Hi there, my good people.

I’m hunkering down for a storm that’s just now beginning to rage, and rage it will. Winds shall break 120 km/hr tonight. I think that’s 85 miles, for you metrically-challenged Americans.

It’s stormy nights like this that I enjoy not being single. Which I’m not. I’m single, not not single. Still. I did have a date recently, which I think we both realized wasn’t working out. Nice enough guy, but certainly no go. Lemme give you a very, very simple tip.

If your date can’t find enough time for you on the first date, and he/she keeps answering their cellphone, it may be an indicator that you’re not going to be priority one any time soon in the future, either. Don’t get involved and then wonder why they never have 100% of their attention thrown your way — it was made clear that was the case from day one.

Know those little things I’m always looking for? Just another example. Me, my cellphone gets turned off.

My date was cellphone-challenged. I’m not too keen on men who don’t focus their attention on me. Some careers require it, but most careers can come with, oh, a four-hour pause button.

Anyhow. As it happens, single I am. Amazing what running a Craigslist ad and then posting something freaky about your dad’s health and the drama you’re facing can do to make men run like they’re in the streets of Pamplona, fleeing a herd of crazed bulls looking to trample them to death.

Not like I care, really. I just haven’t the energy to bother. I’ve had better results other times, and I think I wasn’t in the headspace anyhow. I think I wanted a good shagging, really. The rest is difficult to manouever at times, and my head’s been in the wrong fucking place on a whole lot of levels for a whole lotta time.

I’ll tell you one thing, though: Dealing with disease and the threat of loved ones passing tends to remind you that life’s too fucking short to put the living on hold.

There are many variations of the same saying, and my two favourite come from 1) The Shawshank Redemption, and 2) a quote by the highly controversial Ayn Rand. They are, respectively, “Get busy livin’, or get busy dyin'” and “Man’s greatest fault is is inability to realize that avoiding death does not equal living life.” Oh, and a third, from Virginia Woolf, “Look out! If you are losing your leisure, it may be you are losing your soul.”

I’ve had big wake-ups in my life and many, many of them. My near-death scenarios alone are enough to make me realize how precious this all is, let alone the deaths of those around me. Yet, like everyone else, I forget how important moments are, and how unique every day is. I fall into the drone of the routine. I am just another mindless soul shuffling down the city streets, just like you. And sometimes I manage to wake the hell up and stop avoiding death just long enough to live a little life for a bit.

I have been working like a dog for all the wrong reasons. I’ve not been enjoying my life. I don’t have fun with my friends. I don’t get shagged or date or smile unprovoked these days. Something slipped away from me during all my crazy, crazy months that have started and persisted throughout this dreaded year of 2006. Some good moments in there, to be sure, but it’s mostly been stress and worry, and for what? Has it all been worth it? The short answer: Not on your life. Certainly not on mine.

Now my father lies in ICU, his condition not changing, which is good and bad all at the same time. And I remember: I was always the smell-the-roses type. You know, I have previously planned roadtrips so minutely as to pre-arrange my positioning for sunrises. You know, on top of X mountain for sunrise, that sort of thing. I know how to live life. Goddamned right I do. I know how to indulge and laugh and be spontaneous. Hell, I wrote the fucking book on it. Yet I, too, have fallen victim to coasting through life on cruise control instead of grabbing the fucking wheel and just going, you know?

I suspect my father will get well. There’s no hard proof. Just hope and prayers and superstitious rituals. I know I’ll still be single when the windows start to clatter and the winds really howl as they rip through the gap between these two apartment buildings late tonight. I know that, no matter what happens tomorrow, with me, my father, my life, that I’ll still have a pulse and life will still be there, waiting to be lived by a girl with as keen a passion for life as I know I once had and will have again.

Anyhow. This is a meandering post, but I just wanted to check in, say hey, I’m still around, and yeah, life’s a bitch and a grind, but it is what it is, and even in the shittiest of days there can be pluses to be had. Just takes a little creativity and a whole lot of willingness to look at the finer points in order to find the good stuff. Somehow, I’m managing to do just that.

Meanwhile. I’m overdue for a nice hot bath. Enjoy your warm-bodied bed-buddies if you have ’em. This girl’s a low-maintenance party of one this evening.

As Canadians, most of the people I know were obsessed with the voting returns last night. I applaud the new Democratic House and I’m curious to see what the next couple years will be like. I’m also happy to see a female Speaker of the House. Wow. There’s a neat change in the U.S. Go, Nancy.

