Auld Lang ZING

As a public service to our always excited readers, Second String Soulmate suggests the following...

Twelve And A Half Resolutions For The Year To Come

1) I will tell people they are beautiful more often than is socially normal.

2) I will masturbate as much as I need to, and use several different methods so as to enrich myself as a person.

3) I will stay within reasonable speeds and mostly keep my eyes open when getting a hand job on the freeway.

4) I will teach at least one needy person how to give better oral sex.

5) I will eshew the company of complainers and people who take life too seriously, or indeed seriously at all. When I cannot avoid them, I will instead point and laugh. It is okay, because they are already miserable and they enjoy it.

6) I will only flirt with people I want to sleep with, or hook up with, or people I like as friends, people I want attention from, or to improve my employment or academic prospects, or obtail discounts on goods and services.

7) I will not use the words “sexy” or “hot” to describe things that are merely cool.

8) I will talk about sex with at least as much openness and enthusiasm as I talk about fashion, movies, politics, and other things of no consequence.

9) I will masturbate outdoors, at least once, either alone or with a friend(s).

10) I will not have sex with anyone who is beneath me in spirit, no matter how long it has been since my last fuck.

11) I will keep at least one sexy thing secret from everyone. For myself.

12) I will use lube. God gave it to us for a reason. There is no shame, only reward.

12.5) I will let Doc in on my sexy secret. Because he will appreciate it like no one else.

Happy New Year, mates. Go out there and make some trouble.

COMING IN THE NEW YEAR:

Boys And How To Make Them Behave

Girls And How To Make Them Not Behave

Naming Your Clitoris And Other Ways To Love Your Bits

The Green Eyed Monster Gets A Nice Pink Hat

There seems to be a great deal of confusion around the subject of who is actually with whom, and to whom one does or does not owe either 1) Sexual loyalty, or 2) At least some kind of explanation of their behavior. Are you allowed to sleep with your ex-girlfriend’s friends? Are you allowed to sleep with your ex-girlfriend’s friends if you are also still sleeping with your ex-girlfriend (and let’s not be naïve about that one, right kids? The break-up is not even close to being the end of the relationship.) If you and your friend both want to tag the same cock, who should you be loyal to? Your friend, or your hungry little pussycat? It seems to be hugely complicated, and so like most things that are very complicated and very important, our solution is to never never talk about it.

(As a side note, “It’s Complicated” invariably means “I know what the shit is, but I am not going to tell you because if I do you will interfere with me getting what I want.” Okay? Add that to the Doc Luben Sex-To-Human translation dictionary.)

There is a simple answer, which isn’t necessarily the correct one, which is that no one owes any loyalty to anyone. This is an area in which no one, even the most noble and thoughtful of people, is likely to be honest. So the easy solution is to not put anyone in a position where honesty is required. In general, people in matters of sex hold very passionately an “Exact-Opposite-Of-The-Golden-Rule” which I do not have a catchy title for. But the effect is that people fiercely expect others to restrain themselves in ways that they would never even momentarily consider for themselves.

For example, the MOMENT that you break up with someone, your chief goal is to fuck someone else. This is true for everyone. Whether or not you DO fuck someone else is a matter of luck and timing and, usually, whether the person you actually broke up over has the balls to follow through with it. But whether you know it is your plan or not, no one would ever hesitate for a second if another fuck came along in the days (/hours) (/same party) after a break up. And yet, if your partner fucks someone else just after breaking up with you, you will go mad with outrage. Not just jealousy, but real and righteous OUTRAGE--- you will feel, probably for the rest of your life, that you were the victim of an absolute wrong. A crime. Like horse thieving.

I think the same is true with the love triangle scenario, and the ex-girlfriend scenario, and all the scenarios. Scenariototalus. Would you really ever feel conflicted about naked-snogging a dude if you knew that your dear friend had hot pants in her heart for him? Has there ever been a pair of men who chose to preserve their friendship instead of falling sway to the gentle allure of the local princess’s crotch?

In fact, I think one of the reasons that we are so driven to COUPLE in the first place--- not to mate but to couple up and give it a title--- is that it is one of the only relationships in your life that IS defined. Your fully vested Significant Other is the only person in your life that you are really allowed to ask anything of, the only person who is expected to make a concession to your life as well as their own. Even with your very very best friend, you aren’t allowed to negotiate rules for when you will call them and who else you snuggle on and what the acceptable procedure is for changing the time of brunch.

