Yeah, if you have no conception that something might happen, you don't notice it when it happens.
When I was a teenager I was at a party hanging out with this insanely hot young lady and chatting. She said she hated guys who flirted without closing the deal - "not like you." I smiled at the compliment, we chatted a bit more, then I went home.
Another time I spent an afternoon with a girl who I knew used to have a crush on me, and I kind of liked her. We were reconnecting after not seeing each other for a long time, having been friends in grade school. We drove around town in her car looking for a place to hang out. I thought the car was great place to chat and catch up, but was confused about why she had this sense of urgency to find the right place. Only about a year later did I realize (based on the locations we drove to) she was trying to find somewhere private where we could have sex.
I also blew it when I was invited to dinner by a woman who lived in a group house called T/wo and a Ha/lf Wome/n of Eas/y Vir/tue. Figured it out about three months later and have been kicking myself ever since. She was hot and a really fun person.
Well, come on, a few months ago we were calling some Utahn guy a rapist because he assumed "getting undressed and engaging in oral, and straddling" indicated that the woman might want to have sex with him.
#19 sounds like an Abbott and Costello routine.
#8 is a word-for-word Seinfeld plot point.
What did the half a woman refer to? Because if it is an analog of "Two and a Half Men," that's creepy.
I'm sorry, Paul! You didn't err like these guys!
6: Three women living together, two quite promiscuous, the other not so much. It was one of the former I missed out with.
4 & 8, although my 8 wasn't an invite for sex, just an invite to extend a date. Reader, I married her.
Actually, my 4 was basically combined with 7. I'm sure I've told the story. One of literally 2 regrets* in my life.
*not that I've done nothing else regrettable, but nothing that I ever ruminate on - everything else has been minor or harmless
17 hurts.
Does anyone know how I can help my children avoid these situations without being totally inappropriate? If there's one thing I'd like to impart, it's this, and yet...
Many years ago, I met a friend of one of my college friends while visiting the city. I lived in my small college town; she lived in the city. She invited me to come dancing with her. I declined because the bus back to my town left at about 10:30pm. But no, she said, she was sure she could find some place for me to sleep. I'd hate to inconvenience anyone, I said.
If I recall correctly, she later got my number and called me, and I still declined.
Sometimes I wonder, though, whether at least some of these "I was so oblivious" anecdotes aren't really from people who just weren't that ready to have sex at that moment. Admittedly, I base this on my own experience - if that girl had asked me on a date, or to dinner, or to something that didn't require all kinds of transit madness, I would have twigged and said yes, but the fact that the two options were "awkward sleeping on someone's floor because she isn't interested" and "this person expects me to have sex with her after having known her for only a few hours" really deterred me.
"If a girls asks you to lick something off her face, you should evaluate that on the basis of how much you like the girl and not how much you like the substance smeared on her face. Unless what is smeared on her face is poison. Or really disgusting. And if you have a peanut allergy, you might want to ask some questions about the ingredients of the substance. Do you want to get a pen and take some notes?"
Pause:
A surprising number of dental journals have rather dirty-sounding titles, mostly involving the word "oral" and sometimes the word "investigations".
Play.
The longer I live the less I regret not responding to overtures like the ones in the op, when as Frowner says I wasn't ready, whether I was aware of it or not.
I would however, have taken every example from the OP as amounting to non-verbal consent, to anticipate LB's consent-trolling.
Role-playing with your kids can help them understand these situations.
Now your mom has scooted near you. Look, her knee touched yours and she didn't move it away. What does that mean?
Mom wants to have sex with me?
Bingo, Jimmy!
"My hands are cold" is (a) verbal and (b) consent at most to have one's hands taken.
There's no way to know what someone else is thinking. Most of these stories might just as easily be Paul Atreides's story.
The only ones I regret were when I was actually making out with someone, and never contemplated going beyond "first base" or "second base" or whatever, because I never contemplated that you could reach multiple bases in one outing instead of progressing gradually.
