Tattoo (part 1)

In an interview about her 1981 movie tattoo Maud Adams said "The tattooing in this movie is a metaphor for what happens in a relationship. Except you can see it outside instead of just having the inside of your head tattooed."

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In the posts Perfect and Fear, Uptight, and Twitchingly Paranoid... On Being Cadbury I referred to my sexual issues with regard to Smitten and the cast-offs and carry-overs from my relationship with Mrs_C.

Dysfunction is not an issue most men discuss with other men. It's rare and usually drunken. Or maybe with a doctor.

The social stigmas associated with it are strong. It is an easy hit on almost any man. The suggestion that you are not able to just drop your drawers and do it at a moment's notice anywhere and anytime seriously impugns a person's "manhood".

Even when anonymous was trashing me in one of his postings (deleted) he took a cheap shot on the subject:

"careful chelle, Cad is in a deleting mood with people who disagree with him.

I wonder if what upset Cad was the reference to quoting a private conversation on a public blog without permission? or was it that Miss Smitten might think him impotent for not getting hard as they snuggled naked together?" [bold mine]

It's an easy hit on pretty much any guy if there is ever an issue with anything but constant and straining erections.

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Tattooing

Tattooing the inside of your head

Sex

Sexual dysfunction

Sex with Mrs_C and sex with Smitten

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I was 17 when I first started having sex. Having sex and having relationships. Pretty much straight from nerd guy to sex. I had a 3 month dating and heavy petting relationship prior to going into a full fledged sex and "steady" relationship with a woman who was 23. Before you gasp about the age difference, I will point out that my peer group was all over 20. I was pretty much the same uptight weenie I am now - not your usual 17 year old male. Also for the record I graduated from high school when I was 16 years old (all of the kids in my family were accelerated and skipped). At 17 I was already working full-time in the computer industry (it wasn't the same as now - being a computer guy in the early '80s was a lot more rare).

FYI - we had known each other as part of the same social circle for 4 years previous to that. She had come out of a bad (really bad) relationship and I was just as earnestly nice as I am now. Also FYI this is the woman designated K in the post Too Nice A Guy

K was a pretty hot number, did the bar and night-club scene, and worked in one of the busy/trendy bars in town. So I went straight from being a nerd guy in high school to boy-toy in nightclubs. She didn't tell her friends how old I was - she didn't think of me as younger and often would forget my age even in casual conversation.

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About sex - I knew only what I had read and what I had been told. I didn't believe most of what I had been told because teenage boys are idiots. I had read the Joy of Sex, an entire sex encyclopedia, and a bunch of years of the Playboy advisor. Book larnin' about sex.

Book larnin' about sex... and about relationships.

I knew a few things going in. I knew I didn't know shit. I really wanted to have more sex. I really wanted this hot 23 year old woman to continue dating me. I knew that I loved buying flowers and being charming. Boy, I loved it when I could get her to smile.

I already was of the core belief that it was my "duty" and responsibility to satisfy her (and any woman) sexually. That I was fundamentally opposed to the "guy getting his rocks off" view of sex (one of the reasons I read Playboy and not Penthouse or Hustler. Yes people - I read Playboy for the editorial stance [heh])

My 23 year old girlfriend happily loaned me all her books on sex as well. I read them all with a studiousness that would have earned many scholarships if I had only applied in while attending university...

She dumped me after about a year and a half - she had healed. She still liked me and after a period of upset we resumed being very good friends. We had a fling each year (usually in the spring) until I started seeing Mrs_C.

But a pattern was set. At least a pattern that appears in a stochastic sense after the fact.

The nice guy.

The safe guy.