Say something sexy

Today, I got an e-mail message from an ex-girlfriend who moved far away months ago; we still talk and flirt all the time, and often engage in conversations of a sexual nature. Her message requested that I say something sexy – just something brief and sexy.

My mind went to work immediately and voraciously to tackle this remarkably complicated request. Here are some of the ideas I came up with:

• I want you so badly that I’m considering getting out of bed.
• C-Span is airing a discussion on sexual freedom and its making me think of you.
• I recently had a role-playing fantasy in which I was Henry Kissinger
• My double chin is starting to look like your ass
• I still find your hairs all over my house – and I’ve been collecting them.
• The constant rubbing together of my thighs makes me think of you
• I’m dedicating my Ph.D. dissertation to your body.
• I was thinking about you in the men’s room the other day…
• I rarely wear underwear, and when I do, it’s usually something exotic.
• I’m watching Star Trek right now and Riker is about to fuck some member of an alien androgynous species.
• I not only changed my sheets two days ago, but even washed my duvet cover.
• Since you left, I haven’t had any sex – by choice, mind you.

The feline mystique

I don’t mean to turn this into a feline forum (though there is certainly enough material to do so), but I just adopted a new cat a couple of weeks ago, a female adult that I have named Bella. I’m a modern guy, and a feminist, but I have never in my life had a female pet before, and I didn’t realize that it takes some adjustments:

* I feel strange changing clothes in front of her. Asking her to leave (with a polite, ‘Could you please excuse me, dear?’) doesn’t work very well. I find myself wanting to leave the room to change. When she watches, I can almost hear her thinking, “Oh, yeah – that’s attractive.”

* My ‘pet names’ require a total retooling. Although ‘cutie’ is still appropriate, ‘handsome’ has lost its resonance, ‘big beast’ seems insulting, and I cannot quite bring myself to call my cat ‘beautiful’ – it seems a bit overdone, no? Maybe I will import ‘sweetheart’ into my repertoire, but I am really starting to fear my girlfriends noticing that I address them and my cat in the exact same terms. Moreover, I think Bella has been thinking the same thing, and it is an even more offensive thought to her.

* The bathroom is off-limits – period.

* For some reason, even when my cats aren’t fat, I call them fat, and doing that with a female may be risky, especially since Bella (aka Bella Reese) is, in fact, a whole lot of woman. I almost feel like she looks at me funny when I call her ‘chunky’ or ‘big mama.’ As if she is saying, “Excuse me, motherfucker?”

* When my male cats whined for whatever reason, I would ignore them and certainly never reinforce their whining by giving them what they were looking for. However, when Bella whines, I feel compelled to be an understanding man, hear her out, and show respect for her feelings and wishes, even though I’m well aware of the fact that she, just like my previous male cats, is pretty much saying, “Food, dickhead,” or “Pet me, hairless ape.”

* When I brush her, I feel like I have to be more careful and get things just right. She's sitting there and saying, "Look, big boy, I'm not one of these disheveled bitches you're always hanging around with." When I meekly say, "I'll try harder. I'm sorry," she replies, "I'm sorry too."

Nine lives at once

A couple of months ago, my cat Iliad, whom I adored, was killed by a car in front of my house.

Its strange to lose a cat. When my previous cat, Custer, died, it was a different experience – I adopted him with kidney disease, and he was very old, surviving only three years in my care (three happy years, mind you). I still cry sometimes when I think about that cat, and I still miss him, even though he died 2-3 years ago. I cry because I think of how horribly defensive and timid he was when I got him, how he very slowly came to trust me (and even others), how sweet and unintrusive he was, and how I hope with every ounce of my being that he was as happy as possible during his tenure here, despite the gradual onset of kidney failure.

But Ili was different. Ili was young and vibrant, trusting of and affectionate towards all bipedal individuals, and I never had a single doubt that he was happy at all times. My house is pretty much a feline resort: unlimited food, the ability to go outside and return inside at any time, an owner who is almost always at home and willing to play/pet at any time, etc. And Ili took full advantage of all those features and amenities with a remarkable sense of non-presumptuous entitlement. He spent his whole life here either outside hunting and sensing or inside, on his back, getting pet by a man (i.e., me) who took great pains to try different strokes and tempos and remember what seemed particularly pleasurable. He was as happy and well-adjusted a cat as I’ve ever come across, he had no boundaries or defenses (I used to floss his teeth sometimes; I actually think he liked it), and I absolutely, unconditionally adored him.

And then, one day, I picked him up off the side of the road, totally mauled by a car, which caused injuries that I don’t care to describe. In front of 4-5 onlookers, who had stopped their cars and come out to help, I could not speak, and I was crouched over Iliad, all 6’5” 260 pounds of me, sobbing. He was lifeless. I had never seen him lifeless; even when he slept, he seemed active to me. There is something fundamentally wrong with seeing something so sweet and happy die. It is difficult to process; I still don’t quite understand what happened, even though I know perfectly well. Shit – it would be really nice to believe in heaven right now.