So the simple way to be cool in the world would be to just groove with the fact that, when all is said and done, people are going to fuck who they are going to fuck. And they don’t owe you anything. Jealousy is a nasty, primal beast, but as grown up humans we can probably dig that in real life, how you feel is mostly your own problem. Most social circles are small and incestuous. People are going to fuck your exes. They are going to tag your friends before you get a chance to seduce them. It does seem a bit on the tweaked side to get really bent about something which is fairly frakking inevitable.

But, because jealousy IS primal, it ain’t that easy to suppress. And even harder to shut down once it gets thundering.

A whole lot of pain would be averted if people would have those conversations. If people would negotiate their break-ups as well as they (hopefully) negotiate their relationship. Set some rules. Set some timelines. Get out the index cards and make a little chart. I swear, it sounds ridiculous, but wouldn’t it be grand if you and your friends just sat down and actually made a list of people you are not allowed to screw? Explain why, make a case, and agree on who would really be hurtful. It could be a party! Jesus, I could make a board game. FUCKABLES, by Milton Bradley.

Then at least we would really know who was off limits. And that would make fucking those people SO MUCH HOTTER.

So yes, I know it isn’t realistic. Inner peace isn’t created through more rules and new, even more twisted kinds of group therapy. But there might be a version of it that would be helpful. I recently had the courage to actually talk to my best friend and tell them that I really would be fucked up if they screwed around with one particular person. And I don’t know if I had the right, and I don’t know if my saying it will really prevent it happening, but I feel a hell of a lot better for having said it. For just telling how I feel and having it acknowledged and understood. At least now when they lie to me, I will know why they are lying. In the past, my friends have kept their slightly forbidden hook-ups secret from me, and it made the whole thing so much worse than if I had just known about it from the start--- it made it into a calculated betrayal of trust, when it could have just been an annoyance. At least in this case, I’ve been able to say what it means to me. And having a tiny bit of control in the most uncontrollable part of our lives is what we are all searching for.

So maybe that would be the starting place for a new social order. If we all let one another have just one person. If for each of your ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends and very close friends, you could just have one person who you got to say No to. Because I like to think that, even as much as I find people to be animals, they could manage with the other six billion people in the world.

And, for the record, just a few words in advance make all the difference. One time and one time only in my life, I have had someone come to me and say “I am thinking I want to hook up with this girl who you like, and I want to make sure that is okay with you.” I think of it as one of the greatest things anyone has ever done for me. And there are not a lot of people who would be selfish enough to say No. I think what hurts folks the most is getting blindsided by it. I was so happy to be asked.

Of course, I had to kill him. No, really, it was fine. They dated. She dumped him because he had goofy underwear. And rightly so. Fair is fair.

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Of Peppermint, Marx, And Indoor Pine Trees

The Holidays are essentially a mechanism for separating those who are alone from those who aren't. There are all the usual traditions and giftings and love of God and such, but mostly the holiday seems to be a mechanism for making sure the lonely and the poor have an intense awareness of how lonely and poor they are. Christmas, especially, is a fierce period of social sorting. At least here in our provocative and always special American culture, where consumerism is not just one piece of the pie but the real and proper North of our moral compass. Capitalism demands that people be separate, because otherwise they might do things like Share Resources and Talk About The Condition Of Their Lives, which only leads to the horrors of Unions and Socialized Healthcare and Community Theater.

And those pesky Christians have managed to inject the double-pesky idea of "family values" into our brains. In a simpler time, Family Values was a simple code for "Fuck Off You Yukky Gay People" but the idea that "Family" is an actual value, and not just a way of describing a certain kind of social group, has become more and more of a sticky wicket.

Whether or not you dig with me on that shaky analysis, you have to admit that come XMastime, the American family adopts an underground bunker mentality: go to the store and stock up on lots of shit, then lock yourself in with your biological relations and don't make too much noise.

At least on Thanksgiving, there are still some people left who have a sense that "no one should be alone" and you are likely to be invited to share a feast with friends or even acquaintances if you don't have family to scoop you up. But Christmas is enforced, strictly mandated Family Time. If you don't have Family to Time with, or you can't get to them because you are working at the AMC in Kearney, or you can get to them but would rather be eaten by a particularly hungry raccoon, then you are simply not a part of the holiday.

