so unpersonal
Jan. 24th, 2022 10:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ffloI got a card in an envelope today from the first woman I slept with, way back when. (Such as it counted as sleeping together. Let's just say that much better sleeping with women was still to come.)
She and I've been in touch more since I asked on facebook who wanted to be postcard penpals, back toward the beginning of the pandemic. Her birthday is in a couple of days, and I half expected this latest mailing to be a birthday card celebrating her own birthday, as she's rather very all about herself, and she does point out how soon her birthday is coming and various other relativities to her birthday more than anyone else I've ever known does or has done.
The card was a picture of a flower, from a box of cards, and inside were pictures of elephants from the zoo where she works, cuz they've had elephant babies. We talked about that on the phone when we had an actual phone call a few weeks ago, so I guess that's why she's writing me about it. Maybe. There's also a picture of her team in some competition at work---a team named after her new cat, oddly. I mean, wouldn't that be a little odd to you, if you and 4 coworkers formed a team, and somebody was like "Let's use my new cat's name!"
So I read the card, which started with "Hello" and then launched into elephant facts. And I realized: she never uses my name on any of these correspondences. With or without a "Dear" in front of it. That's on top of so rarely saying or asking anything about me that when she does, it sticks out like a sore thumb.
How did I once find this person so desirable? Was it just that she was not only okay with sleeping with women but even thought it made her more cool than other people? Was it just me codependently accepting all her projected "I'm so cool" stuff? How much of it was that it didn't seem as off-putting to have a (young) woman with this full-of-self thing as it might a privileged "good-looking" white guy?
She could've put that card in the mail to anyone. Literally anyone. She could've written someone else at the same time and switched the cards and envelopes and me and the other schmuck would never know. Like that trope about counseling men not to yell out anyone's name during sex so that you don't use the wrong one, with all the sex and name-yelling-impulse moments you're going to have.
She and I've been in touch more since I asked on facebook who wanted to be postcard penpals, back toward the beginning of the pandemic. Her birthday is in a couple of days, and I half expected this latest mailing to be a birthday card celebrating her own birthday, as she's rather very all about herself, and she does point out how soon her birthday is coming and various other relativities to her birthday more than anyone else I've ever known does or has done.
The card was a picture of a flower, from a box of cards, and inside were pictures of elephants from the zoo where she works, cuz they've had elephant babies. We talked about that on the phone when we had an actual phone call a few weeks ago, so I guess that's why she's writing me about it. Maybe. There's also a picture of her team in some competition at work---a team named after her new cat, oddly. I mean, wouldn't that be a little odd to you, if you and 4 coworkers formed a team, and somebody was like "Let's use my new cat's name!"
So I read the card, which started with "Hello" and then launched into elephant facts. And I realized: she never uses my name on any of these correspondences. With or without a "Dear" in front of it. That's on top of so rarely saying or asking anything about me that when she does, it sticks out like a sore thumb.
How did I once find this person so desirable? Was it just that she was not only okay with sleeping with women but even thought it made her more cool than other people? Was it just me codependently accepting all her projected "I'm so cool" stuff? How much of it was that it didn't seem as off-putting to have a (young) woman with this full-of-self thing as it might a privileged "good-looking" white guy?
She could've put that card in the mail to anyone. Literally anyone. She could've written someone else at the same time and switched the cards and envelopes and me and the other schmuck would never know. Like that trope about counseling men not to yell out anyone's name during sex so that you don't use the wrong one, with all the sex and name-yelling-impulse moments you're going to have.
