Sports Bras

Posted on by
1

Yes, this will be the second post in which I gripe about womens’ clothing.

I realized I don’t understand sports bras.

I’m a C. I like a lot of support. I like pads, tough, tight, under wire frames, and other things to keep things secure. I’m not saying that bouncing is bad, I’m saying that they still bounce even if the best support, so…

I started doing jiu-jistu, I figure I should get some athletic clothes. I have my gi, but in addition I should be wearing appropriate clothes with it and under it.

I tried on some sports bras.

Fact: I bounce about 75% more with a sports bra than with my regular bras.

Fact: My regular bras provide my chest 100% more protection from being hurt. Padding may not be equivalent to the cups men wear, but yeah, when knee-on-stomach is accidentally knee-on-chest, it helps.

Is this just another joke, like womens’ pant sizes?

I looked it up online and apparently that normal, pull-over sports bras only really work for ‘normal breast sizes’ which apparently is up to a B. So, no wonder I had no luck. I mean, I didn’t know that there was a kind of sports bar that wasn’t a pull-over.

Apparently I need something called an “encapsulation style” sports bra, like my bra is going to be frozen in a capsule so it may be able to wake up in a future time? An encapsulation style sports bra apparently has adjustable back clasps, shoulder straps, and are made in non-stretch fabric. Wait… this sounds like a regular bra. I’m confused.

Now I know what to shop for. I wonder when I try one if I’ll say, “Wow, this feels like a regular bra that I normally wear.”

I also wonder how much of an arm and a leg they’re going to try to charge me for these ‘special’ sports bras.

Woo. Clothing.

Meaning in Mating

Posted on by
Reply

The boy admitted to me today that he felt like sex had lost some of it’s meaning.

It’ not a great thing to hear, but he immediately qualified it. He didn’t mean sex with me, he meant the concept of sex in general.

He said that before he started the road to self improvement and read No More Mr. Nice Guy, dropped a bunch of belt sizes, and started learning about women, he used sex as a way to try to make girls close and keep girls close. It was a controlling mechanism more than anything. He finally realized that was what he was doing and let that go. Now he is trying to figure out what is left.

Right now there’s pleasure, fun, and exploration. What’s missing?

I told him that for me sex is getting closer to someone, taking things to the next level of trust and closeness. I told him I thought it was sad he didn’t have that kind of meaning.

I couldn’t help myself. I also told him it was probably because he only had these short non-relationships. Yes, I did it, I implied that his sexual exploration could be responsible for cheapening his sex life. I doubt he actually agreed with me, but he’s not the kind of guy to get annoyed or angry. He left it with a “Hmm, I don’t know.”

He told me that he’d found other ways to get closer to someone, conversation, cuddling, experiences together other than sex, and it’s a good point. Sex isn’t what’s needed to get closer, other things do that in a deeper fashion.

I do think it’s sad though. If he was using sex for control before, I can see how it would feel like there’s something missing. It doesn’t sound like there was ever a deeper meaning for him. I think most people at least start out with a romantic notion of sex. For him, what he had was actually a desperate notion. Now, he’s looking for meaning after the fact.

Maybe it’s part of the exploration. I know I can’t help him find meaning, it’s a pretty personal concept. I actually pity him as I don’t feel like things are missing. There is more every time and every time it’s that much better and I feel a little closer.

I don’t really know what he’s exactly looking for and I don’t think he does either, but I do hope he finds it.

Update:

Apparently some of what’s missing is giving himself permission to not feel guilt or pre-programmed notions of what one does during sex.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but he’s one of the most creative guys I’ve dated and he’s extremely open-minded, so I’m kind of curious what will happen once he sheds off those demons.

It seems incongruous probably due to the whole “I’m learning to be part of a secret society of guys who are so cool no woman can resist us” thing.

Sometimes I wonder what we would have thought of each other if we’d met a each other at a different time. How many recent big changes in himself and his life has he made? It seems like a lot, and every now and then something comes up that seems like is part of a different person. I sometimes wonder who that person was and in what capacity he might still exist.

How the Game Was One/Won

Posted on by
Reply

This is a continuation of my posts on exploring The Game, both the book and the whole secret society of guys trying to get girls (because it’s a big secret guys try to do this..? Why not a secret society of breathing?). It has it’s own category above if you’d like to catch up on the posts and read them in order.

Here are my impressions of chapter one:

Here I expect we’ll get right into the women and picking up, but instead the book opens with the supposed master of all PUA wanting to commit suicide. It’s apparently on behalf of a girl. How’s that for confusing?

It’s a good hook and it reads like a very intentional hook. You expect the book to start in one general place, and next thing you know, you’re in a mental hospital. Wow, how did that happen? I guess I have to read the whole thing now. Yay literary devices!