As for my father, ICU seems to be the perfect place for him. He’s slowly improving. Had some colour yesterday, and even though he was too weak to communicate much, he had a ferocious grip in his hands and squeezed my brother’s and my hands and looked on us with great affection that still makes me smile now. Who says you need words to know you’re loved? I’ll know more later this week, but I’m optimistic he’ll get past this and I can return to being a happy Steff. Stay tuned.

(FYI: My father’s taken a turn for the worse. Intensive care, life support. The news looks bad. I don’t know if he’ll make it through the next few days. This blog is not a priority, but it can be cathartic. I don’t suspect I’ll be a barrell of laughs for a bit.)

The good people over at Penguin’s imprint Avery have been so kind as to send me Nina Hartley’s Guide to Total Sex.

Hmm. A book on sex that features raves on the cover from Margaret Cho and Penn Jillette? Hmm, indeed. I wouldn’t exactly list Cho & Penn as two of my sex idols. In moments of unbridled passion, where the lights are low, temperatures rising, panties in a twist, when I’m staring down an erect penis, I don’t flash into the recesses of my brain and go, “Oh, god, what would Margaret Cho do right now?” I mean, obviously.

Let this be a lesson to publishers: Just because you can get a celebrity to endorse your product doesn’t necessarily mean you should. Penn? Ahem.

Now, Hartley pronounces that this is the book she wished she had at 18. Okay, all right.

I have a problem getting totally behind this book. And lemme tell ya why.

First, sex is a pretty mind-blowing thing, and unlike riding the old wooden roller coaster or some other cheap thrill like that, it can vary six ways to Sunday every single time you do it. Unlike other thrills, sex has a whole world of options available to you.

Sex is one of the most expansive activities you will ever, ever engage in.

Thus, I find it pretty hard to believe that Nina Hartley’s double-spaced, 349-page Guide to (Not-quite-so) Total Sex is ever gonna be an encyclopedic reference.

Add to that the total lack of images of any kind, and you can start to wonder just how clued-in Hartley was at 18, ‘cos I gotta tell ya, some diagrams woulda gotten me to a whole new place of fulfillment back when I was 18. Describing body parts by name or vague description isn’t going to work for a lot of people. Pictures aren’t too hard to do, and they can serve a whole lot of purposes. Sex books without pictures are somewhat baffling.

The other problem is this happy medley of voices employed by Miss Hartley as she narrates your way through the book – half porn-star, half biology teacher – I just find the weird voice to be a whole lot less effective a way of educating the masses. It’s missing something in its explanations, and it far too much assumes that the average reader already knows something about sex. And, unfortunately, in this case, they probably do. They’ve probably seen any number of Miss Hartley’s videos.

This is not a book for beginners. It doesn’t break shit down near enough. Maybe a sex-video star knows a bit more about human biology than the average person, but this is one incident when addressing the lowest common denominator is something that would benefit the masses.

That said, this is not the book I would have wanted at age 18, and if it was the first sex book I was ever buying, I think there would be an awful lot I’d be missing out on. As a back-up book or for an out-of-practice lover, it might be a good purchase.

All the negatives aside, I often enjoyed the voice it was written in, and I like the emphasis that one can be a moral sexual being, that there is an ethic at work among the more sexually promiscuous – most of the time – but I’m not sure that it doesn’t gloss things over a little at times. Still, it’s a great attempt at reminding people that sex is basic biology and not something we should be experiencing such guilt over engaging in.

That it touches on the basics of bondage, BDSM, swinging, and other less than mainstream deviations is something I do applaud. I just think it’s a little too simplistic.

And it’s not a Total Guide, however much it wishes to be.

The ultimate, absolute best book I’ve ever, ever seen on sex was and IS, with its brand-spankin’-new eighth edition, is The Guide to Getting it On.

In the next couple weeks I’ll be reviewing it, talking about the CRAZY new selection of new chapters they’ve just added in, and telling you why, if you only ever buy one book on sex, whether you’re male or female, Paul Johannides’ Guide to Getting it On is absolutely, hands-down, the one book to buy.

If you’re looking for an interesting look at other aspects of sex, and you’re wanting a good read, well-organized, basic look at a wide variety of sexual lifestyles and such, this is actually a really good book to have. It’s just not what Miss Hartley’s trying to sell you. Total guide? Not by a long shot, but certainly a good backdrop for a larger library.