16:
also
Global Slag
Screw Machine World
Shock & Vibration Digest
(all from HIGNFY)
Mostly, these just make me sad. These are self-reports of obliviousness, so I can take them at face value and assume that the reporters are mostly recounting their oblivious youths and that they have mostly figured things out now. But some men aren't oblivious, they notice things that might-be-signals, but they aren't confident so they don't act on them. Men who far more often have experienced rejection than subtle (or not-subtle) indications of interest (or who lack the confidence even to have experienced much rejection), may feel that trying to act on suspected signals is more likely to expose them to ridicule than to create sexual opportunities. So, even if they wonder if there may be a signal of interest, it gets ignored. And then instead of getting ridiculed for thinking a woman might be interested in their pitiful selves, they get ridiculed for being "oblivious" to supposed signals. It's lose-lose.
Hot Dip Galvanising
Strictly Slots
RAF Wives
Wild about Animals
Can relate to many of these, but ned gets it right in 1.
21: Perhaps I am being excessively careful in google-proofing this, but there is a large American dental school whose largest department was known as "Or/al Sci/ences" until fairly recently.
There's definitely some aspect of 14.3 that's right, but I honestly think there's some special flavor of obliviousness. In the case of my 4/7, I was interested in this girl on a specifically sexual* level, and yet still didn't clue in to her not-subtle invite. And in the case of my 8, I had initiated the date.
I really think there's something about how this stage of romance is handled in books/movies/TV that makes this sort of thing more likely. Like, the clue-giver is so sure that the clues are super-clear, while the clue-misser has no idea that he's walked into this sort of scene. Somewhere in there is the terror of reading a clue that isn't present, but I doubt that it covers most of these cases.
*I don't actually know if I was dtf, as I hadn't yet kissed a girl, but I was certainly down for that, and in fact succeeded that very night, but at my house, where my parents were, not in hers, where her parents weren't
Jammies had no idea that I was hitting on him until he realized we were in the middle of kissing. I'd been inviting him to things for months. That particular night, I'd had a bunch of people over, and gotten him to stick around after everyone had left, and we were cuddling on the couch, and he still hadn't picked up on anything. So not Frowner's 14.3 for that situation.
8 is true. I do have more than my share of oblivious tales of missed opportunities from high school, college, and a few years after. Mostly high school though come to think of it.
To be clear, #2 of the article linked in the OP.
26: missed that. That's still rather a good idea.
32: Maybe the girl was his sister?
I don't think that really changes anything on the asshole dimension.
It explains why he was slow to consider the fact that he was being hit on.
I once missed out on a foursome with three lesbians because I thought nothing would happen. They were lesbians, after all. The next day one of them asked me, very surprised, why I left.
The only two possible options are "realize he's being hit on" and "throw ice cubes."
20.2: As unfoggetarians we know that all analogies are bad, however there may be no analogy with greater persistent evil consequences than the baseball analogy.
My superpower, in my teens and twenties, was that I was pretty good on picking up at those signals, and acting on them. So while I didn't necessarily have more women coming on to me, and I certainly wasn't going around trying to come on to women, situations did seem to develop more easily than it did for most of my friends.
These days, I think, I'm back to oblivious because married and fat.
Over the years of talking about this stuff here, I've developed the firm belief that the cultural norm that talking explicitly about whether someone wants to have sexual contact with you (on any level from kissing on up) is impossibly weird and awkward and it's better to be obsessed and confused and never get laid anyway than to risk explicit rejection is one of the worst cultural norms out there. Language is a really, really useful way of communicating things.
39: Upon further reflection I'm thinking that the baseball analogy is the other factor, along with racism, that makes the U.S. so particularly fucked up.
Now that I think about it, I don't really regret not having picked up on signals; I mostly regret not having asked the people I was interested in. The signals that I can see happened in retrospect were from people I wasn't especially interested in or compatible with and I know that I'm the type of person who doesn't do very well hooking up with people just because they're interested and not absolutely unattractive.
On another but related note: since I've decided to stop dating men and have changed my gender presentation, I no longer get the really agonizing "if only this person would be attracted to me plus I can't stop thinking about them" kind of crushes. Partly I'm old and have better things to do, but I had one as recently as my late thirties. An awful lot of the agonizing was apparently mostly about my ability to perform heterosexual femininity rather than about the people, which is a bit depressing.
