Phrasing

Today at Curves the mailman brought in a copy of Women's Health Magazine. So I browsed through to see if there were any handy tips or such to share with the ladies who work out at the club. Although there weren't any this time around, I did find this fantastic little tid-bit in their "sex" section. (Also, random question, is it just me or does like every single magazine have a "sex" section in it now? Like a designated section just to talk about sex.)

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Serious Attraction

Lust and love aren't all that different, a recent study says - at least not to your brain. Researchers reviewed brain scans of people looking at photos of their significant others and at pornography. Both types of images activated bonding mechanisms in the brain, indicating that sexual longing and long-term relationships share similar chemistry - and that initial sparks can transition into something serious. "When you're feeling like you could be in love, sex can turn that into a reality of actually being in love, if you are open to it," says study coauthor Jim Pfaus, Ph.D.

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At the get-go, this excerpt makes my brain go all, "heyyy, I see what you did there.

You appropriated research that essentially said people don't show a huge difference between love and lust on a neurological level, and turned it into a fucking support analogy for monogamy." Although it also appropriates the idea that women are incapable of having sex with somebody without falling in love with that person. It also is sort of creepy the implication that you need to test your relationship with sex in order to somehow validate "love feelings."

Mostly, I wonder how long the "significant others" had been together. Was the number of years of commitment standardized in some way? Were at least 75% of participants in relationships for more than 3 years? Were there requisite previous tests that each couple had to take in order to prove happiness together? (I like to imagine this testing involved something like a version of The Newlywed Game - I have two good things to post for this internal joke, so you get both of them. NPH and his hubby, and the chick that likes it up the butt.) Did they scan each person for like...an optimal amount of "bonding" neurological response so they knew what type of reaction they could count when they did the scans with porn and stuff?

Although I do like the implication that the subjects could have possibly been shown the porn at the exact same time as photos of their significant others. Like a sort of brainwashing association task. "Now whenever you look at your girlfriend you will be unable to disassociate her with deep anal penetration. It should make things very awkward, unless of course she was already into it."

So...I did a little bit of leg work on this, and found this elaborated version of the snippet from WHM. Which, the main thing missing from the first little paragraph is the connection to drug addiction.

The brain treats love like a habit that has been formed over time. So, after lust may come love, and those feelings of love move to different part of the brain that processes habits and reward patterns. The same brain pattern occurs when people become drug addicts.

By having casual sex with people I am actually just being a better controlled human being and not getting addicted to something harmful. Checkpoint, people that form committed relationships.


*Note: This blog entry was almost completely derailed because Now-hubby got me the James Deen dildo for Christmas and I literally fucked myself with it until I felt like I was levitating off the bed with how intense my orgasms were.

An open letter

So, things are going shittily between my younger sister and the guy she married a few months ago. In terms of divorce papers have been signed and she came here for Christmas because she didn't want to have to deal with a bunch of people in our family asking about what happened and such. Which just meant she spent a lot of time here crying. Which means I am plotting various ways to now inflict pain on this person she married because it makes me very angry when people treat the people I care about carelessly.

In reflection of this, Now-hubby took it upon himself to message Frisbee and tell him that I am in a bad mood but could use people to care about me. Which ultimately makes me feel appreciated and loved but also on the other hand slightly pissed because when I am angry the first thing I want is people to care about me. Which means it's the last thing I'll actually admit to wanting.

In addition to all this, I went to a very good friend from college's wedding this past weekend. He is one of those rare platonic exceptions in my pantheon of male friends. Which is not to say that instances have not arisen. It's more to say that if I had been raised slightly different (see: with a penis):

 I might have possibly been this person, so the mental image of the two of us existing in a genital-touching sort of way is either really awkward or too awesome to handle. Which means his wedding was pretty alright, actually. If I had ever decided to be married in a monogamous sense of the word (which I did, sort of, once), it's probably a lot how I would have done it.

One of the things that happened during the ceremony was a wine box thing. I haven't seen this before in a wedding ceremony thing, so it was interesting just in that right. The point is people getting married (I changed it from "bride and groom," wanna fight about it?) write love letters to each other and then seal it in a box with a bottle of wine. This box is to be opened either on the first anniversary of marriage (if things go well), or sooner if things seem not to be going so well. (Me to Now-hubby during the ceremony: "So, the wine could be opened like...as soon as this is over, right? And then you just hold onto the letters like, 'well, we love each other even though we're clearly alcoholics.'")

