different.

It was mostly Malaya who figured out what was freaking me out so badly, and I'm not going to go into the full details, but basically I was just out of my space.  I am not a full-on hermit, but I spend most of my time alone, other than when I'm at work, and I don't socialize much in real life.  I have lived alone for around 10 years, and never spent steady time with a girlfriend for more than a day or so (usually just dates now and then, never living together).  So I was just really dislocated while visiting Malaya.  New place, new things, new person, etc.  And no matter how much I wanted to feel comfortable, and how nicely she treated me, my subconscious was rebelling and I was freaking out.

Malaya had told me that she loved me the first day, that she'd been pretty sure she did for weeks previous, but wanted to wait and meet me in person.  And every time she told me that, mostly during the aforementioned late night pillow talk conversations, it felt like the words were ripping me open. I loved to hear it, but it hurt me to hear it at the same time.  I realize now this was strongly tied to my self-loathing, a personality trait that I have long made light of, but that I have to admit was very bad for me.  I joke about it, but it's not a joke; I really do (did) hate myself, at least in some ways, and with that inherent feeling of worthlessness and disgust at myself, I couldn't accept that a wonderful, beautiful, caring, intelligent woman I almost loved felt so strongly for me.  And when I tried to accept that she really did, I had to think that maybe I wasn't so worthless and miserable and awful after all, it felt like I was breaking inside.

I mean that literally, it was like a weight in my chest, or a coldness, and I would tell myself, usually with Malaya lying in my arms, "She really does love you, you fucking shithead." and I would just sob in happiness and grief and anguish and fear.

"How could someone I cared so much for love me when I was such a piece of shit?" was literally what I was thinking, if not entirely consciously, yet even as I thought that, I could feel the weight of it vanishing from my heart.

If you are reading this skeptically, as I would have three weeks ago, I can only say that this is what I felt, and alleged-writer or not, this is the best job I can do expressing it.  I would never have thought I'd feel that way, and would have found such a description utterly corny.  How could feeling happy or sad equate to an actual, physical sensation in my body?  That's not possible.

Well possible or not, I felt it, and it was overpowering.  I wouldn't say I had a breakdown, but I did lose all control of my emotions a couple of times, and I really have to thank God (or Dog or The Universe or whoever atheists thank) that Malaya didn't freak out or reject me then, or I have no idea what my current mental state would be.  Not good, I think it's safe to say. And while it hurt terribly, and day two wasn't really any better than day one, I felt like I was making some progress on getting over this huge block of pain in my chest.

As it went on I kept having the weirdest thoughts; almost hating Malaya even as I almost loved her, wanting to reject her, wanting her to reject me, etc.  Anything to get away from having to live through and deal with the mental pain, I think. And unfortunately the whole sexual dysfunction stuff was still going on as well, as was the "too nervous to eat without puking" thing. This is at the root of how I lost around 8 pounds in 7 days; I simply didn't eat anything but part of a Greek salad for about the first 60 hours.  I didn't even feel hungry; I was just too miserable and confused to notice my body's normal demands.

I can see how people lose so much weight when they are depressed; I just had no desire or consideration of eating, and when I'd feel hungry I was too freaked out to eat anything. I have long given short shrift to people who have mental issues.  Karen Carpenter = have a fricking sandwich.  However having been there (sort of) I now have more understanding.  If you are mentally fucked up enough, for whatever reason, you can literally not eat.  You don't feel hungry, you know (for a fact) that you will puke up anything you do eat, so what's the point in trying?

This can apply to anything; you realize.  Your mind being out of whack can so totally overwhelm what you want to do or know you should be doing, and even as you tell yourself to stop what you are doing, and hate that you are doing it, you just can't help it.  I so desperately wanted to relax and feel at peace, I had every reason to do so, but I just could not, and it was driving me crazy inside.  And Malaya wasn't faring much better.  She so wanted things to be perfect, and wanted me to be happy, and was doing everything she possibly could to make it so, but it wasn't enough.  We know in retrospect that nothing would have been enough, and that it was all in my head, but at the time it was excruciating.

Fortunately, we remained committed to working through it, and communicated as much as we could during it. I felt horrible and nervous, and I also felt bad since I was making Malaya feel rejected and unloved. Plus she felt like she wasn't being understanding enough, and was beating herself up over that as well.  All in all, things weren't going real well.

I thought many times about giving up and going home early, and she volunteered to drive me to the airport several times, since she could see how miserable and freaked out I was, and as I said previously, her greatest concern was for me, and she hurt that I was feeling so bad, and she would gladly cause herself more pain to spare me some.

Despite my freaking and her offers, I never seriously considered leaving. I thought that if I did it would be the end of the potentially greatest relationship of my life, but more over I could feel that I was getting better, but also that I had to get through this. If I ran from it now I'd feel better in the short term, but it would all still be inside of me, waiting to jump out and ruin things with some future potential mate.  It sounds melodramatic, but I knew I had to stick it out and work through it, painful though it was, or I'd never get any better, and would hate myself for missing out on this opportunity. I don't know how close Malaya was to giving up and just kicking me out, but as hurt as she was feeling she had to have strongly considered it a few times.

Fortunately day three was less of a heartache, though things were still far from how we wanted them to be. I was able to eat somewhat normally, though we were still very uneasy about various things, and my queasiness came and went in waves.  So day three felt better, but the better-ness wasn't due to anything changing, other than me.  I kept telling Malaya that it wasn't her fault and it wasn't about her, it was all about me.  That she was being great and very understanding and all I could have hoped for; it was just me freaking out, and hating myself for doing it, and that if she could just have some patience and let me get over things.

Amazingly enough, the evening of day three we felt closer than we had thus far, and I started to get over most of my biggest worries and fears after a really great couple of hours in bed.  It still wasn't perfect or wonderful, but we were feeling more comfortable with each other, or at least I was with her, since I think she was pretty comfortable right from day one. And as she laid across my chest and looked into my eyes, resting and letting me rest after she'd spent well over an hour doing absolutely amazing things to me, I suddenly realized that I was in love with her.

I had never been in love before, and had even cast scorn on the very concept, thinking it largely a self-delusion.  I still think that, by the way, for most people.  Not for Malaya or I, of course, just *other* people.  We're special and smarter than everyone else, you see. *cough*

Anyway, I didn't know what love felt like, but for the first time since I'd been there I felt really at peace and comfortable, and thinking that she really did love me didn't hurt.  It was sort of scary, but in a good way, and as I thought more about it I asked her to tell me that she loved me again.  And she happily said that she did, and as she said it and I let it sink in, it felt like a damn broke inside of me.

Yes, another corny metaphor, but I've found that they are really quite accurate in describing how I/we fell about each other, so we'll often talk and then say, "corn alert" before we drop some Hallmark'ish "You make me want to be a better person." type line in.  And it actually makes me angry that the best sayings we have in English for the deepest feelings of romantic love and respect and affection are all largely cheese-covered by being thrown casually around inside every sort of greeting card short of small note cards that come with Happy Secretary's Day bouquets.

As I looked up into her (corn alert) loving gaze, I found myself laughing wildly, while I wept uncontrollably.  But I was happy.  Unbelievably, overwhelmingly, heart-poundingly happy. I had never felt that way in my entire life, and it was astonishing.  I felt like I was having a heart attack or some sort of longer duration orgasm (though it was not sexual, I'm just comparing the intensity of emotion).  My brain was spinning, I couldn't stop laughing or crying, and all I could do was laugh and look at her and hug her and try to make her realize how happy I was, and that all of the misery and worry and doubt of the last three nightmarish days was over.

This story will be continued/concluded in tomorrow's blog.

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