Perhaps this is why I've always found it fairly easy to turn women down but difficult to turn men down - I basically feel okay about my appearance and attractiveness as a queer person even if I'm not actually being particularly romantically successful, so I don't really need a lot of external validation.
(Which, to forestall possible objections, applies to both parties in all the stories on the linked list, and more to the women sending signals than to the guys being clueless. Everyone involved should, if the circumstances are such as to make raising the possibility not inappropriate, suck it up and say what they want.)
I do, however, need to use a lot of qualifiers. I don't feel okay; I feel basically okay, which is probably helpful for you to know.
I've talked about this here before, but one instance where I thought I'd read the signals right, but apparently didn't, still haunts me to this day.
I went out with a friend and his girlfriend, and her very cute friend. All of us were 18, I think, but my friend, in a super-precocious way, had just bought his first flat. Post-pub we all went back to his flat, and had a great time drinking wine and listening to music. The plan was that cute friend would crash in their spare bed (or something), and I'd crash on the living floor or sofa.
I fell asleep first,* but woke up the next morning, fully dressed under a blanket, but with cute friend dressed in just a t-shirt, wrapped around me. We woke up, chatted in a non-awkward way. All had breakfast together and went our ways. I read this as a sign that I was likely not to be rejected if I asked her out on a date.
Next day, phoned my friend, asked if cute friend liked me, he checked with his girlfriend, she said yes, I should phone her. I phoned her up and asked her out on a date. No joy.
* and I remember falling asleep so there's no possibility that I'd done something embarrassing and forgotten.
You may have not read the signals wrong. She might have just changed her mind.
I think what a lot of people are saying is right: most of these look like someone missing cues because they don't realize they're in a maybe-sex-will-happen situation. I've certainly had my share of 'in retrospect I now realize why she looked a little put out when the evening ended", but I do think that missing cues that would be obvious if you thought you were in that situation but aren't because you don't is common enough among pretty much everyone that it's something cue-senders should consider as a possibility.*
*The one time that obliviousness still led to making out for me happened when the woman involved clearly became frustrated with my total missing of what was in retrospect an obvious come on and just gave up on signaling and went for it. That seems to me to have been what a lot of the women in those situations should have done.
My superpower, in my teens and twenties, was that I was pretty good on picking up at those signals, and acting on them...These days, I think, I'm back to oblivious because married and fat.
This is me, too. The 20s part was probably much easier for being a conventionally attractive hetero female, but I found it easy to play the game and not particularly distressing to get turned down.
Now I'm married and fat and my default assumption is that absolutely no one would be attracted to me, mostly because it's been a decade since anyone (besides Jammies) signaled to me that they were attracted to me. Of course, I don't send out much in the way of available, here-I-am vibes like I used to. I have no idea what sort of responses I'd get if I were single and out there.
Maybe an ego thing? There's probably a certain degree of delight, for one sort of person, in knowing that you can get people chasing after you and then smacking them down.
Also that story about the tutor is kind of creepy. I mean, I get that he regrets not knowing what was going on now, but seriously that is (1) not something she should have been doing and (2) not really the way she should have gone about it either.
'in retrospect I now realize why she looked a little put out when the evening ended"
She wanted to put out.
I'm very with 43.1. I wish younger me hadn't imagined asking people out as an impossible challenge.
On the other hand, conversations around here also illustrated that I really hadn't developed anything compelling back in high school or college, so I probably would have just developed more tolerance of rejection. Which is also useful, but not fun to acquire.
On another but related note: since I've decided to stop dating men and have changed my gender presentation,
What's the change in your gender presentation? I'm just being nosy, you can tell me to shut up.
Younger me should definitely have asked way more people out, and "younger me" extends up to, say, age 31. I have more or less reconciled myself to the various episodes of amazing obliviousness that characterized my youth, at least!
re: 47
Yeah, I assume that was it. I could never work out why, though.
re: 49.last
I can remember maybe two times in the past couple of years when someone was, in retrospect, possibly, flirting with me, and I just assumed I was reading it wrong.
In the KB in the Hague, a cute grad-student type walked up to me at a table, sat down, told me I looked interesting, and then starting asking why I was there, what I was doing, etc, did I want to meet for coffee later, etc.