Which, in the long and the short of everything, made me want to write love letters. Caché this away for the future and fucking make note of it. I don't do this type of honest expression of feeling often.

To Now-hubby:


I love that you've stuck by me. More than anything else I love that you knew me back in 2003 and you haven't at any point given up on me even though sometimes I revert back to that version of myself even now. I love that you are my "normal," even though my therapist frowns upon me using that word. I like that you are the one I can turn to and ask, "is this something that normal people do?" and you will give me a genuine answer. (i.e. Think about morbidly random things that could happen to you? "normal" Obsess about minute flaws in your personal appearance? Possibly not normal.) Although I know you are not the standard definition of "normal," you offer a tipping point for my perspective, and are endlessly patient with me while I try to figure out what "normal" for me entails. When we fuck, I love how enthusiastic you are; the way you describe things to me without turning it into a creepy narrative. I love how you've been willing to try a lot of the things I wanted to experiment with, just because you knew it would turn me on. I like how you will give me space when I am angry, even when your first instinct tells you to hold onto me and not let go. I love that we are into fairly different things as far as everything is concerned (art, music, movies, etc), but there is enough of an overlap that I know we belong. When I look at the examples you've been set - your parents and your grandparents on both sides - I know that you wouldn't have committed to this unless you were in it for the long haul.

Frisbee:

I love that you are endlessly available to make me happy. Regardless of where I am or how I'm feeling you are there to ask me if I want to talk about things, and you ask it from a genuine place, which makes me feel more willing to share things with you. I love that you were honest about us from the start, which means you are willing to accept me for who I am and will be willing to do the extra leg work required if it means being with me. I love that I met you and you didn't question who I was or the type of relationship I happened to be in when you met me. I like that we met at an unconventional place (gang bang party), but you are okay with me telling people we met though "mutual friends" because I am uncomfortable admitting that aspect of myself to people currently. I like that whenever I am around you, you find a way to be close to me.  Whether I want it or not you are in cuddle mode, and that's invariably what I need.

The way things were

I've been listening pretty exclusively to Christmas tunes on the radio recently. Intentionally, as I browsed the stations until I found the one playing non-stop Christmas music. And that's difficult to do in my car, because my little LED display thing on my radio is totally broken and doesn't display what station I'm on. So I knew the station I was looking for, but I had no reference except for the stations I already had on preset, and then I just had to sort of seek until I found the Christmas one.

If you want your head to hurt, I suggest going to check out the YouTube comment arguments going on over Baby It's Cold Outside. Well, in general if you want your head to hurt I suggest going to YouTube and reading the comments. I think that's the actual outcome of throwing a bunch of monkeys into a room with typewriters. Perhaps they'll eventually get to Shakespeare, but in the meantime they'll waste a bunch of time having arguments on the internet.

The argument on this particular song boils down to whether it is date rape or not (hint: it totally is), with the "omg guyz this is totally not about rape" side picking the ever popular justification that, "that's just the way things were back then." As in, the woman in the song saying "no" multiple times and the man in the song pretty much ignoring it isn't a bad thing, because...c'mon...times were different then. Can't everyone just fucking relax and enjoy a nice holiday tune without having to make us hurt our already overwhelmed little brains with the idea of a possibly darker subtext?

The issue I have with historical white-washing like this is that it excuses behavior. It's taking something that's really not okay and just sort of winking at it like, "oh, you sillypants."

 It's the same idea of "boys will be boys" bullshit. (Well, despite the gender normativity of that statement alone, but that's a rant for another entry.) Just because a certain behavior or mindset existed in the past doesn't make it right, or doesn't mean we can't look back on it now and recognize that it was a shitty way to act.

I'm not getting militant about it and demanding that radio stations never play Baby It's Cold Outside ever again. I'm not starting a letter writing campaign or asking for a public apology. The song exists, the mindset exists/existed, end of story. I put both tenses of the verb, because I'm not fucking naive enough to think that they're aren't still guys out there who think it's okay to completely ignore a woman when she says she's not interested. I've had it happen enough times both to myself and to friends, as well as have sat in the same room sometimes with men having sincere conversations about how "no" is really just a placeholder word until you can get a woman to stop being coy and realize she actually means "yes." I've also read enough bullshit women's advice columns that tell women this exact same thing. It's perpetuated among women that they're supposed to play hard-to-get and keep themselves "pure" or some such bullshit, and it's perpetuated among men that it's their fucking imperative or something to overcome these objections. When the mindset still exists out there, it's not helpful to just completely ignore the subtext of a song that plays into it.