And your suffering is compounded by the Christmas Carol effect, which is a universal understanding that Not Liking Christmas means your soul is rotten. So if you are sad around the holiday, you'd better keep your mouth shut about it. (unless you are me, but when it comes to being bitter* toward the world and hateful of normalcy, I think I am pretty much out of the closet) But in A Christmas Carol, mean old Ebenezer is invited by all manner of folk to share Christmas with them, and he refuses. That won't happen to you here and now. In the real American world, if your mother isn't cooking dinner for you on Christmas, then you are eating KFC leftovers by yourself.

So yes, I admit, it may not be that harsh. What you feel about Xmas probably has more to do with how it was in your childhood. I was reminded this week, by the ever remindey-riffic She-Hulk, that there are a lot of families out there who aren't the product of multiple divorces, families where daily fighting was not the norm, and so Christmas isn't marked by intense tension and careful tiptoeing on the delicate lake of ice.

This year I am with my family, and all the nastiness of our earlier years is gone. I don't have my girl with me, but I have one, and all the inner status that comes along with that. I am loved by many, and I live in warm warm California to boot. I am grateful. So I'm not here stomping my feet over my own Christmas blues. At worst, this year I am little more than melancholy--- not unhappy myself, but far too aware that while I have been let off the hook this year, there are a whole lot like me out there who will be counting the ways they could off themselves.

And it does shine a light on one of the things which makes searching for love complicated. As much as I love to write my snarky little blog about how oral sex and keeping it cool are the simple answer, I get it--- nobody gets it better than I do: the stakes are incredibly high. It's all well and good to kick back in June and say "Yo, it's all good, being single is freedom and fresh skin for the browsing," but come Christmastime the difference between being loved and being alone is a long dark rift in the earth. For those of us who strive to go about Dating and Fucking and Loving in a less confused and less cruel way, it is important to remember that wanting true and hardcore love isn't shallow. It is way more than just status, or ego, or endorphin addiction. Love may be just an idea, but it is the idea around which we build our homes and lives. Finding the right kind of love with the right person can be the difference between being a player in All This and being a spectator.

What I suggest in these virtual pages, it isn't an easy thing. Asking yourself to be chill when the bet on the table is stacked so high you can't see around it, that is no small deal. Finding a way to be cool and kind to a new naked friend when you know they could be the one to make or break your future home--- it is asking a lot. Of everyone involved.

Love and Christmas are exhausting things. They are both inventions, but they are mighty big ones.

Big, and ultimately worthwhile.

Probably.


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This blog entry brought to you by the good people at Ungrammatical Capitalization For Emphasis.

Merry Frakking Christmas.
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*For the record, I like to think of myself as more of a bittersweet candy. You gotta have a sophisticated pallet to taste this morsel.

You Are Soft, Like A New Monkey

Your Second String Soulmate is on semi-vacation for the week, but I am promising you at least one more post before the High Holy Day. In the meantime, a list of random thoughts which you may or may not be able to put to use.

1) Pornography is mostly of such poor quality not because of the unflattering lighting, or because of the inexplicable obsession with the detailed anatomy of intercourse, but because of one of the fine conundrums of life: people are at their least sexy when they are trying to be sexy.

Well, that, and when they are dying of a wasting disease. Except tuberculosis. Everyone knows TB is kind of hot.

2) If you are tempted to get anyone a sex toy for Christmas, do it! It can't possibly be more awkward than when they open up the Time Life coffee table book you bought them off the bargain shelf at Borders. In any case, cock rings are always classy.

3) I have decided that, when it comes to decorating a Christmas tree, tinsel is racist. If you don't see why, then you are racist too.

4) If you are shopping for a Christmas present for a lover or mate, don't try to impress them. Just get them something you know they will like. This is no time to shoot for the moon. If they like golf, get them golf clubs. If they like comics, give them comic book junk. If you like getting blow jobs, get her a subscription to Modern Bride magazine. That's a bit off topic, but it will work.

5) If you set out to be a "burlesque performer" you are going to end up being a stripper. Always buy the premium razors. It's worth it.

VERY, VERY IMPORTANT. VERY.

I'm going to reverse-engineer a train of thought here, so please enjoy the process. Forgive me in advance if the usual snark isn't in high gear for the day.

I have been thinking a great deal, as you would expect, about the Writer's Strike and the corporate insanity which seems to have caused it. Without going into details, which can freely be read elsewhere (Deadline Hollywood Daily is the gold standard) What constantly surprises and confuses me is how personal it all seems to be. The studio CEO's take each new proposal very personally. The WGA negotiators are clearly taking it personally. It looks a whole lot more like a bitter lover's quarrel than it does like a labor dispute.

