SharpNose's Journal: Violin Bitch

My transition out of college was something that I don't regard with pride. Things were seeming pretty good my last few months of school - my grades were OK, I had a girlfriend (although I was getting less and less able to put up with her), and I had a two-bedroom apartment to myself (well, except for Sara [not her real name], who had practically moved in). However, all was not right. I was getting money from home to pay the rent and spending cash, and I had no job. Not even a prospect for a job. The companies who, as I was told before I started college, would be banging on my door never materialized. Worse, I didn't really know what to do; I didn't understand the job market or where I could conceivably fit into it. I didn't really have much of a life outside of getting my ass sanded down at school and what music-related things I could get into.

I dusted Sara the night before I graduated, which was the one and only wise thing I did during that period. I must have been pretty sick of her to have preferred no action to having her around. I graduated in early September, and after having resumed contact with Elvira, Mistress of the Frigid Bitch, I kind of went into a holding pattern. At the time, my mother and stepfather were in the house they'd bought south of town by about two hours (I'll call it Mayfield) and that had been my base of operations for about two years or so. In December, my stepfather killed himself (that needs its own story; not even everyone in my whole family knows what I know about that). A month or so later, my mother began pressuring me to take the job offer I had gotten from a military base south of Mayfield although I really didn't want to go live with my mother full time. But I was stuck in the mud mentally and emotionally and I failed to put a stake in the ground and do what I needed to do to gain and keep my independence. I also should have used my knowledge of all that had come before involving my mother to know that living with her is not good for a person; three men had either died or left her home under bad terms; could I not see what it would do to me to be next up? But, go I did, and in so doing I began a life so far from what a guy in his early 20s should be like that it still pains me to this day to think about it.

The base I worked at had a lot of people but it wasn't a great dating zone; there were few women my age around the place and while I came across some alluring older ones, they were too otherwise involved (or married) to get with. There was an influx of people about my age who came down from Memphis and I got to be friends with this blonde named DeDe. DeDe was alright, but it seemed that she wanted her dates and boyfriends big and stupid, and I was neither. The problem with spending any time with DeDe, even just to knock around, was that she was a practitioner of the Better Offer. How does that work? Me: "DeDe, you want to catch a movie Friday night?" DeDe: "Um, I think me and so-and-so and so-and-so were going to do something but I'll let you know." Translation: "I will now call my friends up and arrange something so I have a Better Offer than spending any time with you." Fuck you!! But I'd put up with it anyway - no pride, no hope, no sense of "I deserve better than this." Desperation.

In the years that followed, some of the stories that you read in this journal occured: Warmonger Bitch, the bitter end of the Elvira debacle, and others I haven't told yet. There was one outlet that I had developed that helped with getting my musical ya-yas out, and that was playing for local community theater. The first one I did in Mayfield, and I think this was in the first or second year I was there, was A CHORUS LINE, for which I played drums. The show is such that there are a number of parts that pretty much had to be played by hotties, and the lead (the Cassie character) was a local named Denise who was uber hot. She was also a very agressive flirt, which I did not deal with well. Let me explain that. The theater had a green room (that's the traditional term for a room off the stage that typically adjoins the dressing rooms, etc. and is a general "common area" for performers in a show) and I was sitting on a couch there about a half hour before curtain. On the wall behind me was a bulletin board and one of the things on the bulletin board was a cast phone list. Everyone in the show is supposed to put their phone number next to their name on the list in case there's one of these pucker-factor "where is so-and-so?" emergencies at five minutes to curtain. As I sat there, Denise walked up and looked at the list, and as she did so she lowered her hand onto my arm. She trailed her fingers through my arm hair and said kind of absently, "You know, my phone number's not on this list..." and she walked away. I didn't move or speak while this was happening; it was all just too weird. In later shows, we talked more and I had occasion to see her come on to other guys pretty hard too, and once the rhythm of the show got more ingrained I learned that she and I were both free after what was both *her* big number and *my* big number and we'd both be in the green room afterwards still buzzing. One time when we did this, I was wearing a white t-shirt and Denise walked up and said "hey, watch this, it's funny" and she grabbed my shirt at my chest over to the side. She twisted it up real hard, and when she let go, I was left with this "nipple." I threatened to return the favor (which would have been GREAT what with her thin maroon leotard when she went out on stage next, but I would have only just hardened her real ones for her). I also overheard one of the trumpet players in the orchestra talking about having banged Denise in high school; whereas that may have been bullshit artistry, I figured that it suggested that Denise was not just all flirt and no payoff.

