Category Archive

My husband, Dave, will take off Monday morning on a weeklong business trip to the South, and I will be home with just my two sweethearts, Mia and Fritz, the cats.  I have some potential opportunities to leave the two cats home by themselves in the evening while Mommy goes out catting around.

I heard from Rhyanna last week, mentioned in my post of May 21, after about a six week silent spell.  She’s been busy with a high school graduation of her younger child and then off on vacation with her husband.  Work has been busy.  She said that it would be nice to get together again, but we’d need to kind of hang loose with plans.  She’s been putting in overtime at work and may not know until that day how things are shaping up.  I said that I could hang pretty loose next week.  Just let me know!  It was good to hear from her, and I hope we can get together sometime soon for some food, conversation, and fellowship.

Dildo Bingo , held monthly at Pi Bar and Restaurant in South Minneapolis, is this next week on Thursday evening.  I was informed when I went out to dinner with Randi Sue on July 17 that this is going to be a good Dildo Bingo evening because it is also the anniversary of Smitten Kitten, the sex toy shop that hosts Dildo Bingo and supplies the prizes.   She would like me to go.  I had a great time on my first occasion of attending Dildo Bingo the end of May and would like to go again.  The only drawback to it is that it is on a work night, and I have trouble tearing myself away from all the fun to get home at a reasonable hour.  I could easily stay up until the wee hours of the morning because I have no self-discipline once I get into the swing of having a good time!  One option is to take those few hours of comp time I have coming to me and sack in for a few extra hours on Friday morning before going in to work for half-a-day.  We’ll see how all that shapes up.

And then there is Michelle, a woman quite dear to me, although I’ve only met her in person one time during our four-year relationship.  Let me explain.  I was cruising the Personals on Fast Cupid back in the summer of ‘04 and happened upon this profile of a local BiCities woman who was looking for male or female friends.  I wasn’t sure exactly what she was looking for but I liked her pleasant profile and shot her an email.  She responded and said that her best friend, Dan, had put her up to placing the profile after she had broken up with her Significant Other.  She and her Significant Other were back together again, however, and she really wasn’t looking for anything more than friendship.  In spite of having some sexual experience with women in her 20s and technically considering herself bisexual, she really wasn’t interested in a sexual relationship with a woman, just friendship.  She said that she had a blog on LiveJournal and I was welcome to check out her journal there.

That was my introduction to LiveJournal and the blogging world.  Michelle was my first LiveJournal friend.  I later added her best friend, Dan, as my friend, too, really liking the man.  He was a great writer and a man dealing with many internal struggles which he wrote eloquently and thoughtfully about.  I connected with him on an emotional level, perhaps more so than with Michelle.

Dan committed suicide in March 2007 and I attended his memorial service.  The large gathering room was full to the brim that day, the overflow of attendees spilling out into the hallway and lobby,  with the dozens (I’d venture to say hundreds) of people whose lives Dan had touched through his work with AA and other chemical dependency support groups, his involvement with Eye of Horus  and other pagan groups, his deep love for his dog, his joy in drumming, his love of the written word.   He was a friend to so many!  It was at his memorial service that I met Michelle in person for the first time.  She, in fact, gave a very beautiful eulogy that day.  It was not a good day to establish any kind of more personal friendship, understandably. 

The past 16 months have been very, very painful for Michelle.  Dan’s suicide will always be with her.  I have followed her LJ postings since then and have tried to be a supportive friend.  I think that she has come to appreciate this more than she did before, where I was largely glossed over among her friends.  Last week, once again, she asked, “So when are we getting together?”  (We never have.)  I answered, “Make a suggestion.  I’m open in the evenings to go out to dinner or for a walk or something.”  I tossed that out there a few days ago and haven’t heard anything from her.  This is how these exchanges have always gone with her.  I would LIKE to get together with her but am waiting for that suggestion as to when she’d like to do it.  (Should I coax her a bit harder, do you think?  Strictly a platonic relationship, I may add.)

So, it could be a busy week or I could sit home and do nothing but read a book and maybe watch a movie.  We’ll see how it unfolds!

This latest incident — meeting someone, enjoying the experience of meeting them, only to have the next date abruptly cancelled because “I can’t do this!” — brings back a lot of memories.  I’ve been down this road before.

In my early 20s, I was actively dating women in the handful of years immediately following our move here to the BiCities.  After all, I was prime dating material from the aspects that I was a twenty-something and very attractive!  (I’d post a pic from that era to back up that claim, but that would ruin my anonymity, although I don’t think anyone who didn’t already know me would recognize my pics from 1978 or so.  Maybe sometime….) 

 I was doing something similar to what I am now in terms of meeting women — the “personals,” although at that time, there was no Internet.  There were Personals printed in the weekly publications, like The Twin Cities Reader and City Pages, that you could pick up in the wire bins in the lobbies of restaurants and bars, student hang-outs at the colleges, other business establishments.  At that time, one would write up a Personals ad, fee usually charged by the number of words, and either deliver it in person or mail it to the newspaper.  They would print it for the specified number of weeks you paid for.  They would assign you an anonymous box number, and you could either have your snail-mail forwarded to an address for a fee or go to the newspaper office and pick it up.  You then communicated with your respondents in one of two ways: a telephone call or a written letter, depending on the information they gave you.

This is how I met Rae in the fall of 1978.  She was four years older than me, an R.N. with a very intense position of being a neonatal ICU nurse in our large county hospital in downtown Minneapolis, and she lived only half-a-dozen blocks from me.  She was living with her male lover who was in his last year of medical school at the University of Minnesota.  She had never had a sexual relationship with a woman before but was interested in exploring her attraction.

We got along very well and a sexual relationship did ensue.  She even posted a notification in the Twin Cities Reader at one point, saying, “K — I’ve never met anyone as warm and wonderful as you.  I think I’m falling in love.  Love, R., R.N.”  I carried that little scrap of paper with me in my wallet for a long time!

But then things got “funny.”  I felt it coming on.  The end of that phase of our relationship came on the evening of our six-month “anniversary,” when we went out to a very nice Japanese restaurant and I gave her a card and small gift in celebration.  I was driving, and when I took her back to her apartment (she was now living alone, having broke up with the med school guy very recently), she gave me a quick peck, thanked me for the nice evening, said that it was a work night and she had to get some rest, and hopped out of the car.  I shrugged, decided then and there that she would call me next; I would make no further invitations.

I did not hear from her.  Six months later or so after our date at the Japanese restaurant, another notification appeared in the Twin Cities Reader.  It said, “K — Bisexuality is for me a very confusing place to be, but I will always remember and cherish our time together.  R., R.N.”  Since I was her first woman and she had had a longstanding history with men, including a brief marriage and divorce, I assumed that she had returned to the heterosexual lifestyle and left the unconventionality of bisexuality behind.

More than a year went by since that notification she put in the Reader.  Then I got a Christmas greeting from her in December 1980, explaining that she had been in an uncomfortable spot with me a year-and-a-half earlier, but she seemed to be in a better place.  She’d like to see me and “catch up.”  We then talked on the phone a couple of times and she invited me over to her apartment for a visit.  We had a lovely evening together.  Just fun!  We talked, laughed, caught up with each other, had some hot apple cider laced with a little “holiday cheer.”  Just had a nice evening together.  As the evening wore on, we sat closer to each other on the couch, and I think there were a couple of rather chaste kisses as the evening drew to a close.  Nothing heavy.  We wanted to see each other again and talked about doing so.

We talked on the phone a few more times and made plans to get together after the first of the year for a girls-afternoon at a St. Paul former strip club that had stopped featuring “exotic female dancers” but had gone the route of male strippers.  We were going to go and laughed at the prospect!  I was looking forward to it, just for the lighthearted silliness of it.   I needed that in a life that was pretty bogged down with full-time college courses and part-time jobs.

The day before we were scheduled to go to the Payne Reliever (on Payne Ave. in St. Paul), I received a letter from her.  (No email then, remember?)  She said, “I can’t see you again.  I thought I could but I can’t.”  I don’t remember what all it said, but it was all kind of crazy.  I’ve never had anything affect me like that letter did.  It was like a sharp slap in the face, and I burst into tears.  I sat there at my desk and cried for quite awhile.  Of course, I wrote her back and said that I was fine with being friends; I hadn’t gone into it expecting that we’d be lovers again.  I enjoyed her company, and what was so complicated about that that she couldn’t see me again, enjoy being friends with me?  I didn’t get any response to that.

