Addiction

I was listening to an interview Terry Gross did with the author of The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good and I was checking e-mails. 94 e-mails from CollarMe guys in a day and a half, and honestly, the vast majority, seem like good men. (A lot of them were from a couple of guys). Too many are far away, but there seem, for the most part, to be good men that are writing me. (There are a lot of, in my definition, not good guys, but they, at least at the moment, aren't bothering with me.)

But there is an element of addition there.

The author of the book was talking about why tobacco was so addictive, more so than heroin, because it is just a little pleasure every time, but it is consistent. And I have to say, a little bit of male attention, it is a consistent pleasure. I LOVED having lots of attention from one man. And if David's life weren't falling apart, or if he had been able to maintain communication, then I think I really could have loved him. But it did and he couldn't.

So how to keep it in balance? I don't know. There's 4 guys I've started talking to since yesterday that I'm quite interested in, and a 5th guy who seems like a decent man, who is interested in me, but whom I find myself less interested in (mostly because, I'm not proud to say, of snobby class reasons) although we'll keep chatting on line and see if we like each other on the phone.

But immediately, I can feel my life centering more around the internet. Which is probably healthier than centering around drinking in bars each night.

We humans are just really elaborate birds. We paint, and pluck, and shave and shine, and gloss and glue, all in an attempt to have bright plumage.

I used to be a sparrow and now I'm more like a heron. I'd like to be seen as a peacock, but I just don't cut it. But I'm finally having fun as a heron. I'm loving the attention. It feeds part of me. Intellectually, I don't approve. Intellectually, I wanted a man to love me for only my mind and soul. But that didn't work. And, honestly, there's enough of my mind and soul there--I'm not just flashing a photo of my tits for attention. I actually am quite proud of the little profile I've crafted.

But as we humans live more and more in front of glowing rectangles, what exactly is the healthy balance?