anniversaries

Tomorrow is my one-year anniversary at this job, which is a happy-making thing. But I also realize that this week (the 13th, I believe) is a big, round-number anniversary of my loss of virginity. I was WAY young and the anniversary is a pretty big number. What say I don't tell my age or the number, and instead talk about sex in days of yore...

In the early 1960s, the birth control pill came on the market (and it was simply known as The Pill). From that time, until people became aware of AIDS (that it was sexually transmitted and not limited to gay men), there was a twenty-year period where people had more, and more, and more casual sex. And in the late 60s and into the 70s, it became OK and not very well-hidden. In the 70s, there was a phenomenon called "singles bars," where you basically went to find people to take home and have sex with. Some people preferred to think of it as a dating scene, but it was really just for finding sex partners - a straight equivalent of the gay bar.

At the singles bars, women generally wore slinky synthetic dresses and no bra; guys had big hair and mustaches and wore some really loud suits. It was basically a disco atmosphere.

But sexual freedom was all over - not just in the singles bars but in high school and (as in the 60s), among the hippies. (Keep this in mind when I mention "hippies": a lot of what people associated with the 60s actually happened in the 70s.) In certain sets, sex was like shaking hands. There was outside sex when people were in relationships, secretly or within "open" relationships; sometimes there were multiple relationships going on at once, or multiple casual sex partners.

The worst things that could happen were these: getting gonorrhea or syphilis (each requiring a shot of antibiotics), or getting pregnant. HPV wasn't around, herpes wasn't around, AIDS wasn't around. If you picked a partner who wasn't insane or murderous, it was pretty safe.

So, you know I racked up some pretty impressive numbers. I started young and had sex with a lot, a lot of men. (Even the occasional woman.) Although there are some liaisons I probably should have skipped, I don't regret the way I conducted my sex life. Certainly I can't say that I missed out on anything (well, I never did have sex with an Asian guy, but that's about it).

This time in my life is very, very different. I'm married, but my married life lacks the physical component and pretty much always has. This is why I often voice an interest in coloring outside the lines, so to speak. On the one hand, it's a more complicated matter, for many reasons; on the other, I'm not ready to call it quits just yet. I will entertain all proposals from Asian men...although I'm having warm feelings of late for someone who is not Asian. Perhaps you remember my recent blathering about trying to listen to someone while trying to make an impression. I think I've gotten a mite better at it. However, I have to wonder if a youngish guy is simply enjoying my company and nothing else. I'm way cute to guys 60 and up, at least the ones who don't think they deserve 22-year-old trophy girlfriends. Old-hippie guys love me. But this younger dude seems to be paying attention, just not sure what kind. It remains to be seen.

Verizon Fios, my TV provider, just got their act together concerning the Bollywood-on-demand channel. They charge about $7 a month, and I was very disappointed by their selection, which was basically three no-name movies and half a dozen film-music videos. But all of a sudden, there are 25 good movies, recent ones and some golden oldies. On top of that, there are maybe a dozen film-music videos and a dozen making-of features. $7 was overpriced for the old content, but now it feels like a huge bargain. Last night I started watching Manzoor (1983) with Dilip Kumar and Raj Babbar, mostly because I'd never seen a Dilip Kumar movie. It is excellent so far. (Of course, the lengths of these movies often precludes watching an entire film on a typical evening.) It's nice to be able to see an Indian movie on the TV instead of the computer, even if the computer has a better and hi-def screen. (The TV is an old tube TV which will be dying any month now.)

It is a dead quiet week at work. The interns are on spring break an I'm all caught up - even my desk is tidy!

Barry's been on the job for two nights now, and it seems to be working out. It's odd for me to go to bed alone and to wake up along, although I confess that I like sleeping alone and I like having a quiet, undistracted morning. Another change is that I've started cooking dinner, which is a pretty painless way for me to start contributing more to the housework. And as nice as it is to have someone else cook, I can get meals much more to my liking when I do the cooking, and arrange to have leftovers for Barry if he wants the next day, or for me to bring to lunch. (Barry is not good about eating leftovers, I have no idea why. Maybe because he's not interested in eating more of the same the next day. I adore leftovers, especially when something came out really well.)

Food, sex, movies...life is not dull.

what I am reading now and so on

I am reading the new bio of Steve Jobs. Even though I'm a PC and very suspicious of empires like Apple, I find Jobs to be a fascinating character.

I watched Bollywood movies again a lot of this weekend.  Barry pointed out that I haven't had any severe mood dips since I started watching Bollywood movies.

