Sunday, April 24, 2005
les questions
A while back I wrote that I was in the mood to answer some questions, so I invited you all to send some in. I wasn't terribly specific, because I wanted to leave it open for people to ask whatever they wanted, be it intellectual, personal, directed, random, intelligent, totally silly, or frivolous. I wasn't going to restrict you in your choice of questions, and in turn I don't plan to restrict my answers. Obviously, there are certain limitations. No one wants to answer truly offensive or incriminating questions. But within reason, I want to be honest.
So I'm publishing the answers to the questions I've received so far, and I encourage those of you who haven't sent any to do so. Don't be shy, cause I won't be!
From Ferncanyonman:
Rick wanted to know if I have ever kissed another girl. As he so eloquently put it:
"Like, have you ever made out with a chick, and did you enjoy it? That would be SO awesome, dude."
I laughed for a good few seconds after I read that. But it's actually a great question, and trying to come up with the answer made me do a lot of thinking.
Yes, I have made out with another girl, more than once in fact. I didn't always enjoy it, but it felt different every time.
I take it I'm not being asked to include those incidents when I was about five years old and my best friend and I decided to see if we could stand to touch tongues for a split second before turning away and yelling "EEEWWW!!!!
The first time was when I was really young, too young to have much of a sex life beyond just kissing and puppy-love crushes. I was in high school, and hanging out with three of my closest girl-friends. I won't give you their names or indentifying details because we made one of those pacts you make every five minutes when you're 16 that anything that happens in said place stays in said place. I don't remember who proposed doing this or why, but we were bored one evening and so we decided to take turns making out with each other. I wasn't really attracted to these girls. They were my best friends and we shared everything -- secrets, school lunches, homework, even sometimes the guys we liked. And it wasn't so much because I wasn't attracted to them that I didn't enjoy it that much. It was more because sex was still the great unknown to me, and my sexual feelings were really in their early stages. I was still young enough to feel that silly teen-magazine glow from kissing, but definitely too young to have those butterflies turn into sexual desire.
The second time was a few years later at a wild party at a ski resort. I was lonely and depressed and I got drunk pretty quickly, which only made me more depressed. I was there with my best guy friend, who was hungover from the night before and so wasn't drinking and wasn't talking to people and was generally acting like one of those irritating people who goes to a party just to make fun of drunken idiots, which I always find a bit mean and unnecessary. I'm glad that he doesn't do that anymore, cause that evening he was being a real bore, and I was incredibly irritated by it.
But there was this one amazing girl there, and despite the fact that I knew her for a single evening several years ago when I was fairly intoxicated, I remember to this day her name, what she looked like, and a few key details about her. She sang in a band and had really beautiful long hair and an amazing voice. I liked her immediately. She was one of those rare girls, one of about a dozen or so that I have known in my life, who really just blew me away to the point where I was never sure if I liked them as friends or as something more than that.
This was the first time ever, after a number of 'crushes' on girls, that any of them had ever showed an active interest in me. At one point I was walking along the deck outside the chalet and she was walking in the opposite direction, coming towards me. We stopped to chat a bit, and she was being almost overtly physical with me -- she kept brushing my hair out of my eyes and touching my arm and doing little things that most people don't do until they know me really well. A few of the guys who were also on the deck commented on the attention she was paying me, and they started doing the typical male hooting and hollering routine. I think one of them yelled something vaguely audible like "why don't you girls just make out?" or "get a room!"
I knew from past experience that this was the point where she would back away and get really shy, since I hadn't given her any reason to think that I was interested. To my complete and utter shock, she did the exact opposite. We were standing maybe ten inches away from each other, and she reached for my face with both her hands and kissed me, hard. I felt like it lasted a long time, but it was probably no more than ten seconds. I was older at this point, not a virgin anymore, and knew exactly what it felt like to be turned on. With her it felt instantaneous, intense, and not even awkward after the fact. I enjoyed every nanosecond of it. I would have kept going too, but we were both aware of how exposed and vulnerable we were in a crowd of mostly drunk people.
I still have no idea whether she did it for the benefit of the guys standing around us, or if she did it because she wanted to. I never saw or heard from her again, but I never forgot her either.