Second, on a train, a (very) attractive girl started asking me about the camera I was carrying, could she touch it, etc. Now, it was an interesting looking camera, so I assumed she was just genuinely interested, but, on the other hand, she did move to sit beside me, was resting her leg on mine, etc.
20 years ago, there's no way I'd not have just assumed they were flirting with me.
Was 50 to me? If so, no, it's not an ego thing. It's easy to turn down women to whom I am not attracted and who I have made no effort to attract. It used to be difficult to turn down men, no matter how unsuitable, because I felt just so damn validated that they could possibly be attracted to a lump like me. This led to quite a lot of less than desirable outcomes for all concerned.
I admit that if 50 was to me, I am flattered by the idea of me as lothario, flirting with women and getting their hopes up only to waltz away rather than sealing the deal. That would be so out of character as to be practically an alternate history of Frowner.
On the other hand, I proved to be quite oblivious into my 30s. My wife still regales people with our first date; when I walked her back to her car, we chatted for quite a while before she hopped in and drove away.
Years later (I hadn't figured it out or thought much about it in the meantime), she told friends the story about how she was jangling her keys and prolonging the conversation in hopes of a kiss.
I'm pretty sure that 50 was to ttaM, about what was going on with the girl who turned him down for a date after waking up with him.
But I'll be thinking of you as a heartless butterfly, flitting from blossom to blossom, anyway.
Now that I'm remembering the (ok not that many) occasions where something like this happened to me I'm starting to feel bad for the poor women involved. That had to be kind of embarrassing feeling. I mean, no one likes to be told 'no', and unambiguous signals being ignored/not responded to is one of the more worst versions of it, because in retrospect they clearly went way further out on the limb as far as what they did than they would have by just openly saying "look let's make out ok?".
It makes me want to start sending out emails like "Ok this was a long time ago and there's no agenda involved here but that time way, way back was totally just me being an idiot and not picking up on stuff and if I had we would absolutely have done stuff so you weren't, like, embarrassing yourself or anything."
Years later (I hadn't figured it out or thought much about it in the meantime), she told friends the story about how she was jangling her keys and prolonging the conversation in hopes of a kiss.
I think I have told the story of my first (and second?) dates with the woman named after a river in Hades here, which were like ultra-extreme versions of this.
re: 50
She didn't really seem the type. We were getting on really well before I fell asleep, and I would certainly have considered asking her out, but I didn't think she was particularly flirting with me, and she wasn't sending any overtly sexy signals that might constitute deliberately getting me to chase after her.
I think she probably did change her mind, or made it up with an ex or something.
Having a hard time picking up on whether someone's attracted to you is a lousy position to be in. I've always been ghastly at it.
The cluelessness stories look a little different gender-flipped: the ones I'm recalling are a couple of incidents of guys talking elliptically about either how awesome I was or the precise nature of our friendship, and only years later in each case did I figure out "Huh, if I'd picked up on where he was actually trying to go with that, it would have gone romantic." But what I actually said must have looked like a gentle rejection in both cases. (Which, in one case it would have been even if I'd figured it out. In the other case I would have been delighted.)
54: Certainly, let me tell you about the change in my gender presentation!
Basically, I didn't used to look queer or non-feminine and now I look like a trans guy except for not binding. Sometimes I am taken for male when people can't see my chest. Also, I dress a lot better and tend to have whatever the bog-standard trendy queer haircut is. (At the moment, it's virtually shaved on the sides and about five inches long on top.) I've also started weightlifting so have a lot more in the shoulders than I used to. Still kind of fat, though.
You should picture this in the style of those atlas bodybuilding cartoons with bullies kicking sand, etc:
Some years ago I was a blocky, overweight person with masculine features who was generally unhappily dressed in ill-fitting ruffly stuff which did not suit my figure, face or personality.
Then I got back into radical activism, met a bunch of obnoxious bike punks and a lot of queer and trans people, started going dancing occasionally, found a competent person to cut my hair and gradually stopped wearing dresses, skirts, ruffly things, etc. I felt so much better at this point that I pretty much gave up on trying to look like any variety of woman or straight person and now I mostly look like I come from tumblr, but with better shoes.