THIRTEEN YEARS goes by.  A letter arrives.  I was still living at the same address I was when we had known each other in the late ’70s, early 80s.  (Same address, same husband.  Talk about stability!)  It had one of those absurd beginnings: “Remember me?”  That is such a crazy introduction to a letter when of course you remember this person!   It would be like your high school best friend or your ex-fiance in college beginning a letter that way after a lengthy absence.  Of course you remember who they are!  But anyway, she went on to say that she had actually left Minnesota for quite awhile back in the 80s, had been overseas with some medical group, had been working in California, etc., etc.  She had had a couple of lesbian relationships and had been “out” as a lesbian for all that time, much to my surprise.  However, she had moved back to the Twin Cities, had gotten involved with a Buddhist Temple (we were alike in that — ex-Catholics who became more Buddhist than anything), met a man at the Temple and married him recently, much to her friends’ surprise.  She was reconnecting with a “bisexual” side of herself.

We made plans to meet once again.  We went to the May Day celebration at Powderhorn Park in my neighborhood, a celebration that always draws a large GLBT gathering.  We went out to lunch a couple of times after that.  Talked on the phone.  We were estabishing a relationship again after 13 years apart, although a platonic relationship, I presumed.

Then…nothing after a couple of months.  No return phone calls.  No response to the notes and cards I sent.  I wasn’t surprised.  I didn’t cry.  I had become kind of callused by that point.

Looking in the phone book a year or so later, I noted that her husband was still at the same address she had given me but had reverted to his “maiden” name.  They had hyphenated their last names when they got married and both of them then went by the hyphenated name.  He was back to being just plain old “Johnson” instead of Robins-Johnson, as they had been listed before, and there was no listing for her.  Furthermore, I knew she had changed jobs because I recently had accepted a position at the HMO she was working for, and I knew from checking the employee roster that she wasn’t there.  She had done a “disappearing act” again.  Taken a powder.   

So, yeah, the long and the short of it is that this crazy kind of thing has happened before, the  “I can’t see you again” on the basis of a pleasant lunch or a nice evening.  For some people, connecting with someone and enjoying a friendship has to be a very complicated thing.  For some people, accepting the fluidity of their sexual orientation has to be a very traumatic and confusing thing.

….sigh….

In previous entries, I’ve mentioned a trans woman I’ve been friends with since mid-April, and for purposes of anonymity in this blog, I’ve named her “Randi Sue.”  (Some years ago, it was my own username on a website because a character I created in my stories many, many years ago was named Randy.)  Randi Sue had her MTF reassignment surgery one year ago yesterday and I asked her if she wanted to go out to dinner with me and celebrate the occasion.    She selected the Conga Latin Bistro not far from our University of Minnesota student neighborhood known as Dinkytown, and we met there at 7:00.

I’m keeping this relationship platonic on my end.  When she suggested a few days earlier that I drive to her house — about a 25 minute drive from my house — and then we would go together to the restaurant, another half-hour drive from her house, I hesitated to approve that plan.  I hashed over the pros and cons of that with my husband and I said that taking separate cars would be a good way to keep sexual advances at bay.  He agreed that it would circumvent the offer of “would you like to come in for a glass of wine or a cup of coffee?” and help to prevent any situations from getting started.    That is, he went on, unless I wanted such a thing to happen.

No, I didn’t, so I explained to Randi Sue that I hadn’t been getting home from work until 5:30 every evening.  To make a 7:00 dinner reservation, I’d have to leave my house by 6:00 to get to her house by 6:30.  I wanted time to shower and change my clothes after a day in the lab, and I said it would be better if I just left from my house and met her at the restaurant at 7:00.  When she asked if I wanted to move the reservation until later in the evening, I said no, not on a work night.

We did have a nice supper and some good conversation.  I gifted her with a necklace, bracelet and earring set that I had made, beading having been one of my hobbies for about 13 years now.  I know that she has some difficulty getting bracelets to fit her larger wrists, and I took that into account when making that item.  The length was fine on both the bracelet and the necklace, and she seemed to really like them.  She took off the jewelry she had been wearing and put on what I had given her. 

I think I was right in my intuition not to meet up at her house.  The suggestions for a night of wild lovemaking started as our evening neared its close.  I deflected these suggestions and said that I was going to go home and get some sleep.  It was a work night, after all!

Okay, why don’t I want to go to bed with this woman, a woman I had some very good sex with on two occasions during the first week of our relationship?  It would be as easy as pie to say yes and enjoy the experience!

It’s because she is still in such a state of transition in her life.  I need to have a certain level of trust in my partner in order to have a good sexual relationship with him/her.  I need a fair degree of stability in that relationship.  I don’t do “casual sex” well at all!

Not only is Randi Sue a year into her surgical transition, she is recently into a divorced status as well.  Her spouse of 22 years wanted a divorce when Randi Sue decided to surgically transition, and the divorce was finalized just last month.  There have been a lot of major changes in this person’s life!

During the three months that I’ve known her, she has reversed her position on “casual sex.”  During the first couple of weeks of our relationship, she was firm in stating that she couldn’t have sex without being in love.  This was worrisome to me since we had already had sex and she had announced on the second occasion that she thought she was falling in love with me.  That was just too quick for me to wrap my head around and I drew back from it.  A month later, she is talking about not wanting to get seriously involved with anyone — just wanting to hang loose for now — but that she didn’t want to give up sex.  She was feeling in an “experimental” mode then and followed through on it by having sex with a man for the first time as a woman, even though she had told me that she really wasn’t interested in men; she liked women!

A few weeks ago, she wrote up a new profile under a different username on the dating site we belong to, this time called herself lesbian while still keeping the profile where she calls herself bisexual.  This fragmentation is enough to make my head spin!  She recently decided, however, to drop the lesbian profile and keep the bisexual profile, although your guess is as good as mine regarding where she stands with this orientation issue at the moment. 

The bottom line is that she is still in a state of intense self-discovery and exploration, and she’s doing a lot of vacilating while she tries on these different emotions and roles.  That’s common for the phase of life known as adolescence, and that’s quite what she’s in, even though she is almost as old as I am.  I’ve teased her a bit about her being only a year old now.  She said she thought it sounded better if she started at age 16 and aged from there.  In effect, then, we celebrated her 17th birthday last night!

We hugged goodbye on the sidewalk by the restaurant and she went home in her car and I went home in my car.  Later in bed, my husband away on a business trip, I confided to my Mia-Kitty, the Siamese who shares my bed every night, that Mom had had an offer to have hot sex with a woman but had come home to her Mia-Kitty instead.  Mia gave me a head-butt, purred, and snuggled in with her mama, glad that I made the decision I did.  I’m glad, too.  It seems to be the path to follow in this particular relationship while a lot of changes are taking place in my trans friend’s life, the surgical transition a year ago just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

On the evening of July 7 a year ago, the following incident happened with a woman I had been dating for almost four months.  (The post reprinted below is lifted from my LiveJournal account and was posted at 10:19 that night):

A few days ago, I made a comment to another person’s post about my polyamorous situation with my friend, Millie.  I said something to the effect that the past three months have been wonderful with her, but lurking in the shadows is the fear that she’s involved with so many people that I’m just going to drop off the bottom of the list someday.I think that it might have happened this evening.

I dropped my husband off at the airport for his weeklong trip to Wales at 5:30 this afternoon and then proceeded on to Millie’s house.  We had made plans to go out to dinner….and then……  (???)  I threw some overnight necessities in a bag, just in case I got an invitation to spend the night and decided to accept it!

First of all, she told me on the way to dinner that she had a recent one-night stand to confess, something that she needed to tell to all her partners.  She had been flirting with her kid’s karate instructor for the past six weeks or so and “got carried away” last week.  She didn’t think that this was a good situation to be in with this man since she feels he doesn’t understand polyamory, and he has a girlfriend who would be jealous if she knew about this affair.  She doesn’t want to be in that situation, but they had sex.  Hence, the one-night stand.

Okay.  Thanks for sharing, Millie.

Then over supper, she said that she’s been in a confused place about all these relationships she’s got going on, and there are a few.  There’s me.  There’s the guy in San Francisco.  There is the guy in Beloit, Wisconsin.  There are a couple of local men she’s having sex with.  She just got out of a messy menage a trois with a local couple that went on for quite awhile, although she is still in contact with the former participants and I think she’d like to return to it if they could work things out.   She mentioned something to that effect this evening.

She’s still cruising the Fast Cupid website, reading profiles and making contact with people.

She said that there is something missing in her life.  She wants to be in love.  She said that hanging out with me is nice but…..  She was out to our house for supper last with her 3-year-old and that was nice, too, but…..  She enjoyed being at the park after supper with my husband and me and watching her son play, but….