I feel this must be because of the New Age movement.

Check me here: the New Age movement deserves some fair credit for being a part of a lot of enlightened thinking in the modern day. The environmental movement, a stronger tendency in the public to think of war as something bad instead of something glorious--- all of the things represented by the musical Hair and the the life of John Lennon. But somewhere along the way, the movement also became associated with the desire for personal satisfaction. It incorporated very shallow readings of Buddhism and eastern philosophy, and it spawned endless trends of classes and books and seminars which employ words like "empowerment" and "self-realization."

I've been through one or two of those seminars. I mean, the serious, hard core, trainers yelling in your face, middle aged women holding each other and weeping at 2 in the morning, life empowerment training. I've also been to a fair number of counsellors and shrinks, sometimes by choice, often by court order. And the movement is designed around analyzing small, daily behaviors in search of a greater pattern. That is useful. But it can also be dangerous.

The New Age movement is largely wrapped up in the idea that we are all linked by an invisible binding of energy which directly creates the world around us--- or, to put it simply, that the world becomes what you believe it is. That if everyone believes in peace, there will be peace. Something which is often referred to with the innocent sounding title "Mindfulness." Which, like Buddhism, is a big and complex philosophy which requires some serious probing and contemplation to understand.

But on a simple, day to day level, the movement strongly encourages people to be ZEALOUS in their pursuit of personal enlightenment. Whether you learn this at a spiritual center for discovery or at a completely non-spiritual corporate "leadership training" you are going to learn the same thing: you must live with raw and untempered passion, all the time, otherwise you are not 1) Fulfilling your full potential or 2) Contributing your full share to the well being of humanity. Even if you have never been to a big time training or a small town shrink, you are still getting it from books and Oprah and plinky guitar folk music. The philosophy is that every moment is the most important moment of your life.

And that has really, really screwed us up.

In all of our relationships, we are burdened by the very modern notion that every single thing is of utmost significance. That everything you say and do "represents" something deeper. It is a huge amount of stress to live under. And it causes people to overreact. To everything. Because, in a lot of ways and from a lot of sources, we are told that to NOT overreact is irresponsible. If you don't react with passion then you don't care. And you care, don't you? Don't you? Do you care or don't you?? Those are your only two options. Answer me!!

We are also burdened with the peculiar idea (thanks AGAIN, Oprah) that a good way to deal with your mate is to psychoanalyze the shit out of them. Study their behavior, decide what their "issues" are, and then share with them your findings. Free of charge. I have to say, even most people who went to school for 8 years and got a license and make a living in a nice cushy office, they are pretty shitty at psychoanalysis. The armchair head-shrinking of lovers is considerably less reliable.

I am here to suggest something that flies in the face of guidance counsellors and (cringe) The Secret and inspirational posters the world over: most of the days of your life are not important. Most of the things you do don't matter much. How you phrase things may be interesting, but it may not reveal your deepest beliefs and values. And becoming happy isn't a matter of forcing yourself into a state of hyper-sensitive hyper-awareness.

It is more a matter of chilling the fuck out.

It seems to me this writer's strike could be resolved in a few chatty days if everyone involved would just kind of chill the fuck out. And it seems to me that relationships between lovers and spouses would be a lot more fun if they treated them more like labor negotiations. Talk about who is going to do what, and how you are going to pay for things, and how you are going to divide your time. Let go of the idea of figuring out what things mean. Most things don't fucking mean anything. Freeing up the energy that you spend on trying to understand the relationship will leave a lot more energy for fucking and drinking and climbing mountains together and, you know, actually having the relationship.

Most spiritual ideas have the nasty danger of being interpreted as the opposite of what they mean. The core of Christianity is kindness and tolerance, but most Christians focus on judgment and discrimination. The idea behind New Age-ism is that what you do also effects the big picture. The result is, people look so hard at themselves they stop noticing the big picture. Forget not seeing the forest for the trees. Most people are stuck on checking out a handful of leaves.

A lot of things are important. But only the important things. The things that aren't important, not-so-much important. The big things are big. The little things are on the smaller side. You can take that shit to the bank.