I haven't really bothered making people use different pronouns or changed my name, because I couldn't do that at work or I'd probably lose my job and it would bug me to be known differently at work and in the rest of my life.
A big piece of all this really was consciously giving up trying to be interesting or attractive to men - there was a particular Capital reading group wherein I realized that no matter how much I fussed around with my hair or tried to be nice and charming or suppressed my natural tendency to hold forth, the men in the group would never treat me as well as they did the young, pretty, feminine woman in the group. And then I decided that I would no longer do anything to accommodate male expectations and was virtually instantly much happier. It does mean that I have to remind myself that I am never ever going to attract a man again when I meet an appealing one, but on the whole it's a tremendous improvement.
Downside: lots of homophobia in all aspects of life, but honestly it's still better than high school and that's my metric for being treated acceptably.
I mostly look like I come from tumblr, but with better shoes.
I love this description.
Also, IIRC, Frowner has some awesome shoes.
Also, sometimes men get into this weird dude-off thing with me now, either because they read me as male or because they read me as trying-to-be-male, which isn't exactly what's going on. Where I might have been sexually harassed or ignored in the past, now guys do that "I am going to take up the whole sidewalk and try to make you step aside" thing, also they often talk in a much more aggro voice or different tone. Several times in dimly lighted settings I have been addressed as "bro".
Also straight men sometimes try to accord me dude privileges of the "belly up to the bar" kind, which I appreciate even though it's not my style since I can tell it's them being consciously anti-homophobic.
re: 67
I thought they were Fluevogs?
</miaow>
Also!
67: I do have awesome shoes [Frowner typed, humbly]. I've gotten a bit into that fancy minimalist sneaker thing this year, though, and am indeed wearing fancy minimalist sneakers today even though I am at work. (They are gently used via eBay rather than $400 via Italy.)
But LB in 44 there was the charming young woman in the linked story who said she liked him! What more could she possibly do?!??!
About a year ago I was hanging out in a cafe in Portland (knitting, of all things!) and a very attractive young man (no more than mid twenties) flirted so charmingly and persistently it was cute. Pretty obviously looking for some cross generational action. Sorry dude I wasn't oblivious just not interested!
This was more flattering than when I go out with my stepdaughter and her friends to e.g. bars with low lighting and semi pissed guys try to pick me up much to stepdaughter and friends amusement.
I have my share of in-retrospect-obvious-how-could-I-have-been-so-clueless incidents from HS and early college.
If everyone just agreed to use "Come up and see my etchings" as the universal "I'm interested" signal, life would be simpler.
I sort of figure that the "I like you" story, the joke was that it took him that long to catch on, not that he still didn't catch on after that point.
69: Meow indeed! I had some Fluevogs back in the nineties, I think, when they were still made in Poland.
Although I quite like these, and they used to have some vaguely twenties-ish boots that I actually thought of getting. But they're ridiculously expensive for their origin, leather quality and probable construction - if I were going to spend that much, which I almost certainly wouldn't due to the wonders of secondhand via eBay, I could get something from a small maker in Spain or England that was much better quality.
I was seriously considering getting some Fluevogs in my last bout of desire for high-heeled men's shoes but the shop near me didn't have any of the styles that appealed, so … nothing came of it.
Also my first and last pair of Fluevogs are what led to a case of tendinosis, so.
74: as it happens I've forgotten which river it was.
How do you know the shoes were responsible?
To think, all these years I felt guilty about tormenting the girls by being a dumbass closeted-to-myself homo in high school, when apparently I was no more oblivious than the straight boys.
I've always thought that had I been straight, (or even gay in a different time and place) then I could have gotten laid like crazy in high school. I figured I was blind to the obvious-in-retrospect signals I was getting from the girls because there was no lizardy little part of my brain wanting something to happen. Meanwhile, I sure found reasons to ingratiate myself with boys I was crushing on even though I had no idea why or what I wanted to do with them. Maybe if that energy could have been directed at appropriate objects of affection... but no, now I see that teenage boy cluelessness is orientation-neutral.