But there is something missing for her.

I don’t know what’s missing.  Therefore, I don’t know if I can provide it for her or not!  

I know that I’m uneasy about all the “activity” going on in her social life.  I’m technically polyamorous but I’ve never had more than two relationships going on at a time: that with my husband and that with a female lover.  I honestly don’t know what to make of all these various relationships she’s got going on, all in various stages and levels of frequency.  I’m having a hard time finding common definition with the term polyamory as it pertains to my life compared to how she chooses to conduct her polyamorous life.  I have found myself frequently pondering that term polyamory lately and wondering what it really means.  My recent observations would lead me to believe that for some people, it is a lifestyle of numerous sexual affairs going on concurrently, sometimes spontaneously and impulsively because HEY!  I’m poly, and it’s okay!  The only thing that separates that behavior from your basic ”affairs” and general sexual promiscuity is the level of honesty and self-acceptance about what’s going on.  

But that’s not how I’m comfortable conducting my sexual relationships and therein lies the problem.  

So, I’m home tonight.   We had supper together.  (She clarified that she wasn’t breaking up with me, although it sure felt like it!)  We shopped for a bit at the shopping mall by the restaurant.  I took her home.  We hugged goodnight.  I declined to go in.

I think it’s over and I’m sad tonight.

Sad but not surprised.

For those of you who have followed this blog (which may just be my husband and me, but that’s fine), you’ll know that running into Millie again at the BECAUSE conference kick-off evening the end of March was the incentive for the birth of this blog.  I had not seen or spoken to her since the night of July 7, with the exception of the note I put in her package which contained the repaired necklaces she had given me to fix and a paperback book I had borrowed from her.  It was done.  Over.

Over except for my remaining anger and confusion about what had gone on between us, something that hit me full in the face the evening our paths crossed at the BECAUSE conference and I left that evening, not to return for the full day of the conference on Saturday because she was giving one of the sessions the next day.

To end this year since my last dinner with her, an interesting thing happened.  As I’ve mentioned, I am a member of a dating site since the end of March.  I think it was on Wednesday that I noticed a local couple had looked at my profile.  The names they gave in their profile were Michael and Diane.  Common enough, All-American names, but it gave me pause because the couple in the menage a trois that Millie was involved with was Mike and Diane.  I read through their profile and picked out the fact that they were both from another state and had relocated here within the last couple of years.  Millie talked about them a lot with me and this rang a bell.  The ages seemed right.

I let this all simmer for a day and then decided, what the hell?  I shot them a message and asked if they had been involved with a local woman last year, that we may have a mutual acquaintance!  They gave me a honest reply back.  Yes, they were involved with a woman, a relationship that ended in early 2007.  They supposed that it could have been her.

I answered with the probable mutual acquaintance’s initials and said that I was just curious so I’d know who to stay away from in case she was still involved with them!

Michael replied that, yes, this was the woman and that if I were in proximity to them, I’d be about as far away from HER as I could get!

This resulted in a number of messages going back and forth over the next couple of days, some written by Michael, who had known Millie for a long time, and some written by Diane who had only met Millie through MIchael’s preexisting relationship with her.  The take-home message for me in all that was that Millie was/is an emotionally unpredictable woman.  I knew about her being treated for a long time for depression (for that matter, so have I), but MIchael postulated that she may be bipolar as well.    He went on to say after knowing her for more than a decade, “She has contradictory needs.  Sometimes she needs someone emotionally strong when she is feeling frail and needs someone to carry her and other times she needs them to be emotionally weak so that she can feel more control in her own life.   The people that seem to be best for her are either physically or emotionally distant from her…”

Diane said in a letter she wrote to me, “I would guess that she has quickly moved on to many other new conquests. It has been my observation that she flirts until she catches the person, takes what she wants and then moves on…”

Both of them agreed that it was good for me that I only experienced four months of this and decided to end it!

Have I had doubts about this?  Perhaps in some ways.  I know that I carry my own amount of baggage due to my growing-up years in a dysfunctional family and I know I tend to be hypersensitive to certain things.  Sometimes I have to pause and ask myself if I’m responding to some stimulus in an appropriate way or reacting from a need to protect an Inner Child from hurt and abuse.  This was one of those cases.

To “celebrate” the first anniversary of giving Millie the boot, I think that I can lay those doubts to rest, thanks to the input from MIchael and Diane, two people whom I never, ever expected to talk to!  They obviously didn’t have an easy time of it, either, and MIchael said that he let it go on for far too long.  This chance encounter with them reassured me that I was not out of line in making the decision I did, and I thank them for the words that they shared with me.

And now, let us return to our originally scheduled programming! 

My husband and I, both over 50-years-old, had our annual check-ups recently.  The inevitable colonoscopy recommendation comes up at every check-up, a procedure that we’ve both declined to have so far.  (No lectures, please.  I’m an R.N. with dual degrees in health care fields.  I know what the statistics are regarding colorectal cancer.)

We were talking about the pros and cons of the colonoscopy procedure again, a topic of conversation that comes up now and again for obvious reasons.  I voiced the opinion that I really doubted that colorectal cancer would be the cause of my death, given my lack of obvious risk factors for it and my clear risk factors for other illnesses.

He said, “Yeah, I don’t think that colon cancer will probably be the cause of my death, either.  If anything, I would say that the cause of my death will be a jealous girlfriend.”

“A jealous girlfriend!” I exclaimed.  “Whose?”

“YOURS!” he replied.

I laughed until tears threatened to roll down my cheeks!

Of course, it won’t be a laughing matter if it actually happens….

I missed all the Pride festivities here in the Twin Cities this past weekend, but I had a good excuse.  I accompanied my husband to his 40th high school class reunion in an Iron Range town about a three-hour drive north of the Cities.

I’ve covered some of the highlights of that event in my general-reading blog.  I’ll just relate an enjoyable situation that is best described here in the privacy of this anonymous blog.

The Class of 1968 had a big event Saturday evening in the lobby of an old hotel in the downtown district of the town.  We started off with drinks and socializing, followed by a brief program to offer appreciation for those who put forth a lot of effort to make this reunion happen.  There was a reading of the names of the 46 classmates who had passed away and a moment of silence for them.  (46 classmates was 10% of that class.  That seems like a lot of deaths for a bunch who is only 58 years old now.  Rather disconcerting.) 

Then the browsing at the buffet line started, the drinking continued, and shortly thereafter, the DJ fired up his computer and started “spinning some tunes.” 

Now, I love to dance.  I always have.  I took five years of tap dancing lessons as a youngster and a year of ballet.   When I was in my hey-day at the skating rink as a teen, my favorite part of skating was learning the dances with a partner.  If my husband enjoyed dancing, we probably would have taken dance lessons over the years in many of its forms: ballroom, country, square-dancing, modern dance, tango, the works!  We’d enjoy it and practice together and have fun with it.   Unfortunately, this is a “mixed marriage” in more ways than one, and my husband doesn’t dance.  I’ve never mastered any of the traditional dance steps, either, because I’ve never had a partner.  

What I end up doing at these events is standing on the sidelines, moving and swaying to the music if it ”has a good beat and you can dance to it.”  That’s what I was doing Saturday night.

After a bit, a lady approached me and whispered into my ear over the thrum of the music, “If you wouldn’t mind dancing with another woman, I’d be happy to dance with you anytime.  Just come and get me!”  I smiled and nodded, and she went back to her seat.

Holy cow! I thought.  Would I mind dancing with another woman?  Hell no!  I’d love to dance with another woman!  I held back, though, because this woman was an excellent dancer.  I’d seen her out on the dance floor with who I presumed to be her husband — and for those of you who know and read my more public blog, this is the man I had complimented earlier that day for being 50 times better looking than he was as a senior in high school!  The two of them were obviously accomplished and well-practiced dancers with each other, and they had the moves down!  I enjoyed watching them together very much.

I had another drink, told my husband that I had been propositioned to dance by that dark-haired cutie-pie sitting over there by herself while her husband was out socializing with his former classmates.  I repeated to him that she told me just to come get her if I wanted to dance.

“So go get her,” was his response.  “She’s just sitting over there waiting for you to ask!”

I was intimidated by her expertise on the dance floor, though.  I finally did get out on the dance floor with several other women and boogied around for awhile.  She was out on the dance floor, too, and sidled over to me.  ”You didn’t come get me!” she pouted.

I sat out a couple of songs and then a song I really liked came on.  “Go on!” my husband encouraged.