My religion is well known
to those who know me.
I believe in bodies,
arms entangling and untangling.
I believe, and I know it to be so,
that there are so many
curves and hollows
in a single body
that none of us
can come to know them all
within a single lifetime.
I believe in one to one
and one on one.
No wine or magic,
no hand-me-down Bible
can improve on that.
I believe in spring,
but only if I’m rolled up in a pillow
or holding some well-loved face
in my hands…
More often I’m a spectator,
meaning I’ve no reason
to believe in anything
save what I see.
But I do.

–Rod McKuen, Alone

According to a recent study by the UN’s World Health Organization, the greatest threat to a woman’s safety and life is her partner.

The irony is, most of us claim to feel safer when we’re involved. Nothing quite makes the cold, bitter world outside fade away than the comforting arms of a man. But the facts are facts, and depending where you are in the world, there’s anywhere from a 1 in 7 to 7 in 10 chance (15 – 70%) that you’re going to be victimized by your lover at some point in your life, and if it happens once, you can almost lay Vegas odds on it happening again.

Violence is never, ever okay. Apologies are just words. Actions speak far louder. Violence is never the way to solve problems. There is never an excuse that can justify someone raising a hand (or belt or frying pan or stick or tire iron) against you. And contrary to popular opinion, men are battered, too. And that’s just as wrong.

I don’t care who you are or what your excuse is, if you’ve ever smacked someone or done any kind of physical violence because you were “angry”, then you have issues and you need to deal with it if you haven’t already. And if you’re in a relationship with someone who’s been violent against you, you need to walk.

Some relationships, it’s hard to walk. Hell, it might be the hardest thing you ever do. There are those who will threaten the lives of their “lovers”, in the instance that the victimized one would leave, and anyone who’s staying put as a result of that threat needs to seriously realize that staying put is almost as real a threat to your life as leaving, but that leaving at least offers the hope of change and healing.

I am not a professional. I cannot and will not pretend to understand the horrors that happen in some people’s lives. The only thing I know is, hard things can be overcome, and there are people out there who have the ability to help. They’re waiting for you.

If you’ve been a victim, you’re not alone. It happens every millisecond somewhere in the world. People understand more than you think. And you are not the person your victimizer believes you are. You are not a victim. You’re a survivor. You need to fight. You need to realize that you have the basic human right to protect yourself and to expect to be treated in a humane, caring way.

Even if you’re in a marriage, you’re not property. You can be raped by your spouse. Having sex is a choice, not an obligation – despite the fact that I believe sex to be a deeply important part of a relationship. If you do not consent, do not want to do it, and you have expressed that you don’t want to have sex, then it’s rape. There’s a lot of bickering out there sometimes about whether no really means no or if it’s possibly a maybe, but every time I’ve looked it up in the dictionary, “no” has meant exactly what rumour has suggested it means: “to reject or refuse approval.” Hmm. Seems pretty clear to me.

Some people want to be abused in different ways, and they belong to the BDSM society. They like paddles on their asses, clamps on their nipples, flogging with leather, and more. Some walk away from this “past-time” with bruises, welts, and other wounds. Yes, it’s a choice. But it’s also a very structured society built on respect and rules. There’s always a stop word. There are always rules and protocols to follow in the lifestyle, and anyone who doesn’t follow the rules will get a reputation in the circles.

In an abusive relationship, abuse is unwanted. There are no stop words. It’s an exercise of inhumanity – domination over a weaker person, and the willful act of degradation and humiliation, all in an attempt to usurp power and morale.

If you’re not getting the treatment you want in a relationship – whether it’s something as simple as the person not respecting your time or your schedule, or taking advantage of your finances, or blowing up over stupid issues and refusing to resolve them like an adult, or calling you names and mocking you, or something more harsh like their hitting you and demeaning you, or flat-out sexual abuse – then you have every right and every reason to walk.

If you’re being abused, it’s likely that more than one person in your life has seen the signs but doesn’t know how to talk about it with you. It’s likely that they’re waiting for you to ask for help. If you feel can’t trust them, that’s understandable, and then you need to find an organization you can trust – shelters are found in almost every city in the world. Here in Vancouver, we have a terrific organization called Women Against Violence Against Women. There are even underground networks that will help relocate you if your life is in danger.

You deserve happiness. If being together is hurting you, you need to explore your options and find the strength to change your life. Leaving isn’t the end of the world – it’s the end of a cycle. The start of something new. The start of you having courage, pride, and the strength of will to realize that you are not your legacy, and pasts don’t need to become our futures.

Do a Google search for: violence, women, shelters, and your hometown. Be careful. Be brave.