To think, all these years I felt guilty about tormenting the girls by being a dumbass closeted-to-myself homo in high school, when apparently I was no more oblivious than the straight boys.
I've always thought that had I been straight, (or even gay in a different time and place) then I could have gotten laid like crazy in high school. I figured I was blind to the obvious-in-retrospect signals I was getting from the girls because there was no lizardy little part of my brain wanting something to happen. Meanwhile, I sure found reasons to ingratiate myself with boys I was crushing on even though I had no idea why or what I wanted to do with them. Maybe if that energy could have been directed at appropriate objects of affection... but no, now I see that teenage boy cluelessness is orientation-neutral.
re: 75.last
Those are nice. Fairly classic Chelsea boot.
I just remember lots of Unfogged people linking to Fluevog shoes that looked like they were styled by Orcs.
My wife's place do:
http://www.russellandbromley.co.uk/boots/bill/invt/567907
or, more flamboyantly:
http://www.russellandbromley.co.uk/boots/maple/invt/567857
Also straight men sometimes try to accord me dude privileges of the "belly up to the bar" kind, which I appreciate even though it's not my style since I can tell it's them being consciously anti-homophobic.
I have to admit I don't understand this paragraph.
I have a dim recollection of being troubled by the question of whether I was masculine enough to appeal to the majority of gay men but it's a long time ago.
(Separate and in parentheses because of dubious interest: I do sometimes wonder if heightened self-consciousness about masculinity affected how I place my voice, which is to say I always sang baritone and bass and I think had the speaking voice of a baritone but it turns out my singing voice probably lies naturally in a second tenor kind of place and I notice these days that my speaking voice isn't that low either, now that I am living with someone with quite a low speaking voice.)
Years later (I hadn't figured it out or thought much about it in the meantime), she told friends the story about how she was jangling her keys and prolonging the conversation in hopes of a kiss.
Jangling her keys? Anything can be a "signal" in the minds of some people.
To 12, what would help is if we gave the same message to teenagers of both sexes, instead of "Oh, now boys are going to be interested in you" and "Oh, now you're going to be interested in girls".
Oh huh, there's another gay lately. I did not pick up on this fact or I guess I would have sent an especially fruity fruit basket.
84: This might be a good example: A year or so ago, I was co-running a benefit dance party somewhere with a bar which was staffed by venue workers rather than by our group. (Or rather, I do everything I can not to run the bar, because I'm terrible at it.)
Anyway, the venue staff were just these....hm, bro-ish but in a nice way? straight guys, the kind with plaid short sleeved shirts (but not queer plaid short sleeved shirts) and shorts and sneakers. Lower middle class/upper working class, in their twenties - the kind of guys who might work the occasional shift at the veterans' hall bar but are not primarily bartenders. Basically the kind of guys where I'm always a little anxious about how they're going to treat me.
But they were really nice! I was running around setting up they were all "want to hang out and have a beer", like, "let's hang out and have a beer and talk about sports and girls, but in a nice way not a creepy/sexist/asshole way". There are certainly butch women who would be totally into that. (I don't consider myself a butch woman - for a variety of reasons - and I'm more of the "let's have a coffee and twitch nervously and wave our hands when we talk" school of socializing.)
I think they found me recognizable in a way that they didn't necessarily find anyone else our group (due to the sort of masculine gender presentation) except the straight women, and they weren't being all "hey, have a beer and let's talk about girls" to them.
I meet straight guys, sometimes, who essentially assume that I am sort of a bro-in-a-queer-body because I don't look feminine. As I say, I don't mind this - they don't know me, they probably don't know tons of queer people very well, and they're obviously being friendly.
I kept accidentally typing "have a bear".
48*: As you may recall from the "is straddling consent" thread, BOGF, feeling that I'd missed her clues*, didn't get verbal, but did go ahead and crawl into bed with me in a pretty unmissable way.
Earlier on that trip, I was staying with a friend in Chicago, and when I showed up she was drunk(ish) and just went ahead and grabbed my dick, which was admirably forthright. Equally forthright, I told her I thought it was a bad idea (and that she might think it was a bad idea in the morning), and the rest of my visit was not-weird and we're still friends (although part of me thinks I'd have been better off losing my virginity that night and getting it over with; not sure what the long term implications would have been).