I got my courage up and walked over to her.  She looked up at me and I held out my hand.  We went to the dance floor together and danced three or four songs together.  I really believe that she was eyeing me up, too, and I didn’t mind at all!  She was a very attractive, petite woman and I enjoyed looking at her, too, and moving with her on the dance floor.

That’s all that happened, of course.

It was fun,  though.  It was energizing.  And it added some sparks to my evening.  I hope that she and Mr. Better-Now-at-58 had a wonderful night together, however they finished it out.

Sometime yesterday afternoon while I was at work, I got an email from Randi Sue.  She said, “I could stop over this evening and bring some wine, a movie, and some massage oil.  I’m not an expert on massage, but maybe it would help your sore back and neck.”

I pretended that I didn’t see that email in time to encourage or decline such an invitation for last evening.  The temptation was there to accept her offer.  I’ve been very stressed lately with a combination of a very high workload right now, repetitive strain injuries that are putting me in constant pain, and a low-grade, chronic ache for some physical pampering and TLC.  I feel very low and vulnerable right now.

I closed my eyes yesterday afternoon and imagined what it would be like to accept her offer to come over with wine and massage oil.  (I knew that in the presence of wine and massage oil, the movie would never be viewed.)  Randi  Sue and I have had sex on two separate occasions — during the first week of our relationship!  It was good sex for both of us on those occasions.  I could imagine that the third time would be even better.  She was experienced in making love to a woman, and she had given me much sexual pleasure.  My mind entertained what it would feel like to share some wine and then take off all my clothes.  Maybe a nice, warm bath in the whirlpool would follow with lots of attention to massaging my back and neck as she bathed me with fragrant lather.  She would dry me with a large, soft towel, and then naked on my bed, her oiled hands would soothe and heal as she worked the tense muscles of my shoulders and neck.  I would give myself over to the ministrations until her kneading slowed and stopped.

Turning over onto my back, I would take her in my arms and kiss her, the inevitable shivers cascading down my spine and arms as her lips teased my ears and neck.   Her tongue would run along my collarbone, and soft kisses would trail down onto my breasts.  She was fairly aggressive with me before when she squeezed, pulled, and sucked my nipples, and I liked that!  I’ve developed a taste for nipple stimulation that is sometimes just to the point of discomfort.  It’s highly arousing and I wanted her to do that to me!

By the time she worked her way down to my lower belly, my musky juices would be flowing in abundance, and the merest touch of her lips and tongue to my labia and clit would send me over the edge into immediate and powerful orgasm.  It would be the first of several.

But I didn’t answer her email.  I didn’t invite her over.  One thing didn’t lead to another, and I didn’t have any of that pleasure I craved and imagined.

Why?  Because it means something different to her than it does to me in this relationship.  We’re in different places with our emotions, and I can’t take from someone like that and encourage her to go down that path of disparity with me.  It’s not fair.  It’s not caring.  Sure, one could argue, she’s willing to give it!  You’ve had the discussion.  She knows where you’re at with it.  She’s an adult and capable of deciding for herself how involved she wants to get in a situation like that.  And yet she’s still willing to give you this pleasure!   Take it!

It would be oh-so-easy under those circumstances to just take it, to indulge myself in some pleasure.  I’d make sure she got hers, too.  No worry there.  I’m not a selfish lover in that regard.  She’d go home sexually satisfied as well.

But to do that, knowing that she wants to be in love with me as well as sexually involved with me, I would have to turn a blind eye to that situation and set it aside for the sake of justifying and indulging in my own needs.  She may be a willing partner, regardless of those circumstances, but what would that say about me?  Could I be that self-centered, self-indulgent person?  Could I be that person who doesn’t want to deal with the complexities of the emotions involved, who places sex on a base plane of acts and physical responses, divorced from the concept of emotional intimacy?

The temptation is there to be that person when I’m feeling needy and vulnerable and achy for all of my own personal reasons.  But, no, I’m not that person.

The answer I had to give to myself was no.  By omission yesterday afternoon, my answer to her was no as well.            

Over the weekend, my friend and brief lover, Randi Sue, a trans woman who has her first anniversary of her SRS coming up next month, confided in me that she was no longer a virgin in any sense of the word.  “The bi pendulum continues to swing,” she said.  She told me that it would cost me a dinner to get the details.  She was kidding about me springing for dinner, but I did anyway, and we had supper together last evening at The Glockenspiel, a quaint German restaurant on the edge of downtown St. Paul.

I must admit that ever since she told me in that email that she had lost her “virginity” to a man recently, I’ve been concerned about it.  I suspected that it was probably with this older “gentleman” she’s been corresponding with on the dating site we all three belong to.  I read his profile and I know that he’s married.  Now, keep in mind that this is the woman who told me six weeks ago that she didn’t think she could have a sexual relationship without being in love, which is why I’m not having sex with her.  I’m not in love with her, and I don’t want to have someone emotionally involved with me on an entirely different level than I’m involved with them.  It seems more ethical on my part to keep it platonic under those circumstances.

She shared some details with me last night for the price of dinner!  Yes, it is the local man who is 21 years her senior that she had previously mentioned from the dating site.  She said, “He’s married and fools around.  He and his wife agreed years ago not to talk about it, so I don’t know what she knows and what she doesn’t.  I didn’t press him for the details.”

The knot tightened up in my stomach that had been there for a few days, and I wanted to kick the guy in his aging (but apparently immature) nuts, but then I thought, well, maybe she was in it for the exploration with no strings attached, too, just as he probably was.  I asked her how she was doing with the situation.  I didn’t voice this concern to Randi Sue but inwardly I was very worried that he had just used her to satisfy some curiosity about sex with a trans woman, something I find simply unconscionable unless both partners know about that motive upfront and are willing to entertain it.  The sexual use of another human being to satisfy a curiosity is a thought that makes me nauseated.

It actually was a huge relief to hear her say that she was using him as much as he was using her, that he seemed like a nice enough guy to lose her virginity to.  He was ”experienced but not ‘grabby,’ not like a lot of guys would be.”  She seems to know what the score is with his compulsion for “fooling around.”  (Perhaps “fool” is the imperative root of that particular phrase — both as a noun and a verb!)  He’s the kind of guy to have sex with — and apparently that part was pretty good because he reportedly didn’t leave her house until 3:30 in the morning! — but not the kind of guy to have a relationship with.  Okay, well, if that’s what they’re both looking for (or will settle for), more power to them!  At least, it’s a mutual “I use you and you use me” situation.  Nominally, something to be said for the mutuality of that arrangement!

As Bob Seger said in one of my favorite songs, the 1976 hit, “Night Moves:”

I used her, she used me
But neither one cared
We were gettin our share
Workin on our night moves…

I refrained from going into my women’s health care nurse mode and asking her about safe sex practices with the fooling-around married man who is hanging out on dating sites.  Who knows who or what he’s been sticking it to while his wife is out-of-town?  Sometimes I just need to be a friend and not a health care professional, although it’s hard to separate the two.  Now I’m feeling a bit guilty that I didn’t at least mention it rather than just letting it slide, but I hope that she is responsible enough and concerned enough about her own health and well-being to know that condom use is advisable with someone who is clandestinely fooling around on the side.

As for myself, I’d like a relationship as part of my sexual intimacy.  I can pass on the fly-by-night stuff if a sexual tryst is all it’s going to be.    But to each his (or her) own!

The role of sexual fantasy has always been important in my life.  My imagination is rich and diverse and travels many colorful, interesting paths.  In my younger years, I could fantasize for hours, maintaining an incredible arousal as I visualized the imaginary participants in my scenarios.  These fantasies were so vivid and real to me that it was more like directing a movie in my mind.  The “movie” would be completely improvisational, though, aside from a rough sketch of the situation.  I would literally say to myself, “Here is the outline of scene.  Here are the people involved.  Take it from there.”  And I would watch it unfold and act it out.

This is the basis for the erotic stories I’ve written in the past.  I have watched my fantasy actors play out a scenario in my mind, and later, I’ve written it down, coloring in the details.  (Usually I have to stop and masturbate while I’m trying to write my story, which sometimes makes for a long process in trying to get a story in tangible form!)

I used to be able to immerse myself in a complex, realistic fantasy fairly effortlessly.  Now, unfortunately, it doesn’t happen very often.  The levels of hormones have dropped off from what they were in my teens, twenties and thirties.  Make no mistake about it, I was heavily influenced by circulating levels of sex hormones then, particularly at the start of my period and when I was ovulating.  My body at both of those times was at a hypersensitive level of sexual awareness.  I had some of my best sexual fantasies then and wrote some of my best stories at that time.