Here are some statistics about abuse in the world:

• In both the WHO’s international study (featuring Bangladesh, Brazil, Ethiopia, Japan, Namibia, Peru, Samoa, Serbia, Thailand, and Tanzania) and in American-based studies, more than 25% of those asked (including men) have experienced violence in a relationship, and most said it had happened in their present relationship.
• Only about half of domestic violence is reported to authorities in the United States, with African-American women being more likely to report their abusers. (Good for them.)
• 25% of women and 8% of men in the American National Violence Against Women Survey reported they had been raped and/or assaulted at least once in their lives. (I’m fortunate, it has never happened to me in any way.)
• Rape victims often experience anxiety, guilt, nervousness, phobias, substance abuse, sleep disturbances, depression, alienation, sexual dysfunction, and aggression. They often distrust others and replay the assault in their minds, and they are at increased risk of future victimization (DeLahunta 1997).
• A 1996 study showed that women who had been victimized sexually and with battery showed all the same post-traumatic symptoms experienced by survivors of wars and natural disasters.
• More than HALF of all rapes against women occur before the age of 18, and more than 22% occur before the age of 12 in America.
• Domestic violence occurs in 25 – 33% of same-sex relationships.
• Annually, approximately 50,000 women and children are trafficked into America for sexual slavery and/or forced labour.
• In South Africa, a woman is raped e
  very 83 seconds.
• In Bangladesh, more than 70% of women report violence in their relationships.
• Here in Canada, a study in the late ‘80s showed that more than 60% of women murdered were killed by their partners, a statistic that mirrors that of Zimbabwe and many other countries.

Violence is unacceptable. Regardless of how daunting and horrifying some of these statistics are, abusers are not omnipresent in our society. There are men, and women, who know how to love, cherish, and dote on their partners. I’m one, and every man I’ve been with has been one. I look for early warning signs: Is their anger in keeping with the situation? Are they aggressive drivers? Do they treat others with disdain and humiliation? Do they belittle me when I’m trying to trust them? Do they respect my needs? Do they know how to resolve conflict with conversation? Do they know how to take a deep breath and walk away for ten minutes when things are heated? If not, I know they’re not the fit for me. Little things are huge in the grand scheme of things, if you really know what you’re looking for. Don’t underestimate the early warning signs, and don’t let violence happen a second time. “Sorry” is the easiest thing in the world to say. Don’t believe it.

Statistics found on feminist.com and who.org.
Photos taken from who.org, and The European Parliament.

As is usually the case when life throws me a curveball, I’ve been taking some time to reflect on things this morning. I’ll be seeing my father on Sunday and I’m hoping things will clear up sufficiently that he doesn’t need to lose his leg to this. He needs a good scare to help him get his shit together. I know what to say for encouragement when I see him, and hopefully it’ll have the impact I want. We’ll see.

It seems to me that every time I think I’m in the clear again, life packs another punch against me. Then it occurs to me that that’s a little grandiose a notion, and that I’m probably not nearly as important a target in the grand scheme of things as I might like to think I am, and this, as opposed to all appearances, is just how life rolls. It’s like they say, if it was supposed to be a good time, we’d be paying admission, don’t you think?

Every now and then, I’m struck by the immensity of it all. Aren’t you? One small planet, one fraction of space, and yet there are six billion people on this planet, and a good many of them facing every bit of the adversity I face on a daily basis, if not far, far more. And yet we all share so little of that pain and tribulation we endure. And yet we learn so little from it.

Me, I hate the adversity sometimes, but this morning I was sitting there somewhere in the midst of my coffee and a thought occurred. I’m so fortunate that I’m able to learn from these things, I thought.

I’ve always believed that I’m fairly good at distilling the happenstance of life into the meaning of life. I think I take all the events that I’m fortunate, or not so much so, enough to experience and glean from them some kind of meaning that makes it all somewhat worthwhile. Knowing that every experience brings with it some wisdom or understanding sometimes makes it easier to endure while it’s coming down the pipes.

But, you know what? It only works if I share it with others. I have to be able to trust others and let them in during those harder times, or else the voices in my head get a little too loud for comfort, if you know what I mean? The inner dialogue, not multiple-personality disorder. Heh.

When I was unable to convey what I was experiencing to others, say seven years ago after Mom’s death, life was harder. Much. I always, always had huge issues with trust. I wouldn’t tell people what I was experiencing, and I sure as hell couldn’t open up. Learning to trust has been the hardest journey of my life, but I think I’ve made the last leg of it this past year.

(Perhaps you don’t know that about me, but this blog has definitely been a record of a personal journey as much as anything else you might think it to be.)