My Ass Is Only Barely On Fire

It would be arrogant to think that this newly minted blog has anything that could be called "fans," even if I am sure it has a least a small and sturdy handful of readers. (including lovely immigrants from my seventeen other blogs which I consolidated into this one.) However, for anyone out there, I am writing to say that there will be a new entry coming soon. I, like everyone in this peculiar time of year, am busy in a way that seems neither socially appropriate or morally correct. It is made only worse by the fact that all of the things I am busy with are activities which yield no income--- some, like being on strike (or should I say, being on STRIKE!) are actually designed to be much work with no income. (if you don't think being on strike is work, choose any small section of sidewalk near your home, go there on an early winter day, and walk in a circle for fours hours. Then come back and we can both drink a toast to class warfare.)

However, I promise that I will be posting more regularly from now on. I got the first blush of passion out of the way in my early posts, and now that I am through that I am ready to settle into writing smaller and more practical bits of useful dirty words. With the Holidays and New Year's coming up, I know everyone is going to need serious levels of advice. And I am here to serve.

Hey wait, is this a new entry already? Well then fuck y'all. Be patient.

Seriously: sex advice by tomorrow. Pinky promise.

Some Day My Prince Will Come On My Face

I feel in these early days of the blog I have given the impression that I have contempt for most people and the way they deal with relationships. Nothing could be further from the truth. I do, indeed, have contempt for most people. But it isn't because of the way they deal with relationships. It isn't because of their search for love, or their lust for ass, or the often irrational decisions made as a result. I like irrational decisions. They turn me on. Honestly, if it wasn't for poor judgement and irresponsible choices, I would never get laid at all.

What I do feel, with great vigor, is that there is a lot wrong with the way we talk about love and sex and lust and need and the not-so-mysterious webbing between those things. Or the way we don't talk about them. Every time I turn on the television and hear someone saying "do you have feelings for Clark?" I want to drink a genetically activated nuclear cocktail so that I can grow to giant size and moon the whole fucking puritan country. What the fuck is Having Feelings? I have feelings for fettuccine alfredo, but that doesn't mean I want to have sex with it. (okay, maybe I do a little bit.)

There are a lot of good reasons to take sex seriously--- the threat of pregnancy, the unfortunate likelihood of nasty little bugs, and the fact that some men have a hard time taking no for an answer. Plus the danger that your little heart will be temporarily crushed, which is hardly trite or trivial. But I am troubled by the mystique that we have built around finding a good friend and making a mutually beneficial banging arrangement. And yes, I understand that for most people the goal is more advanced, that they want to make a nest and hatch a few shrieking fleshy golums, but that is even LESS romantic and more practical. It is nothing to write sparkle-sweet fairy tales about. (and we all know, don't we by now, that fairy tales had nothing whatsoever to do with love until Old Walt Disney got his perverted woman-hating hands on them.)

But that doesn't mean that I don't think love is something. It doesn't mean I don't believe that love is something meaningful, and substantial, and even quite a bucket full of magical. I have just looked microscopically close at the phenomenon of coupling, and found that the cause of almost all the suffering is that we just don't want to talk about it. For real, big and scary, talk about it. And when we do talk about it, we try to leave the dirty parts out. Which is kind of like trying to bake a cake without adding the sugar.

So I like to talk about the dirty, nasty, sticky, tangled up parts. The musky wet bits of the soul. And I encourage others to do the same. I'd like to lead a revolution of trashy porn star pillow talk made public. I want the coffee shops and the talk radio waves to be filled with chat about fucking and cumming and birth control and gay sex weekends. I want to open the newspaper and read about Hilary Clinton's recommended sex toys. (cuz say what you will about Hilary, that woman looks like she gets off plenty regular.)

It may seem like I don't believe in love. It is the opposite. I believe it is a thousand times more interesting and colorful and wild than we give it credit for. I think by trying to make it noble and keep it clean, we're cheating ourselves out of the sweetest parts.


COMING SOON:

How To Kiss Like A Man

James And The Giant Clitoris

Smoking After Sex: Seek Immediate Medical Treatment

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Hot Air Traffic Control

I watched a movie tonight, one of these somewhat ridiculous post-Nora Ephron romantic comedies in which the main obstacle to the characters getting together is that they feel a little bit nervous about getting together. This one involved several different pairings of people in various states of meeting/dating/coupling/cheating etc, and one of the things I noticed is that all of the characters talked constantly about how "confused" they were. Aside from, obviously, it being a sign of very bad writing, it got me thinking about how often I have heard people talk about being "confused" in their relationships. And what a load of shit I think it is.