I wasn’t disappointed completely. Before the end of the chapter, the very hot psychiatrist is told that in a different time, different place, she too would be swept off her feet by Mystery: PUA extraordinaire. The narrator who calls himself Style, the author himself I assume, lays it on thick that this is the absolute truth: Mystery is the man. Style says he’s the man too, but Mystery’s a man’s man (man). They are both the man, and yet Mystery is trying to kill himself.

And meanwhile you wonder what killing yourself has to do with pickup.

Also, I’m left to empathize with the woman behind the desk who gives the, “Uh,-huh, suuuuuuure.” politeness. I roll my eyes with her.

I hope there is meaning to this chapter by the end of the book, and this isn’t just a hook. I enjoy meaning. If suicidal tendencies can be turned into a good meaning, I’m all for it. I’m just hoping that meaning isn’t going in the direction of, “See what happens when you fall for a girl? They ruin you and you want to commit suicide, so stay in the game and don’t fall for the stupid bitches.” I automatically plot out possibilities as I read books. Maybe it’s just my previous prejudices and preconceptions showing, but it’s possible at this point things may be headed in that direction.

The Game

Posted on by
10

My biggest issue with my new love interest is that he insists on ‘just dating’ (rather than being in a relationship) even though we’re now going on three months.

I don’t take issue with much. I don’t sweat the small stuff. Snoring? I can deal with that. I wear earplugs.

I’m not the kind of woman that still believes that someday soon before I die some guy will come into my life that is perfect in every way including no snoring. Having flaws is part of being human. If it even were possibly to be that perfect, too perfect is ultimately unattractive since you can’t connect with someone you can’t relate to. How could you relate to an perfect person when you have your own baggage and regiment you follow for self-improvement?

So now that I’m entirely off topic, it’s not just that which makes me uncomfortable, hesitant, and slightly distant. The whole only seeing each other even though we spend a lot of time with each other and have become close is part of it. The other part is part of the why he insists on this.

Part of what makes up his self-improvement regiment is that he wants to learn to be good with women, and he’s got it in his head that he has to learn about women by dating a lot of women.

I didn’t know about this when we first started seeing each other, but he is part, or is learning to be a part of, a secret society of pickup artists. Really. I’m serious. Stop laughing. He goes to these meeting things every Tuesday night that I can only guess is where a bunch of guys sit in a circle and talk about how to figure out and get into womens’ panties and build their own self confidence to do so.

Life is so weird, I couldn’t make this stuff up.

He belongs to an online forum for them, they call them lairs (seriously, stop laughing). He has a bunch of books in his house on the subject of picking up women complete with workbooks and cheesiness. I raised my eyebrows at this the first time I was over his house and laughed:

“AD&D Players Handbook Third Edition… Oracle SQL Interactive Workbook… Visual Basic .Net Programmer’s Reference… The Art of Japanese Swordsmanship… Business Plans for Dummies… A Complete Hacker’s Handbook… Palmistry… How to Attract Anyone, Anytime, Anyplace…?”

…and there were worse sounding titles than that.

Until then, minus all of my art books, and a different flavor of programming books, the library reads similar to mine. I expect the nightstand to have porn, but all of the sex self help wasn’t as expected. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about self help. I’ve read interpretations of the Kama Sutra. I approve of that.

I picked up some and read chapters of some of the books he has, but I’ve been avoiding anything too sketchy looking. Anything with the implications that it’s one of those pick up artist (PUA) guides makes me a little leery.

It’s maybe like getting to know someone and getting real close and then finding out they belong to a cult. I’m trying not to judge, but anything that calls itself a secret society registers as cultish anyways. Anything that is dedicated to getting women in bed makes my feminist sensibilities hurt. The fact that I’ve gotten this close to someone who belongs to any kind of secret society makes me nervous. The fact I’ve gotten this close to someone who I guess is some kind of player in training is just… I don’t even know.

Like I’ve said, I’ve been meeting some of the friends. One of them I’ve been over his house a few times on my own to hang out, make cookies, and watch X-men. It occurred to me before I met him that it could be a fellow PUA. As I was meeting him, it didn’t take me long, I was sure. I didn’t see the tell-tale books about his house, but I did spy a magazine on his coffee table that told all. When I picked on him for it, he told me he read it for the cool gadgets they show every issue. I’m sure he also get’s porn for the articles too, right? I told him to stop acting ashamed about it- if you’re going to be something be it. I may not understand the scene at all, know much about it, or even approve once I get to know more, but if you’re choosing to be something, you better be okay enough with it to be able to say, “Yeah, so, and? Fuck you if you don’t approve.”

He asked me how much the boy had told me about PUA. I told him truthfully that I’ve been told nothing directly, but I did find his blog which talks a about it complete with thick jargon without a glossary.

What I didn’t go on about was that I’m smart, though. I read books. I surf the internet. I’ve read between the lines on things he’s talked about with self-improvement and groups things that have helped him. I even read between the lines when he tries something out on me. I know that some things are his own creation, and some things are from things he’s learned that he wants to try out (and some things a combination of the two).