Now…. not so much.  I’ll be 53 in two months, and my ovaries don’t do much anymore.  I’m on a minimal level of hormone replacement therapy to control hot flashes and depression.  My brain often feels fairly sluggish and apathetic about sexual matters.

Imagine my surprise when a genuine stretch of heightened sexual awareness came my way recently.  I even have suspicions that I ovulated last month, judging from the five days of pain I had in my belly that didn’t seem to have any other explanation. 

I was home alone over the weekend and I took advantage of the privacy to see where my mind would go if I encouraged it.  I took a long, warm bath, shaved myself smooth from pits to ankles, and then stretched out on the bed.  I found some body lotion in the nightstand drawer that I had forgotten about.  I bought it a year ago at a boutique.  It’s a sensuous scent, a mixture of sandalwood and citrus, and I love it.  I smoothed it over my entire body, breathing deeply of the heady aroma.  I let my mind go….

Randy and Peggy came out to play.  Briefly, Randy is a man who professes to be gay and has lived with his male partner for a dozen years.  However, he and Peggy love each other and have a dynamic, imaginative sex life!  As their relationship matured and deepened, Peggy became a part of Randy and Vince’s life together, and she witnessed and shared Randy’s intense pleasure as he welcomed Vince into his body in that way that two men can.  (I’m being somewhat discreet!  I don’t want this blog censored!)

Later, she shared with Randy that she would like to experience what he experienced that night with Vince, that it would be a way of knowing what it felt like to be in his skin, to feel what he felt when he accepted his man into his body.  She wanted Randy to do the very same thing with her.

And for an hour, I watched in my mind as Randy guided her down that earthy, unexplored path…

I reveled in my creativity, my sensuality, my vitality, excited and aroused as I felt what Randy felt, as I felt what Peggy felt.  I love my sexual fluidity at times like that!

I must appreciate the occasions when this still happens rather than lament that those times are all too few and far between!

A great start to a Saturday morning – a Saturday morning that is a work morning, alas.  I got up to a message in my mailbox at the dating site I frequent.  It said, “You’re a very young looking older gal… how do you feel about younger women? I see that we have a fair amount in common. Would you care to explore our points of connection over coffee?” 

I read her profile, looked at her photos, and  yes, she seems like a highly articulate, very intelligent, and very attractive “younger woman.”  She’s 34 – 18 years younger than I am.  But if no one is in a vulnerable position due to an inexperience and maturity gap, there is no harm in that.  I answered that I would be quite agreeable to meeting if there was good coffee and good conversation involved!

Very nice to get a compliment like that early in the morning…

Edit: No response to my email as of Monday morning June 2.  Perhaps she has reconsidered dating an “older gal!”  Maybe just as well…

I have no one to blame but myself for how I feel this morning!  Repeat as needed….

I went to my very first EVAR evening of “Dildo Bingo” at our most popular lesbian-friendly bar here the Twin Cities, Pi.  It was my first visit to Pi as well, a newer establishment here in the Cities that is located not terribly far from where I used to live in south Minneapolis.  I wish it had been there THEN, but times have changed since then, too, and maybe the world is now ready for a place like Pi and the women (and a few guys) who go to Pi.

Randi Sue, my friend from some posts back, suggested that we do this.  I said that I’d meet her there so that I could leave when I wanted to if things got a bit awkward between us or if I just needed to cut the evening short.  I was fairly ambivalent about going last night with it being a work night, with it being a rainy work night, and with it being a rainy work night following a night that hadn’t been all that restful.  But I went, with the thought that I’d stay for a couple of hours max and then get home at a decent time to get to bed.

Dildo Bingo was a damn blast, though!  To watch and listen to the people running it up on stage was just outrageous!  They were so funny and so over-the-top with their raunchy humor, so completely uninhibited about the subject of sex, alternative sex, safe sex, and sex toys.  That’s what the prizes for each round (10 in all) were: sex toys donated by our local sex toy boutique, Smitten Kitten.  And all the proceeds from Dildo Bingo go to GLBT charities.  Dildo Bingo has raised $25,000 in charitable contributions during the past year.  Awesome!

I won, I won, I won!!   When I won, I had to yell out, “Dildo!” instead of ”Bingo,” and I did, loud and clear!   I won in Round 4 or something like that.  It must have been the “Trans” round because I won a prosthetic penis and balls to pack my pants with and a porn flick featuring FTM tranny men.  I will never pack my pants with a fake cock and ball set to impress the women (or maybe the men!), but I’ll take a look at that movie during this two-week home-alone time without my husband. 

Anyway, I had so much fun that I stay for nine of the ten rounds of Dildo Bingo.  (I was disappointed that I didn’t win in the Butt Plug round and get that new, rather nifty-looking toy to add to my collection!) It was going on 11:00 when I left Pi to head for home on the east side of St. Paul.  It was 12:30 last night by the time I got to sleep.

Randi Sue and I got along okay.  There was enough else going on to keep us highly entertained without staring at each other across the table.  She was getting into the kissing mode by the end of the evening, though, although it remained under control.

She seems to be working on expanding her dating horizons a little.  Even told me about an older gentleman that she’s been corresponding with who lives in her own suburb!  How convenient is that?  She’s considering outfitting herself with some new golf clothes and shoes so that she can take him up on a golf date sometime.  I think she’d probably enjoy that and should go for it!  I hope that the guy is nice, though.  Luckily, it sounds like they’re not rushing into anything.

Well, I’ve got both eyes reasonably open and it’s time to head off to work.   

Well, Rhyanna and I renewed our acquaintanceship last evening, definitely on the same page: she suggested that we go to Pizza Lucé on Selby Ave. in St. Paul for supper, one of my favorite places to go!  Their pizza is fantastic!  We met up around 5:20 right after work.

We pretty much picked up right where we left off five years ago, although both of us are wiser and more experienced than we were five years ago.  She and I didn’t have a sexual relationship going on five years ago, although I think the possibility was always in the background.  After seven months of hanging out together, I told her I was ”seeing someone.”  She made no further effort to contact me, and I didn’t get in touch with her.  That’s too bad because I think we had (and have!) the basis for a good friendship.  This time around, I’d like to cultivate that because friendship is one of the most important things there is in life.

We took a walk after supper around a few neighborhood blocks.  (Pizza Lucé is in an older St. Paul neighborhood, right in the middle of a residental block.)  I reached out and took her hand and we strolled for awhile holding hands.  She flippantly said she needed to “overanalyze” my gesture –  something she’s good at — and tried to turn it into a joke.  I told her to just let it be what it is and don’t worry about it!

Truth is, I just enjoy a woman’s company, especially a woman who has just spent two hours telling me about her life in an open, unabashed way.  I felt the bonds of friendship and trust there.  I just wanted to reach out and make a physical connection with her.  Sometimes that’s all it’s about!  And that’s more than enough.

So, here’s to the NEXT five years and a growing friendship.

All is quiet on the Western Front right now.

Andrew has not answered that long letter I wrote a week ago in “Changing, Aging Perspectives.” 

Randi Sue has attempted no further email or phone communication since I answered her last email reprinted in “The Saga Continues.”  We were so not on the same page with that attempted relationship!  I just don’t fall in love in the span of seven days, and it’s uncomfortable for me to be with someone who is oozing that kind of agenda from her pores when we’re together.

I’ve been hanging out on a dating site (where I met Randi Sue)  and discovered a woman I knew years ago.  I met her in the fall of 2002 and we had a casual, platonic relationship for about seven months.  I started seeing another woman in May 2003, began a sexual affair with her,  and my friendship with Rhyanna slid into obscurity.  I recognized her photos on the dating site and contacted her.  We’re having supper or something this evening.  I need to call her later today to firm up our plans.  I’m looking forward to it.

That’s about all for now!  Pretty quiet in comparison to the last few weeks!

I got up this morning to this in my Gmail account from Randi Sue whom I haven’t seen face-to-face since the evening of May 1.  (Keep in mind that I just met this woman on April 18!):

Dear Kinsey,

I feel like we are not finished.  Whether we are friends or lovers or something else needs to be discussed.  You are an important part of my life, if we never saw each other again (which I think is unlikely) you will still be my first.  I am glad you will never understand that sex can be both good and bad, but it was just good with you.

I really think that a person, at least this person, can truly love many people.  Why do I think this?  Because I am a parent of two children.  I do not love one child to the exclusion of the other.  The love of my youngest child does not diminish the love of my oldest child.