I admit, I am pretty harsh with people, and I have an unfortunate tendency to be even more harsh with them when they are feeling at their most vulnerable. But I can't stand the theatre of confusion. Being "confused" about a relationship is one of many claims that I think is, pretty much always, a lie.

So here is my guide to sorting out your confusion, so that you can avoid your own life becoming a poorly written romantic comedy.

First and foremost: "confusion" is a sign of dishonesty. I'm cracking that code for you right here and now. The only reason you are "confused" is either because you are being manipulated or because you are trying to manipulate someone else--- that part is key, because this mostly does not happen by accident. Ninety percent of the time someone tells you that they are confused, it is because they are trying to confuse you.

It's actually kind of brilliant. I have gotten a lot of mileage out of it, myself.

A dude who tells you he is confused is telling you that he wants to fuck you, maybe even wants to fuck you a lot, but he is with his girlfriend and is not going to leave his girlfriend. And he knows that you will not fuck him unless you think maybe he might accidentally leave her in a fit of confusion. He won't. He's not confused. He knows he won't leave her. You, in turn, now feel confused, but your confusion is not a sign of you having feelings that are new and surprising and hard to understand: you confusion comes from the fact that someone you like a lot is lying to you.

And that is genuinely confusing, because as people we are naturally compelled to believe what we are told. It is why movies and plays and books are so powerful: because we can't tell the difference between what is real and what isn't. Obviously we CAN tell the difference, with some time and effort, but physically, emotionally we never learn one thing from the other. We respond to everything we see and hear as though it is real. Our brains, at least our immediate, animal brains, never quite learn to accommodate the fact that something you are told might not be true.

But that effect is short. For someone to keep you "confused" for any length of time, you have to play along. Save yourself a lot of pain by learning to spot this giant red flag. When you find yourself being "confused" you are either being lied to or you are lying. Either he is telling you he will leave his girl, or you are telling yourself he might.

And that is another thing I can settle right here on this page:
HE WON'T LEAVE HIS GIRLFRIEND FOR YOU. Never. This has never happened in the history of relationships. I swear to God's holy anus, it never has.

Now, she may find out he is screwing around with you, and then if we're all lucky she will dump his cowardly ass, and then he will crawl over to your apartment claiming that he left her for you. But he didn't. No dude has ever had the guts to leave his girlfriend/fiance/wife for another woman. Ever. Even if he "confessed" to her about his cheating, he did it because he knew he was going to get caught, and he was trying to score all the points he could. Probably by confessing and telling her how confused he was. Which usually works, by the way. A man in a long term relationship can get a lot of extra pussy by skillfully and repeatedly playing the confusion card.

The thing is, people really don't get confused about how they feel. What they are confused about is how to explain what they feel in a way that makes them sound good. To most people it sounds pretty crappy to say "well, yes, I have a boyfriend, but I really wanted to give this other man a try to see if he would be better, so I went and did that." Or "Yes, he is engaged, but I am lonely and I think he's hot, so I fucked him and I would like to do it again." Those are ugly things to say. (unless you are me, in which case I love you for saying them.) But being confused feels softer. It feels almost tragic. And you are the tragic hero, the victim of a circumstance bigger than you can manage.

I have a lot of sympathy-- encouragement, even--- for people making bad choices and nasty mistakes. But I don't have any soft spots for people claiming they didn't know what they were doing. Of course, as an arrogant bastard myself, I have never understood why people prefer to claim stupidity over selfishness. Everyone is selfish and everyone understands--- you don't get angry at your friends for cheating unless you are a victim. But you don't hear a lot of people say "that dude is stupid" with a tone of warm understanding.

Conflicted, yes. I give you conflicted. Ambivalent, torn, and many other words you could find in a thesaurus. Probably "confused" would even be in there, but that one is special. It is different. I am way down with people who are conflicted and don't know what the right thing to do is. But the words people use are far more specific than we usually give credit for. And "confused" is a call word for some dark shit going down somewhere. I've heard people say they were conflicted, and be able to tell why and what they are trying to choose between. But I have never met anyone who said "I'm just so confused" who later went on to figure out what they were confused about and take appropriate action. People who are confused remain confused for as long as it takes for someone ELSE to make the important decisions for them.

I do believe it is possible to be really confused by relationships. I am just saying that it doesn't happen unless someone in the mix is being crafty.

So, add it to the list of red flag words. Confused.


(other new additions to the list of red flag words: "Venomous," "Smashed," and "Pregnant")