Really, though, I don’t know enough about PUA and the more secretive people act, the closer I get to the boy, the more I want to know.

This friend of the boy’s was asking how much I was told as if he would then turn around and give the boy a talking to. It seemed like he disapproved that the boy leaves stuff around. Maybe he was just disgusted at the lack of style, or maybe he was worried he would reveal their secrets or something.

And yet, he was the one who gave me the idea where to start researching.

A book has come up a bunch, and the friend has it listed as his favorite book. I’m not going to read every book, system, and watch every DVD and video clip at the boy’s house. I’d rather read and study the SQL books, but I probably won’t do that either. Still, I want a better understanding of the thing that makes me uncomfortable about a person I am getting closer to as time goes on. He won’t talk about it, so this book seems like a good place to start.

Don’t get me wrong. Dating and meeting his friends and having him meet my friends and taking trips, it’s taking up a lot of my time. I don’t want to spend all of my time researching this and trying to understand him. I still need to focus on me and my goals. I know my blog has been hijacked by him in this indirect fashion lately, but it’s an outlet to keep it him from distracting me the rest of the time. If it doesn’t go into words on here or on paper, it stays in my head playing a bad game of Breakout. Boing, boing. Get the picture?

The title of the book is The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists. Okay, now you’re laughing again.

I just started reading it, and am doing so slowly and hesitantly. It’s like the time I tried reading the Bible (Old to New Testament). I didn’t get far. I did it with the idea that doing so would give me a better understanding and respect for people who chose to follow it. At some point while reading, it started to do the opposite. Then I realized most people who call themselves religious or followers of the Bible have read snippets at best, so reading it wasn’t going to help me understand them anyways.

I hope this doesn’t do the same, but if it does, then I at least will be able to have a rational issues with it. Right now it’s more that I’m wary of it because I don’t get it, and I shouldn’t be afraid of it for those reasons. I don’t understand why when things are going so well between us, when he has no time for much else, when he has other more important seeming goals that he feels like he needs to spend time seeing other women or study being a PUA. Who knows if he actually does even see other women. If he does I don’t know when he has time to. It’s not something I want to ask about because it’s not something I think I’d really want to know the specifics of.

Maybe it has something to do with building self confidence and stroking ego. Maybe it has to do with exploring masculinity and breaking away from societies conventions and definitions of what being man means, though one could argue PUA is just following yet another ‘supposed to’ for men. Right now, though, I don’t have much of a basis for my ideas, so I begin to read.

My first impression of the book left me both impressed and disgusted:

If you are reading this, I want you to know I wasn’t running game on you. I was being sincere. Really. You were different.

I laughed and threw up a little in my mouth.

But then he quotes The Feminine Mystique:

Men weren’t really the enemy- They were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill.

Food for thought, yes, I do believe sexism is not just an issue that women face. Men have their own stereotypes and issues to overcome that I will never fully know or understand having faced my own journey being a woman. I’m not sure what this has to do with the game exactly, yet, but the use of the quote does intrigue me. Is it a rationalization for behavior, or a statement that the Game is learning to breaking from it?

You might be wondering why I don’t discuss this with the boy, as communication is the way as I’ve said over and over on the blog. The answer is that it’s a secret society. I can’t even get him to say what really goes on Tuesday nights. The only reason I know he meets with a group was vague answers, and then once I’d assumed he was doing worse things, he clarified.

I have tried to push this with direct questions as well as jibes and joking and so far I haven’t been able to draw him into conversation on the subject, so I will continue my outside research.

Maybe you think I should leave this alone, but I’m not one for ignorance. If I’m going to be with someone who plays this game, I want to know what it is.

Current Current

Posted on by
Reply

Closer we fall inward to forever clutching fleeting faces
touching the nape of my neck and holding tender too tight.
Your teasing whispers testing passions, telling me it’s all right
saying all the while by your stance and smile
as we get closer, we can fade- things can change.
People drift and people flail, I look for footing but know I will fail
and fall again, the wind whipping past, looking to the past and bidding it not repeat.
I stand on two feet, fearing the fall, knowing the fall, seeing the fall
tipping to the edge and facing your face and taking your embrace and tumble
caress, holding to my breast a place and a feeling- comforting touch caring outside of time,
sensual touch taring and taking what’s mine,
together touch, taking steps as two equals together in time
fairing well in the silent hope that the weather will hold as we hold tight together under night.
We fold our fears in tight so their small packages are tucked in each others’ arms
out of sight and out of mind as we mind nothing but he banter and the bubbling over
the falls splashing down, the excitement plummets into the base of my stomach, creeping to my fingers, extending to touch your lips as they laugh ideas and smile sentiments into my ears.
Rolling down the rapids, drifting down the steady trickle not knowing if the current will bring us closer or carry us apart.