If you feel that I am not giving you the space you need let me know.  I know that I can be intense, but that is a strength as well as a weakness.  Do not fear that I will ever want to hurt you.

I am putting the ball in your court.  Let me know how you feel.

Seeking the truth in love,

Randi Sue

****************************

I promptly replied, half-asleep this morning:

Randi Sue:

If a relationship as lovers is going to develop in a way that I am comfortable with — and that’s an “if,” — it needs time to do that.  It doesn’t happen for me in a matter of hours or days.  I need to feel comfortable with lovemaking and outward displays of affection as much as you do, and I’m not there with it.  My needs are not driven by intense emotion right now.  They’re driven more by logic and grounding and how relationships fit into my current lifestyle.

If you want to be friends, I think that is good.  I think we enjoy each other’s company.  I don’t want to feel pressured in any way to be your lover.  I still actually think that your needs would be best fulfilled by a person who can give you her undivided devotion in a relationship rather than getting romantically involved with me who might see you once every other week.

So, that’s what I think in a very disjointed way this morning.  I’m not fully awake and need to get out the door to work.  I’m tired.

Take care,

Kinsey

******************

Dear Kinsey,

Thank you for getting back to me quickly, I do appreciate that.  I am sorry I wasn’t very clear in my last letter.  I agree with you that continuing as lovers is not what would be best for either of us.  I want to be able to develop our friendship while honoring the physical, emotional, and romantic connection that we have shared.  If sometime in the future the romantic and physical relationship develops I would not reject it, but I am not expecting it either.

I have felt like you have been trying to distance yourself from me.  I don’t want to be a pest.  I would like a friendship where either feels free to check in with the other, whenever.  I am not very elegant or articulate in my writing,  perhaps I am not in talking either, but I feel more comfortable in face to face conversation.  I think that my last letter titled “Unfinished”, was an attempt to reach out and say I would like to talk with you, “if” you want to talk with me.

I hope you had a good weekend.  Did you enjoy the Bi Brunch/Meeting?  Did you do anything else interesting?  I had a very full weekend, the MN Trans Health Fair on Friday and Saturday, and then Mothers Day with my mom.

Randi Sue

*******************

Randi Sue,

“I have felt like you have been trying to distance yourself from me.  I don’t want to be a pest.  I would like a friendship where either feels free to check in with the other, whenever.”

We’re free to “check in” with each other at any time!  As for myself, I’m not a telephone talker.  I hate the telephone.  Even when Dave is out-of-town, he seldom calls me on the phone just to “chat.”  That’s why I turn my cell phone on once a month.  I’m a writer and a journaler and an e-mailer, for the most part, and a face-to-face communicator when those occasions can be arranged.

I’d be happy to get together with you for an outing of some sort but not if the conversation is going to center on “where are we?  What’s going on between us?   Where is it going to go?”  Could we go out and just enjoy what we’re doing and let a relationship go where it’s destined to go in a healthy way for now?

The Bi Brunch was fun.  About a dozen people showed up.  The meeting was productive.  The food was good.  I had a fellow BOP member from Woodbury go with me.  I had met her at the one Chic Chat I went to.  Interestingly enough, she is also a novice beader and wants to learn more about that so I invited her over to my house Wednesday evening.  We’ll spread the beads out on the kitchen table, play around with them, and I’ll try to give her some tips on putting together some creations.  Should be fun.

We celebrated Dave’s birthday at Trevina Restaurant in South St. Paul Saturday evening.  It was a very enjoyable evening. 

I lost two pounds during the five days that Dave was gone last week.  After going out to eat Friday night, Saturday night, and having three servings of T’s enchilada casserole yesterday, I had put on a pound for the week!  This has got to stop!

Dave wants to go up to Duluth/Two Harbors this next weekend, leaving on Friday after work and coming back on Sunday.  If I can get the neighbors to cat-sit, we’ll go.  Maybe he’ll get his fishing pole in the water, if the weather is nice.

Take care,

Kinsey

*********************************

My husband and I have had quite a few open discussions about transgenderism (is that a word?) lately due to my recent relationships with two more trans individuals.  I’ve been thinking about why I have such a laid-back whatever attitude towards it when others struggle with this situation.

My first experience with a trans individual was with a woman who was in her late 30s at the time I met her, and I must have been about 22.  I didn’t know that she was a trans individual at the time I met her.  Perhaps she didn’t, either.  It wasn’t discussed.  I just knew that she was a “dyke,” a very nonfeminine lesbian, and she was very interested in having me as her lover.  I succumbed to her pursuits and had sex with her a couple of times.  On the second occasion, I actually got some of her clothes off and discovered that she was wearing men’s briefs underneath her jeans.  I didn’t comment on it.  In an intuitive way, I sort of understood what it was about and didn’t feel the need to mention it.

I drifted away from the church congregation that we were both members of, and I went for maybe a year without seeing her.  I coincidentally showed up at church again after a long absence on the day of her commitment ceremony to Kate which followed the regular service.  I knew nothing about this, nor did I realize all the changes that had taken place during that time I had been gone.  During the commitment ceremony, Tara was called “David.”  (No, I don’t use people’s real names in these posts.)  At the reception in the church basement, I offered my congratulations to the couple, and Tara told me that her name was now legally “David.”  S/he was on testosterone therapy and making the transition to living as a man.  I was glad for her/him (okay, the pronouns are hard when you’ve known a person as one sex and then he/she switches it on you at some point!) and said so.  It seemed like the way that “David” would be happiest, and I knew that.

It was during my relationship with Tara that I met Max.  I was sitting next to Tara during a church service and the minister asked for prayers for Max who was in the hospital.  I leaned over and asked Tara what Max was in the hospital for.  “A hysterectomy,” she said.

“Oh,” I said.  And nothing more needed to be said.  That one surprised me because I had only known Max as Max and never even had an inkling that Max had female sex organs.  He had already had his mastectomy before I met him.  I became good friends with Max and visited him in the hospital when he underwent his first surgical procedure to construct a semblance of a penis and saw firsthand what cosmetic procedures were being attempted.  I was a friend, and I was interested, and I accepted it for what it was.

There was a man named Kenny in our church congregation at this time as well.  On the first Sunday after New Year’s, Kenny showed up to direct the choir as Victoria.  He/she had made the public transition to start the new year.  Again, I took this all in and quietly acknowledged the situation, having to say that Victoria looked a hell of a lot more attractive as Victoria than she did as Kenny!

A lot of years went by — 17 to be exact — while I was abstinent from sexual relationships with women and absent from publically hanging out with the GLBT community in any organized way.  Then I started dating again.  I had a three-year relationship with Maura.  After we stopped seeing each other, the next person I dated was a MTF trans woman.  She said she felt very comfortable with me.  I learned a lot about “transition” from her: emotionally, psychologically, and physically.

I’ve known several other MTF trans women since then.  They said as well that they felt comfortable with me.  I was easy to talk to, easy to be with.

It’s just me being me.  I have had a natural, easygoing attitude about sex since I started to learn about it as a pubescent child.  I had a keen interest in sexual matters, not just from the usual childhood curiosity standpoint but from the medical and scientific standpoint as well.  I was born too late to be one of Dr. Alfred Kinsey’s associates, but I well could have been if I had been a peer in his era!  From finding the library copy of Dr. Kinsey’s Sexual Response in the Human Female in my room as a high school freshman to Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) on my nightstand as a sophomore and The Sensuous Man in my collection as a junior, I drove my parents nuts with my unabashed interest in human sexuality.  My somewhat explicit journaling while still in high school turned my mother completely gray-haired and ashen-faced!

Nothing much shocks me.  Nothing much surprises me in the realm of human sexuality.  I’ve always believed that we in Western society have done ourselves more harm than good by the puritanical attitudes we’ve maintained over the centuries about our own sexuality.  Yes, I believe in sexual ethics.  I believe that sexual behavior should be shared in a loving manner,  mindful of and responsible for the potential consequences of that behavior.  However, those ethics don’t develop in a healthy way in the midst of inhibited attitudes and shame.

As a teenager, I became acquainted with and embraced my bisexuality, learning early in my life that there are more shades of gray in our sexuality than clear lines of demarcation.  I know that I have many fluid, androgynous qualities.  I move comfortably between my male traits and my female traits, embracing them all as a part of me.  I don’t feel any discomfort about loving men and loving women.  Even my male alter ego can love a man as well as a woman!  It’s all just part of me and the full spectrum of feelings and desires that I’m able to experience.