Fair Shake

I try my best to not be one of those high-and-mighty poly people who just can't believe that people still form monogamous relationships and expect them to work.

 
I don't espouse polyamory to everyone, or even recommend it to most people I meet. I do answer questions people ask me about it, and I answer them in the most honest way I can. Do I feel like monogamy is good for humans? No. Does that mean I'm going to tell everyone I meet that they should accept multiple lovers into their relationships? Also no.

I'm also aware that just because a relationship is poly doesn't mean the people involved in it are good people. A good friend of mine and I always say, "we don't hate you because of your race, your religion, your sexuality. We hate you because you are stupid." There's stupid in poly, and there's stupid in monogamy. I think the ultimate offense is when people get too caught up in the "supposed to" of their relationship and stop actually communicating with each other. Okay, so you're monogamous. That means maybe you don't tell your partner about the elaborate sexual fantasy you had about the new person at work. But it doesn't mean that you can't communicate other limits or expectations. When Now-hubby and I first got together, there was the negotiations about what would make "us" exclusive as opposed to any other relationship we might form with somebody else. In retrospect, totally monogamous discussion topic. Which is where the lines blur and why I think a lot of the BS about what type of relationship you have is so unimportant. It's whether you're invested in your relationship in some type of intellectual way that matters.

Absurdity

I was browsing porn the other day, and in general finding the sidebar ads amusing (cue Now-hubby talking about script blocker blah blah yes, I know).

Then this little gem popped up. Which, I feel like sometimes you hit the motherfucking holy grail of porn site sidebar ads - ones that actually make you stop masturbating because they are so completely absurd. We're not talking the standard ones about simple tricks to make your dick bigger, or those endlessly looping clip show ones. We're talking fucking out there weirdness.

This was one of those times. I actually stopped flicking through the L.L. Bean catalog to screen cap this bad boy.

Ringer

I spent a lot of time this morning learning about ASMR, which I thought was a fairly common thing until Now-hubby saw me watching a whole bunch of YouTube videos where people were role-playing eye exams and stuff and was like, "what the fuck are you doing?" And then I tried to explain it to him like, "you know, it's when something is really relaxing and you sort of get goosebumps over your whole body for extended periods of time." To which he gave me a look sort of like this, and I realized ASMR isn't a universally experienced thing.

I spent a little bit of time yesterday being high and sort of staring at this picture like, "dayumm you fine piece of work." 

 There is something incredibly magical about men's necks, and especially in this position. Just...I want to put love nibbles all over that thing.

I spent a bit of Friday night talking with one of Frisbee's friends about open relationships in general, and mine specifically. I appreciate this person because, although he approaches relationships differently than I do, he answers pretty much any question you want to ask him completely honestly. Which is refreshing. I recognize a bit of the Brian Kinney philosophy in it, so I appreciate that. We wound up talking about the jealousy thing; the myth that you somehow become immune to jealousy when you're in an open relationship. About the "sex without emotion" thing - also mostly a myth, although more possible to do than completely eradicating jealousy. And about the ultimate relationship fear: that your significant other will find another person who somehow is a better "fit" for them and abandon you. Which, the moral of the whole story is that open relationships are not all that completely different from monogamous ones, there's just a bit more actual acknowledgement of feelings and introspection about said feelings in the former. On the abandonment thing. It's entirely possible no matter what type of relationship you're in. There's always the probability that the person you are with is going to find somebody else to be with. I equated it to the fear of death. You know it's going to happen, and you can either try and ignore it but still be afraid of it, or you can face it head on and say, "what about this makes me afraid?" In monogamy, you would never say, "I'm going out to a work dinner tonight, and it's entirely possible I'll meet somebody who I will click with on a level you and I don't." Because you love the person that you're with, and although it's a possibility you might love somebody just as much, if not more, you can't actually say that out loud. In non-monogamy, you can say, "I'm going out to a work dinner tonight, and it's entirely possible I'll meet somebody who I will click with on a level you and I don't. But I promise to come home to you and talk to you about it, and consider your feelings about it, and the way I feel for this new person will not change the way I feel about you." That's the main difference.

Pros and Cons

In addition to the whole not worrying about normal vs. not thing, therapy lady and I spend a lot of time on feelings. Not just how I was feeling, but how I felt about the feelings I was having. Real meta shit.

