When I was younger, I remember sitting in the back seat of my my dad’s car, with my mom driving (she loves driving), and asking “Daddy, what’s a virgin?”

He said “someone who hasn’t had sex.” I thought of the Virgin Mary, and then how people have this weird stressed intonation of unpleasantness when I hear people say the word “virgin” as it was a scandalous word.

“I’m a virgin, then!” I said. It felt like it was weird to say that I was a virgin when I wasn’t pubescent or post pubescent or an adult, as if that context wasn’t even there for a kid to say they are a virgin. But there it was.

The only time I didn’t get a straight answer to a definition was when I was watching Grease and there was a lyric “Hooker” was sung. I imagined a fisherman or sailor with a large fishing hook, and a pretty, gussied up lady with the fishhook in her cheek looking surprised and blankly at the camera. I knew the word was integral to the song, so I asked what it meant.

I asked to my brother (who is two years older than I) “what’s a hooker?” He said, “someone who does stuff for money.” Being a child, I took it as it was said: Someone who does stuff for money. “Stuff” wouldn’t have the coy sexual connotation until years later.

Over the summer in our day camp’s swimming pool, my brother said “I’ll give you a quarter to give me a piggy-back ride!” I love giving him piggy back rides, because it makes me feel strong and I don’t spend enough fun, siblingy time with him. So I picked him up and walked around in the water, and said to his friend nearby, “*I’m* a *hooker*!” That friend gave me a horrible look, and I knew I said something wrong, so I splashed water in his face and swam off underwater.

There’re some muscles in every pelvis called “pubococcygeus,” and it’s the closest thing that sounds like “cock” that I have.

These muscles are the ones that holds in your pee and helps birth babies, but is also damn nice to contract during sexy times, or times you aren’t really doing anything interesting.

If you’ve got a cock, you can apparently raise your penis and balls, and strengthening your pubococc can let you have some multiple orgasms and help with not coming so fast.

This has been a friendly pubococcygeus muscle appreciation post.

I listened to a section of the book Social Intelligence. It spoke of different interactions, the “You, It” and the “You, Me” interaction.

The You, It is where the It is someone you’re not connecting to, you’re not making them feel heard, you’re using them to get something, or you’re just not paying attention. People use this in the service industry, in restaurants etc.

The You, Me interaction is where there’s a back and forth, continual flowing of listening, reaction, and talking. Both people feel heard, connected, and treated like the full human beings they are.

Along the way to my social worker, my father got lost, and we went to the Burger King drive-thru instead of the restaurant as we planned. When the lady gave us our bags of food, I leaned over from shotgun and gave her a wide smile, saying thank you. She beamed right back and said you’re welcome. Hers was a pleasantly surprised, genuine smile, and I’m really happy I gave her a bit of kindness and warmth. Her existence doesn’t end when she hands over the goods, and it certainly started before customers drive up to order. She’s a person, and people can treat her as a delivery robot. Not cool, people.

This is the ballad of the grad

whose grades will count no more.

The summer’s here, the shirts are plaid.

School has made you a bore.

All work, no play, makes Jack so dull.

Your APs’ done their part.

Without your sleep, you’ve wracked your skull.

Your gradebook says you’re smart.

The trees are lush: fresh leaves, buds bloom.

You run hands through the grass.

Will you find in time a dorm room?

You bet your pimply ass.

Now’s the time to see your friends

to romp and celebrate

how lounging, smiling, makes amends

for priority’s weight.

Underneath the summer’s heat

at summer homes and lakes

you laugh and holler, keeping beat

to the tempo of the flakes

of snow that falls on your heart when

you think its time to leave.

Your shivering lips start to part:

you breathe and choke and heave.

Goodbye, my friends. I kiss their cheeks.

Embraces are too short.

Again I’ll begin in some weeks

and find new friends to court.

We sputter out across the state

on foot, by car, on planes.

I carry on me a new slate.

It’s smooth without your names.

[aggressively blows you a kiss goodnight]

Ahh, there’s nothing like handsome men telling you your eyes are beautiful.

If you’re curious if the salty+sweet=heaven concept applies to Cheetos and chocolate covered almonds, let me tell you how delicious it is.

For a fun summer project to consume some of my time while feeling a tad productive, I’m going to make separate blogs and post all my likes, all my 17,710 likes and counting. 

I’ll need to organize them in categories.

• Homestuck
• Words (eg. poetry, word posts)
• Clothing, Hair, Makeup, Feminism and Queerness

To keep tabs on what I’ve posted and what I haven’t, I’m going to unlike the posts I’ve reblogged. I enjoy the “timeline” like feel of having all my likes in order, but I value posting more. I enjoy combing through messy things and organizing them.

Time to master the queue. Time to experiment with pacing.

My dad put on the audio tape of the book Social Intelligence, and it spoke of this one incident when a Japanese dude went over to the states to stay with his friend and colleague.

The friend said, “We’ve got some ice cream. Are you hungry?”

The dude said, “No, thank you.” Even though he was hungry, he wasn’t at all used to that question. That in Japan, someone just looks at you and can tell you are hungry. That people have so much empathy there, they can just sense your hunger and just give you food without asking.

That the friend should have at least asked again, not just dropping it, saying, “Oh, okay.”

It made me really sad, because a good chunk of my life was me wanting to talk to people, but nobody sensed it, so I didn’t speak with them. I wasn’t alone, and I’ve always had friends, but it made me so sad to hear that people in Japan (to generalize to an unknown degree) would just look at you, sense you wanted to talk, and just talk. Looking back, that’s what people do now, and what they have always done. But, to do that so consistently like giving someone food when they sense they’re hungry… I wish that happened a lot more often.