Super-quick work update
Last week the guy who sacked me casually confirmed me as a permanent employee.
I casually thanked him and went back to my desk.
I’m not sure this reflects particularly well on either of us, but I’m happy.
Paying for sex
A guy I met on Saturday was in the middle of bust-up with his girlfriend because he’d been sleeping with prostitutes.
There are lots of reasons why this could end a relationship – deceit, taking risks with sexual health, psych issues – but once, a million years ago, I was the maligned girlfriend and my problem was that the guy was able to compare me directly with someone likely to be much better at sex.
This tells you a lot about my self-confidence at the time, and my destructive habit of measuring my worth in units of sexual prowess.
But talking about it this weekend, I realised my approach now to competing with prostitutes would be different. Sure, they are gonna be good at sex (I should damned well hope so if they’re doing it for a living!) but would it be the end of the world if they were better than me?
I still credit sex with more mystical influence than it probably has, but the idea of not being the best shag someone has ever had sits ok with me now. Plus sex is more than the sum of its parts, and I have things other than expertise to throw into the mix.
(I am often down on myself for acting in ways that don’t confirm the person I’d like to think I am. Quite a few times lately I have caught myself doing the opposite, being surprised when I realise I have become more rational and level-headed about things that used to upset me.)
Labels
Towards the end of last year I noticed something odd about how people relate to labels, but forgot about it until writing the previous post.
I refer to myself as bisexual. It doesn’t describe the nuances of my relationship, but it does a good job of conveying ‘attracted to boys and girls’. During two different conversations (both with UK public school boys) I made reference to this and both guys responded by asking ‘How can you be, you’re married?”
The implication being that the way we define ourselves is determined solely by our actions. I hadn’t got onto the non-monogamy label, so they saw a basic relationship between ‘sleeps with boy’ and ‘straight’.
This seems so nonsensical that I’d never considered anyone would think that way, but these examples proved me wrong. I asked the second guy if he considered everyone asexual until they’d lost their virginity, but that seemed to confuse him.
Whether we see labels as naming something innate or something we choose to be – surely they contribute to an overarching understanding of ourselves?
Pondering this got me thinking about my kinky life in Singapore (or lack of). I still describe my relationship as non-monogamous, despite six months of apple pie, mom & pops monogamy.
I am not using the term to describe my actions, rather my potential for action – which I guess is what labels come down to for me. The horny teenaged virgin knows exactly who they want to shag when the moment arises.
Remember when I was moving to S’pore, I said something like ‘If there are any perverts here J and I will find them’? Well there are, and in-between writing and posting this, we did.
Needless to say, I had a big smile on my face this weekend. I fear that saying more would be indiscrete 
A lot of love to give
Newsweek article on polyamory:
Only you. And you. And you.
It is impossible for me to read that header without hearing the Jim’ll Fix It theme. I guess that isn’t a problem in the US.
Anyway, long article on polyamory, interesting for its voyeuristic peek into the lives and sleeping arrangements of the group in question (p 3). The video package is cute as well.
It seems like the interviewees’ motivation is to raise awareness about a lifestyle that isn’t discussed much. There might be a bit of grandstanding beneath this but they are clearly proud of their relationship, as they ought to be. Ten years in a triad (or any relationship!) is a great achievement.
My favourite quote is this concluding remark from one of the guys interviewed:
“To look at an option like polyamory and say ‘That’s not for me’ is fine. To look at it and not realize you can choose it is just sad.”
And because I enjoy them (although be warned, J won’t watch ‘em cos he says the acting is too bad), here’s interviewee Terisa Greenan’s polyamory web series Family.
Enough already
If self-help books are chicken soup for the soul, working your notice in a job you’ve been told you can’t do is like drinking barium.
I am a mess. I have no confidence in anything I write. I go into paroxysms of fear and worry every time I make a mistake. I am sulky and withdrawn whenever I talk to the boss.
Really, really need to get out.
From a poly website
Made me stop and think, although I’m not sure about taking advice from a therapist who name-drops.
I remember one night, after Atlas was published, she [Ayn Rand] was sitting on the sofa, crying, protesting the state of the world and her place in it, and then she said how much she would hate for John Galt to see her this way, how much she would hate for him to see her miserable or in tears. I said, “Why? Wasn’t this part of the battle? Wasn’t feeling like hell and then picking yourself up and carrying on part of what made the struggle heroic? What was there to be ashamed of? Why did one have to pretend that there were never moments of utter despair? Wasn’t the challenge to experience them, own them, admit them, without denial or pretense ‹ and then go on fighting?” I said we should be proudly willing to let people see us in our darkest moments because in the end it was not going to be our darkest moments that would define us.
– Nathaniel Branden
Crash
Been two and a half weeks since they sacked me, and two weeks since they maybe-unsacked me.
Maybe-unsacking me was a good move in terms of keeping a useful employee around (if you’re paying someone you want them to work, even if they suck at it). I definitely wouldn’t have been able to work out my notice in my fully-sacked status.
Being maybe-sacked has been unsurprisingly confusing. The first week I entertained giddy ideas that I would start the new project, be amazing at it and find a place within the company where I was meant to be. The second week the metronome swung the other way. I started applying for jobs, regained my confidence and was finally able to say ‘fuck you’ and mean it.
Neither situation has been particularly pleasant, but there’s been optimism undercutting both. I either stay and do something awesome, or I leave and do something even better.
Then yesterday I crashed. Got a bit of a head cold anyway, so been shivering and run-down, and this morning I just couldn’t do it. Every time I tried to make myself go to work I felt nauseous and started to cry. In the end I called in sick. That way I managed to get enough of a grip on myself to stop crying, but I’m still shaking and scared.
I’m not sure where I go from here. I can’t be off-sick every day until mid-August. If I can make it through to Friday I have two weeks in the UK where I can forget about it (although that’s two weeks not spent job hunting), but I still need to work this week.
I am hoping that maybe I can get further with the job hunt today and that will give me enough confidence to go back into work tomorrow, but there’s no fight left in me right now. I am just small and scared and sick.
Safe, sane and consensual
Cos nothing completes a complicated working week like a spot of non-consensual sex.
The plot coagulates and curdles slightly
Wednesday afternoon – got sacked. Wednesday evening – sought solace in alcohol. Thursday – talked it through with my boss (while trying not to puke or faint, see Wednesday evening). Went into a weird grieving phase while trying to come to terms with this unpleasant but unchangeable situation. Friday afternoon – got offered a job dong something else at the company.
What. The. Fuck?
Constructive dismissal
So it seems I’ve been sacked.
Except they’re not calling it that. The boss had a chat with me and suggested I wasn’t in the right company and perhaps I’d like to hand my notice in. I’m fairly certain I don’t have a choice though.