Do I understand gender dysphoria, the feeling of being the other gender while carrying the chromosomes and primary sexual characteristics of the genetic sex?  No, I don’t.  I’ve never stood in those shoes.  I’ve got XX chromosomes and sex organs and have always felt comfortable with my identity as a woman.  I don’t know what causes gender dysphoria in some individuals.  I’d like to know more about it, but I’m not sure that science has the answer to that situation so I haven’t done any review of the literature on it.  I may at some point just to see what I can glean from it, but I’m anticipating that it’ll be a hodge-podge and mishmash of stuff, perhaps much of it contradictory and all of it inconclusive.

What I’ve done is accept.   I don’t understand and comprehend gender dysphoria in a personal sense.  I don’t think I really can from my perspective.  I accept that it exists.  I accept that gender reassignment is the solution for some people in this situation.  I accept that their basic needs are the same as everyone else’s. 

That’s what I understand.

I’m trying to develop a social network within the bisexual community here in the Twin Cities.  I’m trying to do my part towards supporting a sense of community for the bisexual population  within the GLBT community.  I believe in this cause.  It’s been sorely lacking in my own life, and I would imagine that many people who identify as bisexual feel the same sense of aloneness and isolation in their lives.

The only group I’ve connected with so far here in the Twin Cities that seems to have any merit in this regard is the Bisexual Organizing Project, and they have a grand total of 240 members, a handful of which participate in any social events!  That seems like a very low number considering the rather substantial bisexual population that must surely exist here in a large, liberal metropolitan area.  However, it is what it is.  (Organizing bisexuals is a lot like herding cats, a whole line of thinking reserved for another post!)

The monthly “bi brunch” is being held this Sunday at a member’s home northwest of Minneapolis, followed by the every-other-month board meeting.  I’ve vaciliated about attending.  I’ve been tending more towards going rather than not going since finding out through the Yahoo Group postings that Millie is otherwise occupied on Mother’s Day! 

I extended an offer to Anne to ride with me to the brunch and meeting on Sunday, aware that she currently does not have a car and relies mostly on public transit.  I’m not going to let that relationship of two “dates” duration deter me from getting involved with the group.  I have absolutely no ill feelings towards Anne.  I wanted to be her friend.

My husband has no ill feelings towards me being friends with Anne.  He stated that he had some trouble wrapping his head around my potential sexual involvement with trans women, and he further went on to later refine this discomfort to say that he has trouble with the concept of me getting sexually involved with pre-surgical trans women.  I understand this feeling, even though I don’t share his same level of discomfort.  I respect his feelings, especially since they were stated in a very appropriate personal ownership of these feelings without any demands, ultimatums, slams or insults in any way associated with his sharing of these feelings.

We’ve talked quite a lot about this whole situation in recent days, and I’m impressed with the level of honesty, open communication, and non-defensive sharing that has gone on.  I’ve acknowledged his feelings.  He’s acknowledged mine, and we’re learning from each other.  Saturday night, I did draw my line in the sand, which was this: “I understand your feelings about my potential sexual relationships with trans women, particularly pre-surgical trans women, but I expect that they’ll always be welcomed warmly as friends in our home and treated no differently than anyone else in that regard.” 

He was firm in his agreement of that position.  “Absolutely!” he stated.  “Of course!” 

Of course, I never expected that there would be any problem with that aspect of my relationships.  He’s a good man, not a bigot, not a “red neck,” not narrow-minded and rigid in his beliefs.  He’s trying to wrap his head around a complex set of issues, a set of issues that his own personal experiences have not covered in his life, and I respect him for the effort he puts into expanding his insights.

Anne, however, appeared to reject my offer of friendship.  The feeling I got was that if she can’t have me as a lover, then she doesn’t want my company.

So be it.  You can’t have everyone as your lover.  Some people are platonic friends, and that is well and good.

The Bisexual Organizing Project with its 240 members appears to be its own little ”Peyton Place,” with members having romantic and sexual partnerships with each other.  That seems to be a complicating factor in its dynamics.  Probably even interferes with its smooth operation at times, depending on who is sleeping with whom and who isn’t anymore, etc.!  I really would like to keep those complications to a minimum if I’m going to get more involved with this group!

Anne turned me down for the ride to the Brunch and Board Meeting on Sunday.  I told her to let me know if she changes her mind, that her contribution and input to the group is welcomed and appreciated.

I want to support this community, not do things to cause conflict and ill will.  Let’s pray I succeed. 

Randi Sue was over to our house this past Thursday evening and met Dave.  We then went out to a local family restaurant and had a bite to eat, just the two of us.  I wanted to tell her about my feelings regarding our relationship, that my feelings in no way matched the intensity of her feelings, given the less than two weeks we had known each other, and that I was deeply concerned that her intensity and impulsivity was going to steer her down a path best not taken with me.  I am never going to be her “one-and-only,” and I don’t want to deter her from seeking that in a partner.  The truth is that I’m not focused on finding a “steady girlfriend” right now and being her exclusive partner.  I need a social support system in the bisexual community, not a lot of romantic entanglements to potentially hamper that process.  (As it is, I didn’t go to the monthly Bisexual Organizing Project’s girls-night Chic Chat last night because I was concerned I’d end up in an awkward situation with either Anne, Millie, or both!)   

I couldn’t say all those painfully truthful things, though.  She is so emotionally needy that I just couldn’t get the blunt words out.  I told her that I’m concerned about the “in love” aspect of her feelings and overwhelmed by it, but I couldn’t go into hard, cold honesty that it’s freaking me out and I don’t want to be in that situation with her.  It’s an imbalanced dynamic between the two of us, and that’s not good for either one of us.

Friday morning, I took about 60% of the middle section of that previous post titled “In Love…or Not” and posted it to my journal on the dating site through which we met.  She looks at my profile a couple of times a day.  Why, I don’t know, but she does, and I knew that she’d see the condensed version of my WordPress post there.  Later that day, I got the following email from her:

On 5/2/08, Randi Sue wrote:

 Dear Kinsey,

    I am not sorry that I shared my feelings with you.  I am sorry that we don’t share those feelings, but whatever will be will be.  I am an intensely emotional being.  I need to learn to protect myself from being hurt and still love freely.  I hope I can find a balance.

    I wish we had more time to talk yesterday.  I am glad I can talk with you.

    I would like to continue our friendship.  I like talking to you,  I care about you.  I don’t think that I can have a sexual relationship without being in love. I need and deserve love in my life.

Always,
Randi

And I responded with:

From: Kinsey
Date: May 2, 2008 12:24 PM
Subject: Re: Love
To: Randi

Yes, Randi, you need and deserve love, as much of it as you can get.  And if you need to be in love to have a sexual relationship, then that is what you should do.  That is why I’m pulling back from having that sexual relationship with you.  I don’t share that same level of intensity right now and may never.  I haven’t had enough time to tell if that’s where it could lead, given my own personal emotional composition and needs in life.

You need to find the person(s) who can feel as deeply as you do and who are free to get as involved as deeply as you would like to.  It needs to be a reciprocal relationship in order to give you the satisfaction, pleasure and fulfillment you need.  You deserve that, and I’d love to see you find it!

I would like for us to be friends, too.  I enjoy talking with you and doing things with you.  I care about you, too, and want what’s best in the long run.

Take care,

Kinsey

I think the romantic, sexual relationship with her is over now, and frankly, I’m relieved.  I felt way in over my head on this one, and that’s not a comfortable feeling at all!

And my husband once more reminded me to keep my pants on until it’s a little clearer what and who I’m getting involved with.  He said with a smirk that some tendencies just seem to be hardwired into my chromosomes, but I really should try to practice some restraint before getting into these sexual situations too early in a relationship!

 I agreed with him. 

 Enough said.

Yesterday evening, as we were relaxing after just finishing our evening meal, Dave said to me, “I read  your WordPress blog this afternoon.”

“You read the latest entry I wrote this afternoon?” I asked.

“Uh-huh,” he confirmed.

I had not as yet given him the details of what all has happened this week between Randi Sue and me.  In part, I’ve been a bit embarrassed that I have found myself in this situation again.  It happens from time to time, and as I said in a previous blog, my vow was not to rush into sexual relationships with people, which I have had a tendency to do.   Dave was given instructions to remind me of that if I ever called home on a first or second date again and said that I wasn’t coming home that night (barring being too drunk to drive — also not a good thing!)

Well, he wasn’t around to remind me of that last Wednesday evening nor last Friday night.  Not that withholding a sexual encounter would necessarily keep a person from “falling in love” with me.  That can happen in the absence of sex, as I well know from my own experience.