In my little bag of hilariously charming issues lies the inability to decide for myself whether I really like the way I behave. It's partly inconsistent reinforcement for behavior when I was growing up. One week it would seem like I could get away with anything, and the next week it seemed that everything I did warranted some type of lecture, reprimand, or physical punishment. So therapy lady and I do a lot of talking and rationalizing about things that have happened in my world, how I feel about them, and then how I feel about my feelings about that thing. To make it a bit more concrete: I'll have a conversation with Now-hubby, something stupid about like where we're going to dinner, and I'll actually voice an opinion about where I'd like to go. This means I will go to therapy lady and be all, "I had a good moment where I actually said what I wanted!" Then therapy lady and I will have an in-depth discussion about how this makes me feel (generally good, if not a bit anxious because now I have to follow up and might have to do it again at some point). And then how I feel about feeling that way (completely anxious, and a little guilty because I feel like I shouldn't feel that way about it).

One behavior thing that took me a really long time to come to realize as a definite pro for myself and stop feeling guilty about was the way I judge people. I'm actually fairly good about not generalizing about people. I've had very little luck meeting Brittanies that were anything other than annoying twats, but that doesn't mean I automatically discount every Brittany I meet. However, I am a very quick judgement maker, and once I have a judgement in place about someone it tends to stick and influence all other interactions with said person. At the beginning of therapy lady time, this used to make me feel not great about myself. I'm alienating myself from people and such and such blather. Then lots of discussion and rationalization happened, and now I actually sort of like that attribute about myself.

Passion for the with-it and hip

On the way home today, an Evanescence song came on the radio, which generally makes me feel about like this:

Evanescence was one of those unfortunate bands who: 1. did not have very good music to begin with and 2. had an incredibly annoying fan base among some of the people around me when the band first started getting popular.

I mention the second thing because I want to illustrate that I already didn't like some of these people to begin with, and their exuberance over Evanescence was the final nail in the coffin. Those who I sort of got along with got a temporary pass for liking Evanescence as long as we still got along on some other fundamental likes and dislikes.

When it comes to things that people are into, I'm a very live-and-let-live sort of individual. Which is not to say that I never disagree with anybody. I'm just more the type of person to let people have their own opinions about things unless it's in some way directly threatening me or those I care about. Maybe it's a bit because I'm fairly hard-headed myself, and dislike people trying to "sell" me on their interpretation of things. So if I have a differing opinion from somebody else, I approach it by rolling my eyes and internally monologize about how  they're wrong because x, y, and z.

When I was in college, there was an individual we called the "Wells Hall Preacher," and he was the best version of a literalist I have ever seen. Everybody was going to hell according to this guy, and it was fucking hilarious. Some people would try to stand up to him and argue points, and I always just thought what a fantastic waste of breath. Now, the girl who I happened to be sitting next to one day listening to the Preacher who told me that homosexuality was just a challenge God gave people. Like, everyone has challenges. Her challenge was that she doesn't trust people enough. Her I snapped at. "So you can't trust people and I want to bury my face in other women's labia? That seems equitable." It wasn't like what she was saying was hurting my feelings or physicality in any way, it was just obnoxiously cliche, and she wasn't backing it up with the completely insane vigor that the Preacher had behind his arguments.

I feel similarly when meeting new people now. Either they're completely nuts-o Wells Hall Preacher, in which case I can usually just avoid them. Or they're at least knowledgeable about the things they like and can speak intelligently about them; then we might get along to some degree. But the Evanescence people who are all, "durr it's like any other shit pop-rock band except with a hot chick for a singer, so that's why I like it." Or the people who are going to get a little sound byte of quotable information ("it's just the challenge God's given you") and then throw it around like it's fucking truth. That's not a justification for anything. That's just a buy-in to why they think they should like something. And it means absolutely nothing as far as actual personality is concerned.

I have a degree in dick-ology

Not really. I just happen to know a lot of random facts about dicks. And about sex in general. Attribute it to having to essentially "learn" about my own sexuality, and having a lot of random facts about other sex things in some of the books I chose to read.

Such as: if you want to have nightmares for a few years, you'll watch a video of a duck penis becoming erect. Or the fact that panda dicks, fully erect, are only about the length of the human thumb. And not like one of those people who have like real long thumbs. We're talking maybe an inch maximum. For a fairly big animal, that's a decidedly tiny wiener.

