Interactions between people should be governed by operating system abstractions.

Each person can be like a process. People are allowed to intercommunicate and share resources, as long as they are willing, capable and know how. If one tries to grab resources from the other or access memory of another without their permission, then a blue bolt from the sky streaks from the sky (with "kill -9" on the side of it, I guess) and strikes the offending person irrevocably dead, perhaps only the remnants of the person (entrails, a core file, whatever) laying there, smouldering (depending on the universe's implementation and configuration).

I wish that could have happened tonight. Well, not the "irrevocably dead" bit, but the metaphorical equivalent.

Tonight I was talking to someone I hadn't seen in a while (let's call her "Bellona") and it was one of those discussions that wandered here and there, but had a common thread of relationships to it. Well, as many such discussions tend to turn (at least in part), this one also turned to sex, more specifically, this guy she's fallen for that she's "not having sex with" (in the same sense as "Mr. President, did you have sex with Miss Lewinsky?" wasn't having sex, I guess) and some sort of horoscope where it said her "ideal" place to have sex was in the back row of a theater, and I said, "oh, really, not ?" and she said something about wanting to have sex with this guy in the same place at the same moment, oddly enough.

Let's me just interject here that I more or less have led a nice, sheltered, sexually-repressed life. The way I was brought up, sex is something you don't really talk about in polite company, if at all, and certainly not generally mixed company (unless they're very close). Of course, most everybody talks about sex, I just don't like to talk about anything personal to me or them with anybody who isn't a close friend. Odds are, if I ever get a sex life during the lifetime of this or any of other journal I may write you're not apt to hear a lot about it, and if you're waiting for that, even in this entry, you're going to be sadly disappointed.

I'd hit the "discussing sex" speed bump with Bellona before (right after we had met; at that point in our friendship, that was in the TMI ("Too Much Information") category), and she wasn't very happy with me because she thought we could discuss anything, which doesn't seem like an unreasonable thing to me, really, I'm not big on boundaries to communications (most of the time, anyway).

Well, this morning I thought we'd give it a shot, maybe it'd deepen our friendship to share a little, and anyway, we weren't talking about anything terribly hair-raising, and anything that was personal to me was from years and years ago, which seems like a lifetime ago anyway. I was okay with it as it was going.

Well, she was telling me about her ongoing relationship with this friend of hers that she's "not having sex with." Well, I forgot myself for a second, and started to ask a question, and then immediately backed up over it and laughed, telling her that I almost asked something, but wouldn't. I mean, it wasn't my business; asking the question told more about me and my past than I wanted to go into

This bugged her, a lot. I told her I couldn't ask, so she said she'd have to guess, and mentioned a related item. I told her that was it, and then she answered (not something I needed to know) but then I forgot myself and said something to the effect of "that's not what I was asking, but if you even get to the point of that question, then my question is assumed true." In answer, she made some comments that were veiled, begged questions.

Immediately, flashing through my mind came visions of her inquiring as to why I would wonder a certain detail, or why this bothered me, or maybe something I simply couldn't anticipate. I immediately started to mildly hyperventilate and get my "I'm about to have a mood flip-flop" headache. I really wasn't expecting for this to lead me here. Me and my big mouth.

This reaction seemed to bug her more. When I tried to tell her I was having this reaction, she seemed like it weirded her out that somebody would feel that way. I have to envy somebody that open with her sexuality, or maybe as immodest, to not be bothered, but sometimes you have to grant people their phobias.

Anyhow, she left upset after I told her just because I felt this way didn't mean we had to have any barriers to discussion, so I sent her an email that spilled the reason I'd felt this way. 'T'weren't easy, either - these are things that I have issues about, and if I were in another relationship where some of the same issues came up, I'd probably crawl under my rock and try my best to fade away. I didn't talk about how it made me feel so much, but some of the things came into the realm of TMI, and some things about a past relationship I didn't want to think about, much less pass on to somebody.

Ever wished you could retract an email? Yeah, me too.

I don't know why I felt I needed to explain myself. There seems to be something in my mind that tells me that there is an unwritten law that I can't rest until everybody likes me, and I know you can't please everybody. Actually, I'm getting better with it, but I felt like somehow I'd caused this unintentionally, that the whole situation was weird to leave the way it was left.

This isn't where I needed to go this morning. I've calmed down apart from some mild embarrassment, but I realized that her reaction and even the mild pressure she gave about this topic upset me. It gives me insight into why when I "push" with Gurugrrl it bothers her, at least.

restlessmind