What I've had, however, is an increased interest in sex, or rather, increased feelings of desire.  Since I've been dead from the waist down for a couple of months, this is a very nice change -- although, as before, there's not much to do with it. There hasn't really been anything to do with it for 3 or 4 years, except enjoy it on my own (ahem).  This is a tough-to-solve issue, and my husband is not much help -- won't be the guy, and won't sit still for anyone else to be the guy (I've never asked, but his attitude about this is pretty clear).  Some months ago, he said to me something along the lines of that he was sorry he hadn't been able to provide the "intimate" part of things, and that's when I realized that there was no hope that he would even try to participate again.  I am determined not to spend the rest of my life without sex, but I'm not sure how that's gonna work.  I had something of a patched-up solution during the early '00s, but that particular scenario, as the other person used to call it, is off the table.

I'm not sure if analysis is helping with this, or if it's just my hormone replacement pills -- that is, the return of desire. Maybe it's just the Bollywood movies.

This is the part of Baghban that didn't make me cry.  What a weepie that movie was!  Here, they celebrate the holiday of Holi, big B looking his fine 2003 self.

In an earlier movie, Silsila, there's another Holi scene, featuring the beautiful song Rang Baarse, but Silsila (1983) made me squirm a little.  Amitabh-ji plays a guy who's cheating on his wife.  His wife is played by his real wife, Jaya.  His girlfriend is played by Rekha, with whom he was suspected of having a long-running affair.  In this clip, he dances at Holi with the girlfriend, where the wife looks unhappy in the back.  The Amitabh/Rekha scene are very sexy, though she barely speaks in the movie -- mostly just looks smouldering.

This song, Rang Baarse, was actually written by Amitabh and his father, who was a famous poet (and I can't remember the spelling of his name just now).  Beautiful song, though not as peppy as the Holi song from Baghban.

Rang Baarse is the third song in the Bbuddah Hoga Tera Baap medley, along with Kaike Paan Banaraswala and Pag Ghungroo.  (This is just in case you think I didn't do my Bollywood homework.)  It's interesting to see AB stealing his old steps, but some of them are the best steps ever.

is this working?

I find I am frustrated with this blog.  Since it is not anonymous, the amount of self-censorship I feel I need to do is enormous.  Even the story I recently told about my dad trying to shut my uncle out of the luncheon with the cousins seemed a little dicey.  There's some huge stuff going on involving my family that I can't get into at all.  Although it's extremely unlikely that my husband would ever read this blog (he doesn't really like to read, and most of his online activity involves music), I don't feel I can talk about my marriage.  Can't talk about sex.  Can't really talk much about work; I don't have anything bad to say about this job, but there are some annoying people here and there.  Can't get too specific about money.  I can only write a fraction of what I (still) have to say about V.  And on and on.

Before this, I had a blog on Xanga which was 100% anonymous -- in fact, I think it was closed except to other Xanga members -- and I was able to fly with anything that was on my mind, although I did change the names.  I had a small but devoted readership and they left a lot of comments.  But I couldn't share it with anyone who knew me.

I don't know what kind of in-between there might be.  I do subscribe to the wisdom that you shouldn't post anything that you wouldn't want even one person to read, but maybe I'm being overly careful.  I don't believe my entire name appears anywhere in here, but there's enough personal information that at least one person was able to identify me (though to be fair, she did have an inside track: she used to be married to my husband).  I don't worry that much about being read and identified by my actual family members, co-workers/bosses, or friends/ex-friends, but I am concerned that people who know them will read something and mention it.  I even had this problem to some extent with the anonymous blog, concerning V. -- many actual details about him would have made him immediately recognizable to anyone who knew him or even knew of him, and as I recall, I put him in a different line of work.

I feel less engaged with this blog, maybe because it seems somewhat superficial compared to the old one.  It seems to me that my entries are either too dull or too light.  Does anyone really want to read about my welfare benefits or my peculiar MST3K and Bollywood obsessions?  I hope the various YouTube clips are at least enjoyable.

The best solution I can think of would be a second, anonymous blog, although the idea of writing two blogs seems like a lot to take on.  I did email Xanga to retrieve my username and password, since it's been a very long time since I've been there.  I'd at least like to reread some of the old blog, and maybe start writing there again (in addition to here), or possibly start a new second blog.  I think it would make me feel a little more comfortable with keeping this one focused on entertainment and media.  Even though I realize I'm a little embarrassed to be so focused on movies and TV and music, the truth is that I'm a big consumer of those things, and I actually know a pretty fair amount about them.