Being me

If you thought my earlier post today was kind of short, that's because there used to be a lot more of it.  The other day, I did something I found amusing and made a note to write about it at a later date.  This morning there wasn't much to say other than my back hurt so I thought it would be a good time to trot out that other topic.

Then I deleted it.  Because I was worried what you all might think of me.  And that has been bugging me all day.

I realized I've kind of been putting on my grandma face around here.  You know, you clean up your language and you hide your piercings and your tattoos and your Latino pool boy Raoul when you go visit your grandma.  Except I've had conversations with my grandma that started with "Have you ever had sex with a man who wasn't circumcised?"  Apparently grandma hasn't.  Apparently "If I had, I sure as hell wouldn't be discussing it with you over the kitchen table, grandma!!" 

And people wonder where I get it from.  You should meet my mom.  Especially after a few drinks.

Anyhow, I have decided I need to be me.  I like being me.  I hope you like me being me too.  If not, then maybe I'll lose a few followers.  I'm okay with that.  I'm betting I'll get some really interesting new ones.  So, here goes.

No. 1.  I swear.  I swear all the fucking time.  I don't think there's anything wrong with cursing.  I'll damper it back around kids and the elderly and usually my boss but on the whole I don't see anything wrong with swearing.  I'd rather not hear a two year old screaming out "fuck!" but it is just a word.  I don't do it so much in writing because it's more to convey the passion or energy of a moment and you can do that more effectively with the written word than is conveyed by the verbal.  When speaking, it gets people's attention.  I hope you're not offended but if you are, I don't see how that should be a problem for me.  Particularly if your reasons for being offended are "it's not ladylike" or any variety thereof because that is bullshit.  If you don't have a problem with a man doing it, you shouldn't have a problem with me doing it. 

No. 2.  This is what I started to write about this morning.  I am a big fan of a series of books by Laurell K. Hamilton, the Anita Blake series.  When the series first started, they were supernatural/horror/mystery.  As the series, and the characters evolved, the series morphed into supernatural/horror/mystery/sex/blood/violence/more sex/magic/bondage/a whole lot more sex of the multiple partner variety/death.  Many many many many people do not like her books, in large part because Americans are weird about sex.  The author notes that in Europe they complain about her books being too violent, but in America all the questions are about the sex.  Including whether the author is drawing from personal experience.  I'm fine with these books not being something most people I know would read.  This series is by no means all I read, but I also rarely read anything outside of a classroom that could be remotely considered literature.  I like mysteries and the supernatural.  They're usually not in Oprah's bookclub. 

Once the author started getting really big, they stepped up the cover art.  And on several books in the middle of the series, the ones most heavily sexual, the cover art looks like this:

Fairly tame, really -- see one of the covers below for her Merry Gentry series, which I also really enjoy -- but also kind of a conversation starter.  "What'cha reading?"  "It's part of a series I really like.  I'm on the one where the main character has just become a succubus due to the vampire powers she has from her one boyfriend so since she now has to feed daily on sex she's moved in her two other boyfriends, both wereleopards, and then this bad vampire has come to town and she needs more energy so she's had to leave the ballet to have sex in the limo with two of her boyfriend's lesser vampires but then her friend Jason -- he's a werewolf -- feels left out so...." 

Not a conversation I like to have with the waitress who will be bringing me my sandwich.  Which is basically what I found amusing the other day:  I found myself pulling off the dust jacket of Incubus Dreams, one of the covers above, because I was going out to lunch.  It wasn't so much that I would have felt embarrassed if any of the nice girls or patrons at the sushi place noticed it, but more than I didn't want to embarrass them.   But then I realized that if they had a problem with it, then it was their problem to deal with not mine.  It's not like I'm going to lean over and start summarizing plot details for anyone.  Unless they asked, of course. 

So, there you have it.  Magic would be pretty cool but I don't want to drink somebody's blood or have orgies or raise zombies or beat someone with a whip or become a vampire or a were-anything, although I don't care if somebody else does and I do like to read about it on a fictional level.  If it's well written with good character development.  Hey, I have standards.

No. 3.  I am an atheist.  That's almost harder to write down than No. 2 above.  Most people will forgive a lot of your freakishness but not believing in God, well.  That's a sin, man, and you're going straight to hell. 

I won't elaborate (much) on my atheism except to say that yes, I do not believe in God, whatever flavor.  My parents never went to church so I wasn't raised from birth in any faith.  When I was about ten or eleven, I went to a couple of different churches with a friend.  Sang in the choir, did vacation bible school, the whole nine yards.  But I never saw the point.  I believe you should do good things and not do bad things.  I do not believe you need someone (usually a man) to tell you that once a week from a position above you.   I don't agree with some things that others have labeled as bad.  I do not believe I need or have some outside thing guiding me or strengthening me.  Or punishing me.  I do just fine with all of that on my own. 

But part of my own personal beliefs is that everyone is free to do as they wish as long as no one else is harmed.  So while it freaks me about when my nieces swing on the swings and sing songs about Jesus (I remember singing about Muskrat Love and Disco Duck), I will sit down and have them teach me the words to their songs so I can sing with them if that's what they want.  I don't like that they go to a private church school because I do not believe it gives the kids a choice, but that decision is their parents.  I read several blogs where the blogger's faith is an integral part of who they are and how they live.  I respect and admire that, I truly do.  It even seems enviable to me some times, having that kind of belief in something beyond yourself that, in my opinion, could not possibly exist.  But they tell me that's why it's called faith. 


So there, I'm done.  All my warts exposed.  (No, RG, not that kind!)  If any of the foregoing, particularly the last one, triggers in you a need to save me from my swearing, sex-obsessed atheist self, well, I'd rather you didn't.  We'll just agree to disagree and I promise my future posts won't be full of number two and I won't diss God.  Can't promise anything on the swearing though. 

Cheers,
the CilleyGirl