{"id":1440,"date":"2004-04-17T20:16:00","date_gmt":"2004-04-17T19:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/2004\/04\/17\/when-worst-has-already-happened-thats\/"},"modified":"2015-06-19T00:26:12","modified_gmt":"2015-06-18T23:26:12","slug":"when-worst-has-already-happened-thats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/2004\/04\/17\/when-worst-has-already-happened-thats\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>When the worst has already happened<\/h3>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"http:\/\/www.xkey.com\/~celesteh\/personal\/images\/blog\/170404\/squirrel.jpg\" width = 598 height = 218 alt = \"[dead squirrel]\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" class=\"lazyload\"><br \/>\nThat&#8217;s a dead squirrel on a paper plate with a wilted flower placed in front of it.  A zoom of the photo seems to reveal that the squirrel&#8217;s throat has been cut, but maybe it died of natural causes . . . and somebody thought it would be nice to leave it in the CFA area next to a tree.  I came by the next day and it was still there, but the paper plate was gone.  I have a pic of that too, but it&#8217;s a less fluffy squirrel after being dead for a day in the rain.  I haven&#8217;t been back by there since.<\/p>\n<p>So the squirrel paid the ultimate price for art or maybe became art accidentally after tossing aside this mortal coil.  One thing you can do when you&#8217;re distressed is to ask &#8220;what&#8217;s the worst that could happen?&#8221;  wtwtch?  this I learned from Olga&#8217;s blog.  So maybe the squirrel&#8217;s predicament is the worst that could happen to anybody.  But I don&#8217;t think so.  Some people seek death as escape, which would imply that it&#8217;s not the worst thing ever.<br \/>\nSo what if the worst thing that could possibly happen already has? Jean asked me a couple of days ago.  *blink*  What would I have to lose?  I&#8217;d be free.  I could stop worrying.  I could love everyone as much as I could.  I could take any risk.  I could go in any direction.<br \/>\nSo what direction to go in?  Man, I dunno.  I feel kind of damaged.  I&#8217;m kind of glad to be trapped in the limbo of grad school as much as I want to get home as soon as I can.  As much as I feel isolated, it&#8217;s like havign a testing ground for differnt directions or something.  being here doesn&#8217;t feel like real life.  I saw a movie over winter break called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0058003\/\" target=\"_top\">The Red Desert<\/a>, in which a woman has a nervous break down and is surrounded by desolation.  She says to a sailor, &#8220;It&#8217;s just that I need to remember that these things that keep happening to me are my life.&#8221;  It&#8217;s a really good movie but it was bit too much for me to watch when I was watching it.<br \/>\nI feel sadder about losing my mom than I feel about losing Christi, and I dunno why cuz I always thought it would be the other way around.  Maybe cuz when I lost my mom is when I lost Christi too, really.  Maybe cuz I never really had Christi.  Maybe cuz Christi&#8217;s not dead, thank god.  Tho I don&#8217;t really want to see her or talk to her right now.<br \/>\nOk, so I said I would post about sleeping with as many women as possible and I wrote a post and I decide to post it and then I change my mind and then I change my mind again.  Which is kind of how I feel about sleeping with as many women as possible&#8230;. la la la&#8230;. here&#8217;s the post I wrote yesterday:<\/p>\n<h3>Sleeping Around<\/h3>\n<p>Normally, I try to keep my blog posts pretty pg-13 and I think this one will prolly be around that level.  Maybe R.  However, if you are a relative or have the power to write grades on my coursework, please shoo from this post and read the archives instead or something.<br \/>\nNow that I&#8217;ve got your attention&#8230;. ok, so one of the rebounding things I listed was &#8220;sleeping with as many women as possible.&#8221;  Which has a million pros and cons.  I met a guy a couple of nights ago who was all sad about some boy and I said that people had been telling to rebound by sleeping around.  The sad guy said he didn&#8217;t think he was capable of such a thing, which reminded me of my first girlfriend&#8230;.<br \/>\nOk, so I was very young.  17.5 &#8211; 18.5.  She was the same age.  (I&#8217;m in disclaimer land.  I bear him no lingering ill will.  I hope him the best.)  Our relationship was non-monogamous.  (I know the hip term now is &#8221; polyamorous,&#8221; but this was 1993 and we didn&#8217;t yet know such a word.)  What this actually meant is that she slept around and had another girlfriend who she&#8217;d been seeing forever . . . and I was just seeing her.  This was not an ideal arrangement, obviously.  She encouraged me towards non-monogamy.  She told me where to meet chicks.  She even left me alone with aggressive females she knew were hot for me.  For whatever reason, I was only interested in her.  Our relationship wasn&#8217;t very good, obviously, and we broke up around the time I left to go to college<br \/>\nI arrived at Mills and decided maybe I should finally embrace this nonmongamy thing and try to get some chicks.  this was grossly unpopular idea.  Several people explained to me that monogamy was where it&#8217;s at.  Some of those people (ok, one) later had six girlfriends who didn&#8217;t all know about each other, but whatever.  It was during this time that I developed my current mack technique which involves giggling stupidly, blushing and looking at my shoes.  This didn&#8217;t work so well at the time, but somehow is working now.  anyway.  So finally, I succeeded in getting a couple of chicks who I was kind of dating, but not seriously and it seemed kind of doomed and then I got with christi.<br \/>\nchristi insisted on monogamy.  I was more or less ok with it, although it was an issue that came up occasionally.<br \/>\nFast forward many years . . . christi and I were still together but on different continents.  We decided to be nonmonogamous due to separation.  I was half heartedly pursuing a few straight women who were really not interested.  As far as she told me, Christi wasn&#8217;t hooking up either.<br \/>\nUm, so this idea of &#8220;sleeping with as many women as possible&#8221; would be a dern new experience, even as it&#8217;s an old idea.<\/p>\n<h4>Pros<\/h4>\n<p>Make up for missing life experience.  Fuck the pain away. (as Peaches would sing)  Make new friends.  Feel like a part of the queer community.  Get a larger audience for thesis concert.  Know more undergrads.  Kind of fun.<\/p>\n<h4>Cons<\/h4>\n<p>undergrads are all around 20 years old, I think.  risk of drama.  risk of disease.  risk of her getting attached to me.  risk of me getting attached to her.  um, could this hurt my future academic career?  takes a lot of effort.  cuts into sleep time.  pain just comes back later, maybe worse cuz of no sleep.  getting shot down could hurt ego. somewhat confusing.<br \/>\nAnd so, rebounding person can have a warm body next to her for one sleepless night.  and feel like there&#8217;s some human connection, where there hasn&#8217;t been that much of one, unless there has: who knows?  if you take critical theory ( a required subject for all undergrads here), you wonder what does it all <em>mean<\/em> because things do not just signify themselves.  Sex with near-strangers is certainly a technology of the self.  Maybe identity is formed in contrast to the other?  Maybe it&#8217;s hard to know what to think.<br \/>\nJean told me to do it and a bunch of people have agreed, but I dunno.<br \/>\nTumultuous affair was a good idea.<br \/>\nSleeping around is, well, different.  hypothetically i mean.  of course.  yes.  goodnight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When the worst has already happened That&#8217;s a dead squirrel on a paper plate with a wilted flower placed in front of it. A zoom of the photo seems to reveal that the squirrel&#8217;s throat has been cut, but maybe it died of natural causes . . . and somebody thought it would be nice &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/2004\/04\/17\/when-worst-has-already-happened-thats\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\"><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1440"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3692,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1440\/revisions\/3692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}