*that was a case of me not getting the clues because I wasn't interested; I'm pretty sure that, on the same progression with a girl I was affirmatively interested in, I would have clued in and gone for it.
I haven't really bothered making people use different pronouns or changed my name
I don't think of Frowner as an especially gender-bound name anyway. Sort of like Jamie.
I kept accidentally typing "have a bear".
Which is, of course, a very different invite to a queer person.
To be fair, sometimes what seem like really clear signals are someone jerking you around. Recently my sometimes-partner and I were hanging out with this woman (a stripper) who insisted on coming home with us. Like, we're in the car, saying, should we take you home? And she says, oh, it would be so much more fun if I come home with you and sleep at your place. So I ask, you mean, you want to have sex with us? Oh no, no, not really in the mood for that. But you want to sleep with us? No, I'll just sleep downstairs. So why do you want to come over then? It would just be fun. Don't you think it would be more fun if we had sex? Oh no, I'll just go to sleep and let myself out in the morning.
And that's pretty much what happened. She tried climbing into bed with me in the morning but I told her to let herself out. I don't like being jerked around.
No. I guess we were a little closer to our place than to hers? And she has a roommate, so it doesn't seem like a "I just don't want to be in an empty home" thing. She slept on the floor.
91: Mavbe she wanted to eventually have sex with you, but she was really tired?
94: That's what I asked, like, perhaps you are drunk and want to sober up or something? I was like, nobody's trying to pressure you into anything; we're just wondering why you want to sleep over on the floor. It doesn't seem very nice, when you have a bed and a cat to go home to.
Maybe she just wanted to listen to us have sex? This is the only possibility that makes any sense to me. Or maybe she wanted to be entreated to have sex because she was feeling low about herself or something. I don't think I would enjoy being entreated to have sex by people I didn't want to have sex with, but that's probably not universal.
Honestly, my guess is that she hates going home on late nights like that one - gets walloped with a wave of loneliness or something upon walking in the door or something. So she likes to sleep elsewhere.
Future serial killer practicing her technique/waiting until her nerves are up to what her neighbor's dog is ordering her to do?
Avoiding her roommate? I can imagine squabbles after which someone might not want to come home late and a little drunk.
99 could be. She was acting a little erratic at the bar.
99 is a perfectly plausible explanation. The one year I lived alone nearly drove me mad.
Also, she might have a stalker or someone she is avoiding, but doesn't want to talk about it.
She was acting a little erratic at the bar.
Yeah, she has a stalker, and she had seen him earlier in the evening.
Maybe she just wanted to listen to us have sex?
She could have done that over the phone.
One possibility is that she wanted to hook up with one of us, but didn't realize that we were sleeping together.
104 could be. We had just come from a place that was 90% dudes who knew her and were hitting on her, and she might not want them to follow her home. That would help solve a mystery.
Obvious solution: The "stripper" was Scott Bakula having done a leap to prevent, by her presence in your place that night, some event that would have resulted in been disastrous for humanity. Possibly you or your partner is going to develop a cure for assholes.
who essentially assume that I am sort of a bro-in-a-queer-body because I don't look feminine.
Thinking about gender presentation, I should recommend the graphic novel (memoir) Pregnant Butch. I thought it was well done, and you might like it.
Maybe your place is closer to Tiffany's and the croissant place she likes than hers.
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I am having my burrito luncheon at a park in San Leandro with a little train in it that you can ride around the park though possibly not if you're an adult. There is a bizarre sign at the entrance to the park that says no kite flying. There is also someone flying a kite. I see a hilarious opportunity to become the worst person in the world!!
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Thread killer
Qu'est-ce que c'est
Fa fa fa fa fa
Fa fa fa fa
Far better
We just wanted to enjoy your burrito before we got back to this thread.
Noooooo I was going to call the cops on the kid! Jeez, what do you take me for?
I was envisioning walking by and offhandedly cutting the string.
How is the kid supposed to know which is Smearcase's dominant hand.