Here's some other fun sexy facts about the animal kingdom for ya'll to enjoy.

Open to Interpretation

The question was raised this weekend (outside of my earshot, I heard about it later) on what the "end plan" was for Frisbee and I. I'm not even entirely sure that was the wording, he was telling me about it later and I may have been tired and/or drunk at the time of retelling. In any case, the general gist behind the question was what exactly Frisbee and I have as far a future is concerned.

Answering this question from a poly perspective is an interesting conundrum. First, you're never really sure if the people asking are genuinely interested in the continued success of your relationship, or if they're just asking in hopes that you'll say something really fucked up like, "we'll be moving to the commune in Los Angeles where we'll have our commitment ceremony officiated by the Frog King." Second, answering questions like, "what is the long-term plan for this relationship?" involves a lot of discussion and negotiation because you've got the possibility of other people being in the relationship. It's not possible to just say some variant of, "well, I guess we'll get married and then move in together and then maybe think about getting pets or house plants or maybe even a tiny baby thing."

I mean, those were all the things I said when people asked me the same question when Now-hubby and I first got together. Because at that time, that's what we weredoing, and it wasn't really necessary to open things up and have the big explanation time about, "and maybe we'll have other people that we have sexytimes with or maybe even other awesome relationships with." I'm not a big one on explaining maybes to people who aren't directly involved in the relationship. Now-hubby and I had talked a lot about how we were going to format our relationship, we knew the eventual "maybe" of having other partners was out there, but it wasn't important for everyone else to know about it as well.

Going outside the set narrative makes it difficult to define exactly where you'll be in the status of a relationship at any given time. Even if I was to find some other V out there in the world (read: relationship between a woman and two men where the woman is involved sexually with both men but the men are only friendly/platonic with each other) and try to get advice, there would be different aspects to the relationship that would make comparison or advice almost impossible. It becomes just a sort of wistful hope that if that relationship's made it successfully, maybe somehow mine will as well. Hypothetical situations can be raised, and discussions can be had about, "what if x, y, or z?" until you have exhausted every possible situation that could arise within a relationship. Ultimately, though, the only way to know if something works is to just try it. And that can be scary as fuck.

'Tis the Season

Hello, intrepid blog visitors. Today I have exciting news. I have a new background on my computer:

It makes me quite happy in the genital region every time I turn on my computer. Also, it is all to benefit a good cause or something. If the cause is increasing my genital arousal, done and done.

Positivity

Back to work today - an entire day of sleeping and chugging an entire gallon of orange juice has done the trick.

I'm keeping panels 5-11 of this comic in my head for the foreseeable future. Although I dislike spiders, I do like feeling awesome. 

Stayed home sick today...

Just woke up out of a Nyquil coma to have some breakfast/lunch type stuff. Then I'm most likely going back to bed because it hurts my body to be upright right now. But before I do that, here is a comic thing to look at. (I tried posting the actual image, but it was too big and I couldn't get it to fit and I am too sick to care about it right now.)

Link to actual comic site is here.

I.O.U.

This past weekend I went back to the gang bangs after an absence that had a lot to do with my student loans coming back into repayment and me not being able to afford to do anything fun anymore.

It was nice to see some of the more regular guys who I'd missed. (In this instance, I am using "regular" to mean "attends the same gang bang parties as myself on a frequent basis," not to indicate some sort of normativity.) There was a decent amount of new guys as well, some of whom turned out to be okay representations of human beings. One particular with a handlebar moustache was pretty awesome. (Men can go one of only two ways with handlebar moustaches - actually cool dude or total and complete hipster asshole.) Then of course there was the guy who tried to stick his dick in my ass without warning (none of the girls were doing anal that night, so it's not even like a, "oh, I thought you were the one who was doing anal" excusable faux pas). The guy I had to actually slap away because he would not stop pushing on the back of my head during oral, even when I was giving oral to other men. And then there was the particular disaster that was The Man Who is Owed Everything from Women Everywhere. (Hereafter abbreviated to TMWOE, for brevity's sake.)

I first experienced TMWOE in line for the bathroom. The party hadn't even officially started yet, but regardless. There's a strict rule at the parties about women having the right of way when it comes to the bathroom. There's only 5 of us to about 30 men, and I guess the rationale also goes that we've waited in enough freaking bathroom lines in our lifetimes. So I get to the bathroom, and there's a guy already in there. My little gender trump card doesn't extend to the point that I can just walk in and push the guy out of the way mid-stream, but TMWOE is the next one in line outside the door. I step in front of him, and he gives me a look. "I just have to piss quick, do you mind?" Which, of course, being the infinite sass machine that I am, I reply to with, "Yes, I mind. Ladies get dibs on the bathroom."