The third time was playing truth or dare with a bunch of friends, mostly guys, in Switzerland. I was dared to make out with one of my friends (I'm not going to 'out' her cause that would be unfair). We kissed several times, pretty intensively. It was not weird, or awkward really. I knew her too well for it to have felt strange. She was also too good a friend for me to feel really sexual about it on anything more than a purely physical level. It was fun. She was a good kisser. But again, the circumstances were not ideal.
The major problem I have had with wanting to get to know other girls on a sexual level is that so many girls do that kind of thing so that men can watch, and not because they really want to do it. I often get the impression that girls who make out with each other at parties are really doing it for the guys and not for themselves, and that's a damn shame. If I had a relationship with a girl, I would want it to be something real, even if it was only a sexual connection. I wouldn't want to make it some kind of freaky sideshow for men to fantasize about. I have no problem with men fantasizing about seeing two girls together in principle, but isn't it hotter if you know that they're doing it because they want to, and not just because you're watching??
I am really irritated by the kind of porn that has women having sex with each other in a way that is tremendously fake. They do all kinds of stupid things, like licking their fingers and using insanely huge strap-ons and removing all traces of body hair, that I would never in a million years do in real life, and certainly not if I was with another woman.
Anyway, it's a topic I could go on and on about, but I'll continue to the other questions.
Rick's 'serious question' was:
"What did you want to do for a job at age 8, age 14, and now?"
When I was 8 I wanted to be a veterinarian, for no better reason than that I was obsessed with riding horses and rescuing injured frogs, birds, lizards, cats, dogs, even caterpillars. I read far too many of those books where troubled youths would befriend wild animals and a lifelong friendship would develop, bla bla bla. I knew nothing whatsoever about higher level math or science and thus I figured this would be a good choice for me.
At 14, I wanted to be an actress. I had done a lot of theatre, starred in a music video, did some work for TV and film, and went to a bunch of auditions. I had just gotten new headshots from a well-known photographer downtown, and I used to follow the set of my favorite TV show, The X-Files. I worked as an extra on that show -- they paid me almost nothing and I never even cashed the cheque because I wanted to keep it as a souvenir. What a silly kid! Everyone told me to find a backup plan, so I did. And somewhere along the way, my backup plan became my life.
Now, I would really like to teach university English classes, upper-level, none of that Composition 101 crap, in different universities around the world, or at least at a school that I really, really like. I want to teach at a small school where I can know each of my students by name and be really open to talking to them about literature and their lives in general. I'd like to have enough spare time to write some books. I haven't decided whether to do fiction or non-fiction. I will have to get over my distaste for my own creative writing before I can try for fiction again.
Thanks, Rick! You made me think long and hard about those answers.
Charlie, aka Valhalla, asked the following:
1) How do you have your pancakes?
I've actually already answered this somewhere on my blog, but I can't remember where. I eat my pancakes with peanut butter and maple syrup. Many people will likely think that's revolting. My brother rants about how gross it is every time I do it. But really, as long as you have enough syrup to make the peanut butter go down nicely, it's divine!
The second question was a riddle. A 'melon-scratcher,' as he put it.
I am incredibly embarrassed to say that I thought about this one for a long time without coming up with anything even remotely resembling an answer. It just doesn't make sense to me. If only two people can cross at the same time, and one person cannot go back to return the torch because they have to travel in pairs, then no one can really get anywhere at all, can they? The only way it works is if the goal is only to CROSS the bridge, not to actually end up on the other side. And what the hell do you mean by "travel at the slowest rate?" Does that mean that if two people cross at once the one with the slower pace determines the amount of time it takes to get to the other side? This one has totally stumped me. I'm not as clever as you may think when it comes to riddles. Anyone else care to field this one?
Congratulations, I am floored. I don't know the answer. I can't even guess or lie because presumably there is only one right answer. Sorry to disappoint.
3.) How many different signatures do you have? I'm interested because I heard that genius folk have lots, and boring folk have one only. Which might be utter tosh. Anyway, it's one to puzzle.
If your theory is correct, then I am a card-carrying member of the "boring folk" club. I only have one signature. It is a bit unusual though. I dot my 'i' with a star, which makes a lot of people stop to look twice at it.
Thanks, kids. That was fun.
Send me more!
I'll see about uploading those photos now.
G'nite.
-N