Nonetheless, I hadn’t rushed into telling him every detail of this past week with Randi Sue.  He knew enough by the time he had finished reading my previous post.  As (almost) always, he was understanding, sympathetic, supportive, and we had a good talk last night.  I unburdened my soul to him, a process that always makes me feel better and less alone.

We talked quite a bit about this phenomenon known as “being in love,” and I told him who was on my Short List.  Him, of course.  (He was relieved to hear that!)  I did recall aloud last night that we had only known each other about six weeks and had been dating for a month when those three little words were mutually spoken to each other 37 years ago.  Not a lengthy period of time to know each other before saying, “I love you!”  However, when I said those words to him for the first time, there was no hesitancy about saying those words.  I meant it from the bottom of my heart.  I knew them to be true and right.  There was never any question about it, no second thoughts.  There never has been with him.

I don’t fall in love easily.  I’m pretty reserved about that emotion, if one actually does have control over that emotion.  I’ve been in love six times for sure.  Four of those times were with men: my boyfriend from my teens, Henry, then Dave, and two Johns.  John #1 was the brother of a good friend of mine in high school, and he and I began a relationship while I was around their house a lot during the six months I was involved in the engagement festivities of his older sister.  I was one of her bridesmaids in her 1974 wedding.  Maggie got married and moved off to Columbus, Ohio, and her brother, a young man who was then struggling with his gay sexual orientation, and I continued our relationship.  That relationship went on for another three years, although it was by and large an intellectual and long-distance relationship.  I haven’t seen him since 1977, but I still think about him and hope all is well.

John #2 was a Family Practice physician I worked with in 1977.  We kept in touch after I left that clinic’s employ.  He was a married man 11 years older than me with four kids.  On the night we made love for the first time, I was 24 and he was 35.  I was in love with him until the summer of 1985, even though I only saw him less than a handful of times during those years.  I went from loving him intensely and deeply to feeling literally nothing for the man when I found out what all came out as his divorce proceedings at that time: he had been physically abusing his wife.  There were times when his wife would end up at the E.R. after John had dragged her around by her hair and blackened her eye.  Stuff like that.  I felt sick, and that was that.  It was over, and I shuddered to think that I wasted my love on the man, that I was ever alone with him.

Then there were two outwardly platonic friendships with high school friends that never played out in any sexual and/or romantic sense, but I was in love with both of those young women: Lorrie, a neighbor girl, whom I had known since she was 11 years old and stayed in touch with until she was 25, and then Marie, a high school classmate of mine.  (Marie died when she was 40-years-old of some kind of cancer.  I was heartbroken when I read that obituary in 1995.)  I loved those two women, but it was unrequited love.

Yes, there have been some relationships other than those which qualified for “in love” status that have caused their share of emotional pleasure and pain, and have been deep and meaningful relationships in their own right.  I’ve loved individuals without feeling that intense emotion I associate as “being in love.” 

I took note of the fact that all of these “in love” relationship began much earlier in my life, in my teens and early 20s.  Does age and/or hormone levels affect this phenomenon?  I would speculate that it does.  It is a powerful drive to pair off with a mate and want to express that desire sexually.  I think that age, experience, multiple time and energy commitments such as career and family, and decreasing hormone levels makes the “in love” phenomenon less common in older individuals — older individuals such as myself!

And this led to a discussion last night about whether trans individuals who have just recently made the full transition to living physically as the gender they self-identify as being are more susceptible to this “in love” phenomenon due to the newness of their lives, the novelty, the inexperience, and the effect of recently-initiated levels of sex hormones on the brain and other organs.  I’ve had two experiences lately of middle-aged (late 40s to late 50s) trans women being “in love” on the basis of a first date and another such experience that occurred 18 months ago!

I don’t know if there will ever be more people to add to my Short List of individuals whom I have been in love with.  That may or may not happen.  We’ll see.

My horoscope for today, courtesy of Holiday Mathis in the Twin Cities Star Tribune newspaper, reads: “Getting back to basics is a personal process, since what is ‘basic’ to you is not even in the realm for someone else.  Get what you need without wondering why you need it or telling yourself that you shouldn’t need it.”

Interesting advice.  Of course, these horoscope snippets found here and there are always subject to one’s own interpretation in light of whatever may be going on in one’s life at the moment.

I’m in a “patch” again, brought about by a evening a week ago Friday that ended by feeling an emotional connection with a person.  We impulsively kissed at the end of Friday evening.  Necked, even.  Wednesday evening, it went further than that at her house.  Friday evening at my house, she announced that she thought she was falling in love.  She emailed that she loves me on Sunday.  She’s intent on being my “girlfriend.”

She said that she hoped I wasn’t scared by this.  Well, yes, honestly, I am freaked.  I don’t fall in love in a week’s time.  I haven’t done that kind of thing since my teens and early 20s.  It’s been a long time since I’ve had that feeling of “being in love.”  (I’ll grandfather my husband in on this emotion, however, since I felt that “in love” feeling very strongly towards him in the earlier months and years of our relationship, and it slowly developed into a deeper, more enduring kind of lifelong love and partnership.)

I need a relationship to develop more slowly, learning about each other along the way to know if a deeper, more enduring relationship is a feasibility given all the other circumstances in my life (i.e. married and bisexual, full time job, lots of demands for my time and attention.)  This “in love” process in the matter of a week is something I just can’t relate to.  Yes, I’m pragmatic and logical, not impulsive and emotional.  Usually.  I must confess that I didn’t behave like my usual pragmatic and logical self a week ago Friday evening, and that confession doesn’t really feel good now.

Does that make me wrong for wanting a relationship to proceed at a slower, more conservative pace?  Does it make me wrong for feeling skeptical, hesitant and concerned about the future of a relationship based on such an impulsive beginning?  Does it make me less of a feeling, caring person for needing my space, needing to grow in trust and sharing rather than jumping into it with both feet (and an arm and a leg?) 

I don’t think so, but I feel like the “bad guy” here for wanting to back off from my “girlfriend’s” level of intensity and involvement.  Frankly, I just don’t know what to do with it right now!

She is an unattached woman right now, not in any other romantic relationships, and on the rebound from recently splitting with her spouse.  I find it hard to imagine that her intense emotional involvement with a woman who is clear about her marriage being her primary relationship is fated to be a positive experience long term.  I see her wanting a one-on-one relationship with someone she can come home to every evening, someone to share her bed every night, someone who puts her first above all others — like my husband is to me.  I won’t be that person to her, and I will disappoint her, sadden her, and it will end.  This is the pragmatic, logical side of me speaking, but why go there? 

Yes, why go there?

I’m just not sure what to do with this.

In my previous post, Transcending Trans, I published a letter that I sent six days ago to not one but two trans women in my life.

Anne (not her real name) was the woman who had contacted me via a dating site, and I wrote about that contact and meeting in the post, Caffeine Hangover.  Even before we met that first evening to go to the Bisexual Organizing Project’s women’s-only evening at Wilde Roast Cafe called Chic Chat, she had sent me a brief email that said, “This makes me really glad that you are willing to go to Chic Chat with me.  Don’t give up on BOP just because of Millie.  You know, the irony of our situation has not escaped me.  You and I first met on a dating service when you had given up on dating services, and I was the one who made that original posting for the BECAUSE conference you found.  And yes, when Lynn was talking about who had helped make the conference possible, my name was in the list.  Please, take it as a sign that I was fated to be here for you…”

I responded to that email by saying that I had taken it as a sign, and I had.  Fate had given me a second chance to get involved in the bisexual community here in the Twin Cities.  Fate had snagged me by the back of the jacket as I was running from Millie again and all those attendant emotions and said, “Hey, come back here!  Here is a supportive friend who is willing to go with you and introduce you to some people.  Go!”  I had not gone down the path, though, of thinking that this woman was slated to be a romantic partner because of the means of our introduction and some common events in our background.  I approached it from the standpoint of making a friend and building some connections, an important thing in and of itself.

She said nothing in her profile on the dating site that suggested her status as a trans woman, and that’s okay.  However, my experience with that situation in the past was that individuals have been upfront about these circumstances, even if it’s in a rather oblique, subtle way at first, not wanting to surprise or discomfit their dates in any way.   It just puts that set of circumstances out there right away and prevents any misunderstanding or embarrassment later should this be an unsettling situation for the date.  I figured it out on my own in three seconds when I picked her up at her house that Saturday evening, visually took in her stature and bone structure and the male timbre of her voice.  I knew what her basic circumstances were without knowing any of the specific details.

We had a pleasant-enough evening going to Chic Chat that Saturday, but I was relieved that it wasn’t a one-on-one date.  She was diffic