Me move on in the night to intros and rule reading. Who's a first timer tonight? Raise your hands. TMWOE's goes up, which doesn't make me feel any more sympathetic for him for not knowing the bathroom rule. It does, however, make me feel slightly bad for him a bit later when he's trying to fuck me and clearly not able to get hard because he's weirded out by all the extra turgid wangs around us. So, like I'm about to administer CPR or something, I tell everybody to give us space and lay him down on his back. He gets a little 1:1 attention, mostly in the form of a blowjob and me on top of him. Ta-da, erection, ejaculation, I get to move on to all the other guys who are still hanging around the perimeter of the action.

Then a bit later I decide to take a break. This is the point where TMWOE begins the cycle of being owed everything from women everywhere. I'm chatting with Handlebar Moustache and one of the more regular guys (again, see "regular" to imply "frequency" rather than "normality"). TMWOE comes up to me and asks, this is a direct quote, if he can, "get any contact information from me?" To which I tell him no. Which, there's also a rule at the parties about no meaning no. But I guess it's a bit confusing about whether no means no just when you're trying something sexual, or if no also means no just in general conversation. Because TMWOE pushes it. I have to say no at least 3 times before he gets the hint and fucks off.

Much later in the night, I'm taking another break and just sort of sitting on a couch in the main gang bang area. I'm resting, but not necessarily completely out of the action yet. TMWOE decides this is a great opportunity to come over and try again. Maybe if he tells me his whole sob story about how women everywhere haven't realized they owe him everything yet, I'll finally be the one to wise up and just give him what he wants. What exactly is it that he wants? He's not really sure, but it somehow involves a girl being both "nice" but also able to "fuck dirty." Multiple attempts by me to explain that girls like that are usually fairly difficult to find out in nature are rebuffed with explanations on how he's tried multiple dating sites online with no success. He's gone out to bars with no success. And he's got good pick-up lines. How does he know that? Because he's pretended to be a woman online before just to collect pick-up lines from dudes and weed out the "good ones," that's how. Seriously, if I'd just let him take me out for a few drinks, he'd show me a good time. (Words that actually came out of his mouth, I'm not extrapolating at all.) At this particular point I decide to give up on genuine advice, because it's fairly clear that TMWOE is not listening at all, and excuse myself to go talk to somebody else.


Men like this exist in other instances out in the world. I've met a few at other gang bang parties, also a few at munches. Sometimes just out there in general people world. One particular other example from the parties was the gentleman who tried to talk me into accompanying him to a clothing-optional camp site based only on the knowledge that I lived near his area and attended gang bangs. It was similar with TMWOE. He knew absolutely nothing about me except the fact that I was at the same gang bang party he was, and that was somehow impetus enough to come over and ask me for personal contact information. At munches, it usually takes the form of men offering to demonstrate toys (never to show me how to wield them, more often to show me how they'll mark my skin), or show me their dungeons, or otherwise just offer things that are creepy in any context beyond the fact that we're in an event-type thing where people are more or less guaranteed to be kinky. Which, the offers are creepy regardless. It all comes down to being owed something. The mentality that they are men, and I am a woman, and somehow just by showing up to this type of event have offered myself up for any type of attention they deem me worthy for. It's the shittiest justification for their behavior. It's not entirely "asshole top" behavior, but it's in the same related family. I once had a female Domme approach me at a munch and physically touch me in ways I wasn't comfortable with while she told me how she felt a compulsion to, "tame those she is with." That was a bit of a combination - those who are owed things typically keep the creeping to a verbal level. Making innuendos and offers that are fairly out-of-bounds considering how much they don't know about me. They also usually pepper their discourse with various complaints about women in general and how we don't make any sense or something and how it's all our fault. Asshole tops have a tendency to bring things into the physical realm - even little light strokes, pats, etc. If I haven't agreed to it it's not okay to do that. In either case, once I've said "no" that should be enough.

The main moral of the story is that it disappoints me how certain people are conditioned by experience to expect certain things from those they interact with. It frustrates me that I have to say no as repeatedly as I do to those people. But I am ultimately proud of myself for being able to say no, regardless of how many shitty attempts I receive at the same question I have already answered.