Belatedly, I should reassure Frowner that I didn't mean to imply that she was some sort of flitting sipper or Lothario (Lotharia? ) trifling with ladies' affections before callously crushing them like a delicate flower, illegally parked car or beer can, though I am sure she could be if she wanted.
114: Kennedy Park (which is technically in Hayward)? Or is there some other park in the San Leandro area that also offers train rides?
Oh no you're right. I guess it's in Hayward.
I was completely petrified by the idea that someone would find out that I had a crush on them in high school and college (like that would be the most embarrassing thing ever) But I don't think that I ever misread signals of someone wanting to hook up with me - and when I was into the idea it mostly happened. These days I find OKCupid so useful for finding new people to have sex with. It is very explicit on my profile that is what I am looking for and it's pretty much the case that if I don't have sex with someone on the first date (or at least something beyond making out) then I probably won't ever. But with OKCupid guys - I don't have to ever see them again if it doesn't work out - and the majority of the times when I invite them back to my apartment, the message is clearly received. There was one guy who kept talking for a long time when we went back to my apartment and then had to leave, but I really liked him and he was easy to talk to so I just asked if he wanted to come back and have sex with me sometime. Which he then did a few days later. The greatest revelation of my thirties is that it is really not that hard to get cute men to have casual sex with me - I have a very high success rate. This is also the biggest problem with now having M and P full time (except for every other weekend)
124: Friends who've tried that tell me the wheat/chaff ratio is really bad and they are barraged with stupid copypasta messages. There's decent guys to be had but holy crap, some of the rubbish they get is impressive.
The fact that society is evolving toward a state where direct questions like "do you want to have sex?" are not only allowed, but generally required is really better for everyone.
Rod Stewart was ahead of us all.
Not to mention Mutombo.
125: Yeah, I just got back on it, and have a few times clicked the "I do not wish to see or be seen by straight people" button for a break, even though I often date straight people. I just joined a few days ago and have almost nothing on my profile, and have 150 messages that have gone into the filter because they are from dudes with nothing in common with me or from some other city, just spamming every chick (esp. bi chicks who have casual sex, apparently) with "wanna fuck?" or "hey beautiful you astonish me i never met anyone like you before wanna fuck?" or immediate invitations to get on some other chat app to get them off. It does seem like a lot of men are using OKC instead of porn, hoping someone will be like, yes, I'd love to do a private camshow for you, or write all my sexual fantasies out to you so you can finally think of something new to do with the wife in bed over in Portland.
"I do not wish to see or be seen by straight people" button
I don't know how that works, but it is just an urban legend that straight people can't see in color.
This addresses the broader issues quite well.
130: God, I think I must have inadvertently clicked that button some time ago.
It's not strictly speaking relevant but a thread with this title seems to me to be the appropriate place to announce that Donald Trump is now polling at twice the level of support than his nearest competitor. (He has 28% support to Jeb Bush's 14.)
Ooh, now some of them are trying, "Hey, this might sound like a random question, but do you want to have casual sex with me?" No picture, no profile, located a thousand miles away. Even if there were, I wouldn't, but I'm trying to figure out how this is even satisfying to the person who is imagining that it could work.
(Also I'm at a lodge in a state park drinking because I don't get an Internet connection in my cabin and really need to let my parents know about the breakup. But in better news, Lee has made it 26 hours with the girls and everyone is enjoying it, so presumably when we tell the girls they'll keep on spending done weekends with her, they won't be as upset as they were by the thought of this one.)
Glad to hear the weekend apart is going well. Hopefully this is a good sign for the future.
I hope so! Lee is also seeing the value of doing the kind of child-intensive activities I do on weekends, and she thinks I should have taken more trips like this and should in the future. So that's nice, in a way.
141: Both great and maddening. Oh well, here's to progress!
Yeah, I had a good break, but Lee mismanaged Selah's medicine and it was bad asthma weather anyway, so I came home early to fix problems. I did tell my parents about the breakup and they've decided to be supportive and helpful, which is what I hoped would happen but I really wasn't sure. Lee just really needs to find an apartment, and we also need to tell the kids because everyone in the neighborhood knows by now and she just thinks magically it won't trickle down to them.