Afflictions, we've all got at least one.  I might have a handful, some pretty tame.  Others just won't leave me alone.   For all the searching and hoping, for all the effing effort and sentamentality:  I'm just too fucking angry to love someone.

Sure, we could dig into the child's psyche -- little Shel at four, little Shel at seven, and the twisted activities of my mother.  But after a point, you can't just keep pointing to that, saying yeah, that's my problem, that's where it comes from.

No, after all these years it's up to me.  And I just can't fucking believe that, after all the love and all the effort I've got nothing -- NOTHING -- to show for it.  Shit, I barely have half of my belongings.

I don't have the vestiges of any past relationships, save for what they did to my head, both good and bad.  I don't have children, or shared child committments.  I don't have sweet old lovers who coo at me from afar.  Well, although I do still talk to my high-school honey very infrequently, and at least we're on pretty good terms, my college GF is patently annoying even in print. The one Good Thing I had going which really wasn't such a good thing except in comparison, is cordial but the conversation is tense and overwraught (for me at least) with emotion.  My estranged wife -- she's certifiable and frankly I don't trust her.  The woman who rocked my world after that... well for all the times I broke up with her, I wouldn't expect her to want to talk to me.  And the last one who tried, well I keep just not answering her texts.

So... sure it's me.  Sure, I don't know what I want.  I can ask.  I ask plenty.  And, frighteningly enough, I tend to get what I ask for.  I just do a really shitty job of asking.

When I was with Heidi (formerly known as the one Good Thing) what I really craved was physical affection, cuddling and love.  And I got it, but that was really a ploy to tear me away and the affection was later much harder to come by.

I left Lauren and what I actually said outloud was that I wanted a woman who knew how to use a strap-on.  Boom.  Special delivery.  El and the mind-blowing ride that she took me on was... mind-blowing.  Intense.  Metaphysical.  And too much.  The indistinguishable boundaries between vanilla sex and the spicer stuff was dangerous.  For the first time in 21 years -- since I first had sex with Julie -- I had a flashback.  Except this time I wasn't in the position of the victim, I was the oppressor.  This, really, was the end of our relationship.  I couldn't be initmate with her after that.  It freaked me out that I could find myself in the other position.  I couldn't trust myself.

So... broken.  Bent.  Damaged.  If you can curl yourself around my brokeness, then you should practice ducking, because I'm still upset about the whole thing.  Four year old me is just pissed as hell, and there's no clear way to make it all better.

Except to bang a drum...

Not that I actually got caught up with work, but I have taken the past three days totally off from work.  I can feel it itching at me, tickling, making me want to check my email.  I haven't, not yet.

No, instead I've been playing Rock Band incessantly.  So much so that I've got a huge knot behind my right shoulder blade and a smaller one in my right inner thigh.  Apparently I don't use that muscle much.  As I jam out on the drum set that isn't really making all those noises, I easily trip off in fantasic fantasies about how fabulous I really am.  It's a nice, easy way for me to decide I'm cool enough.

Sometimes I'm not sure where my mind goes as I play.  Plenty of my head is focused on the colored blips sliding down at me.  Every time I finish a song I turn to the coffee table to my right and my right shoulder fierces up in to a nugget of pain.

I didn't go to any services this weekend, for the first time in I don't know how long.  Somehow I feel ... like I'm in trouble.  I said prayers this morning.  And I can say them before I go to bed.  I've been doing that a lot lately.  For the last two or three weeks I've been saying prayers before bed, going through all the tunes I know in the WHC prayerbook, doing the weekday evening parts.  I really really love to belt out the Hatzi Kaddish.  Maybe that'll appease the great Sephardi Queen in the Sky.  <grin>

I walk around my apartment, and Milkshake follows me, occasionally throwing herself on her back and flipping around.  Of course I notice -- that's what I'm supposed to do.  I bend over and scritchle her tummy and back as she continues dancing on her back.  I say weird things in weird voices.  "Oh yeah?  Like this?  Like this?"  I tug her back leg and she lunges at me with a wide open mouth, purring loudly.  I hope this is fun.

Laundry sits in a mountain on my sofa.  I pick at it sometimes, folding sometimes, sometimes just putting stuff on standing there.  I should be praciticing my Hebrew.  Instead I'm banging the hell out of these drums.

I spent about twelve hours at Wunderland, between staying for an ultra-late poker tournament --which I won -- and going back Friday night.  I walked into that poker game with not one but two $5 IOU's in Andy's cash drawer.  I won the big pot of $25 and walked home with $15.  Not too bad.  Lucky at cards, unlucky at love they say.  I said well, that about says it.

Time to pound a drum.  When my arm finally gives out, I'll put in a movie, watch the OS/OSU game that is taping.  (Don't tell me!)  Or something.  Maybe read.  I still read... usually on the john, but I do read.

Hey Jenn, d'you mind if I read your one-act on the crapper?  Hmmmm.

It's hard to remember sometimes.  For me especially.  I get caught up in what I'm reading, caught up in the details of other's lives.  I get stupid, and illogically fall in love with faces, words and the mirage of a relationship, when it's just me, and the keys and the glowing screen.

It's just me and myself.  There's nothing more brilliant or special than that.  Even though I've been practicing tell people about the brilliance and specialness all around, I can't help but feel like I've run out.

No the truth of it is that I freak my own self out.  How fast I go, how far I fall.  Second date U-Haul my ass.  I have the capacity to lay it all down at first sight.  The big gamble.  I love to throw that one in occasionally, just to spice things up.

Yes, let's leave our home in the suburbs, with two cars, two cats, a dog and a friend in the basement.  Let's move in with this woman you've known for all of six months.  Good plan.  Bet the house.  Go all in.  It's pocket sevens!  You can't lose!!

I'm a nutball.  It's confirmed.  And I watch myself, nutball around.  I shake my head, and write it all down.

And a slightly different take on it, as I begin to realize this:  I am extra competitive.  That's what it is.  All of that mental fist-fighting with Marilyn for 18 years... all the aggression... the need to control in the name of improvement. 

It's the things that make me good at managing, I guess.  Managing people is this weird thing.  You have to interact.  You have to choose carefully how to interact, but you also really need to just be real.  Then you run away and hide in your office, your cube, behind your monitor.

I know I can be too honest, too intense.  I can suck the life out of a person, I'm pretty sure.  I am greedy and constantly want more.

I know that I can read people really really well, and then not at all.  Too quick for my own good a lot of times.  Rushing.  Mega-multi-tasking.

And then I get stuck.

So I finally decided to try to bite the bullet and install some sort of blogging software on my website.  I've been kirking out so bad on Facebook, and it was so easy to update and keep it fresh... it finally seemed stupid that I keep doing JahBear all by hand. 

Still I like the old-school ways.  I like the fact that I know how to fix the HTML directly  I like that I can muck with my own images, and tweak the background and font colors to the nth degree. 

I don't like how the WYSIWIG blog editors all look like Word on crack.  This one doesn't look too bad.

So, my thought was, I can't say EVERYthing I'd like to say on Facebook.  You know, there's a broad range of people out there, potentially poking through my stuff.  I can be writer-ish and shit, but occasionally I worry about my content.  And what I want to say is typically much more... raw.

So this is the Jahbear NC-17 version.  You make find remnants of sex, drugs and rock and roll here.  Probably less on the rock and roll end.

Welcome!