And the trust part of my life has only been underway in the last five years. Slowly I’ve learned to let people in. Used to be that you had to know me for years to get under my shell, but nowadays I seem to have a multi-week plan for schooling new folk in the life of Steff. And it feels great.

It seems to me that everyone needs to come upon the lesson of learning to trust in their own time. I think what winds up happening is that you open up and trust someone, then you realize you’re not going to self-detonate as soon as you reveal your innermost thoughts. This is new, you think. Then, something happens and that trust goes awry, and through all the frustration and sadness or even pain, you realize you didn’t crumble and die. “Strong. Like truck?” you wonder. Then you decide, while it was good, the trusting thing made the rest of it all worthwhile.

It’s really that simple. A cliché. The doing of it hurts far less than never doing it at all. The doing of it is worth every bit of the struggles endured along the way. And it’s amazing how stupid we are in the face of that simple truth. It seems we don’t trust anything that seems so simple. So, we stay boxed up, stoic, strong because we need to be, and we go without some of the greatest experiences we could ever have – the real bonds that form in the face of true trust. Instead, we reserve trust for a small handful of people in our lives. We put up facades for the rest.

We’re some very silly bears, it seems to me.

So, some hard times again, but one way or the other, I’ll live to see another day. Older/wiser, all that. The only thing I know is, I have absolutely zero power over what happens, so all I can do is take it as it comes. And maybe trust a friend or two to be there with me through the process.

Maybe my mindset will settle down, but it might not. I’ve gotten a disturbing call, my dad’s in emergency right now. I’d written a posting earlier in October saying I had concerns about my dad’s health. He had festering wounds — weeping ulcers — on his leg, something every diabetic needs to be terrified of developing. They’ve gotten worse, much, much worse, and now there’s a very real prospect of him possibly needing to have his leg amputated to stop the spread, and the news is that the weeping ulcers are omnipresent over his entire lower leg… Not good. Not at all.

I know my father, and while some people might do well adjusting to losing a leg, I know it would be akin to a death sentence for him.

I predicted my mother would die within the year that she died, long before I even knew she had cancer, and, right now, I’m just a little freaked out. Writing’s about the last thing on my mind. But, who knows, writing’s also pretty cathartic for me. Just don’t expect much, is what I’m saying.

There is no part of my body that better acts as a go-directly-to-“go” beacon than my neck. A pair of lips and some teeth and tongue on it just sends me into the stratosphere.

I’ve kept my hair short for three or four years now, and I’m hesitant to grow it any longer than my jawline for the sheer fact that I love having it easily accessible by the men in my life. I melt when it receives their attention, and I’ve seldom met a man I can’t melt when I give his neck a little of my own attention.

The neck is chock full of nerve endings, and it’s one of the tenderest parts of our bodies. Personally, one of my favourite ambushes is approaching the object of my affections from behind and dragging my teeth over his neck as I suck and nibble and flat-out bite my way across it. Maybe it’s a throwback to my teenaged Anne Rice addiction. I don’t know.

If I had to choose a supernatural creature I’d most like to run into in a dark alley, hands down it’d be Dracula. Preferably Lestat, though. I’d be sure to have a low-cut blouse and plenty of neck access available for the Count. Have at me, I’d plead. The sunrise is hours and hours away, I’d promise.

Lips, teeth, and tongue all push different buttons on a neck. From the nape to the jawline, every area of the neck reacts a little differently. Me, I don’t like anyone to focus on one area. Be an explorer. Visit all of me, you know? I’m sure I’m not the only person who’d like a lover to take out a Eurail traveller’s pass on my neck, shoulders, and ears. Hell, revisit as often as you like. I’ll issue you an all-access pass, if only you promise you’ll explore every nook and cranny.

Wow. I feel impossibly single right now. Me and my lonely neck. Fortunately, it’s All Soul’s Night and my chances of a supernatural visit are a smidge higher than they might normally be.

Where’s a Transylvanian count when a girl needs one, hmm?

Happy All Soul’s Night, friends. Photo is from a Berlin play, Tanz Der Vampire.

Do NOT floss or brush your teeth before performing oral sex. If your gums bleed, it can really increase risk of transmission/infection. Do not re-use anyone’s dental floss. Do not share toothbrushes. Do not share razors. Seriously. But before you get paranoid, read this list of how you cannot get HIV/AIDS, all right? Folks with either do not deserve to be shunned or treated like outcasts. Blood tranfer’s the only way to get this.

I’m off to enjoy one of Vancouver’s best annual events, the Parade of Lost Souls. Halloween… Shpooky! Have a very scary weekend, boys and girls.