Part of why I still remember Denise and what little interaction we had so vividly to this day is that I've been trying to X-ray what was going on in my mind at the time and why I never even thought for a moment that I could ever really go out with Denise, much less nail her. I know full well what was going on with the phone number list; she was dropping a big hint about getting her phone number (DUH!), but why did I just sit there and not even follow up later? I would have to say that when she reached down and touched my arm with what seemed like real affection, I felt the same way I do when I'm accosted by Jehovah's Witnesses - people who pretend to like you and care about you when they have some sick agenda that they're trying to make you part of. I felt like Denise was being more cruel and manipulative than anything else. Was she? I don't really know; her later thing with the t-shirt would suggest it because while it had a sexual overtone to it, it was also something she did that would be embarassing to me. I didn't deserve to be treated like that and it makes me wonder what I might have suffered at her hands had I asked her for her phone number and pursued anything. If anything else, I think it's reasonable to suspect that had I actually gotten in, I'd have had a lot of company. There were some other nice women around, including a liberal arts student who, I'm pretty sure, appeared in a Playboy "Girls of the [insert college sports conference here]" issue (her face was obscured by huge joke-shop sunglasses and a bubble, but the school and the hair were the same).

So, that show was a bust women-wise, but I never forgot that in the general sense, a community theater is a good environment to be in if you want to find rather hot women.

In the summer of 1989, I realized that I had been crossing a desert of laylessness for almost four years - four years littered with twisted wrecks, many of which were old business (especially Elvira and another left over from the end of high school) and some that had been new business and became old business rather abrubtly (e.g., Warmonger Bitch). Incidentally, none of them, old business or new, lived in Mayfield - I was practicing twisted-wrecking long-distance. On two occasions I had attempted to get something going locally in Mayfield, but they were both set-ups arranged by others and both women turned out to be too airheaded - footnotes only.

The summer musical at Mayfield's largest community theater was to be The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas. I lobbied early to make sure I was in the orchestra for that show, but I also made some deliberate plans based on my observation of interpersonal relationships as they occurred at previous shows I had played in.

The most important observation was that there is an unseen "wall" separating cast from orchestra in musical productions. There are all sorts of reasons why this is so. Physical separation is one; cast and orchestra are often situated away from and sometimes even out of sight of each other. Cast and orchestra are trying to accomplish separate things and are using completely different skill sets in the process. Cast members are conscious of being "pretty people" for the most part, and they're meticulously made up and dressed (often very attractively), whereas musicians can schlub in and look like crap and it doesn't matter. The actors also tend to know each other from past shows or by other interactions as do the musicians, but the actors and the musicians tend to not know each other from past shows even if they've seen each other - because of the wall. Lastly, actors tend to bond as a result of the highs and lows associated with trying to but on a production on time; this tends to shut out anyone else, and the musicians can pretty much do their thing with little interaction with anyone save the musical director. Along those same lines, actors often have to trust each other, adding to the bonding process.

I knew that Whorehouse was a production that required a big cast and the titillating subject matter and the nature of the casting would tend to not only put a lot of lissome wenches in the cast but that there would also be a leakage of the scripted "party atmosphere" into real life. So: what to do? The first thing I decided was that the cast/orchestra wall was artificial and it only worked as a wall when both parties agreed it did. I decided that I would establish a "target list" early on, to go after in no particular order. I also decided that I would increase my visibility as much as possible, even if that meant making rounds "above ground" (for this show, we musicians were ensconced underneath the apron of the stage, but part of the apron was louvered so that the entire cast could see the director from his central position down in the orchestra pit) for no reason other than to see and be seen.

Ordinarily, cast and orchestra rehearse separately and don't actually reheare together until the week before opening night. But, I brought my bass rig early in the process and I would bring my bass over so I could run through the songs with just the pianist playing. I would also run my cord out so that I could stand or sit outside of the orchestra pit as I did so. There were actually perfectly good non-social reasons to do this; I learn songs rather well by ear, and from outside the pit I could better tell how I should have my levels set for good balance as heard by the audience.

This all worked rather well, however, the prime target list wasn't coming together very well. The woman I was the most attracted to (she played a ho) was tall and slim with long, dark brown, straight, and rather thick hair, and she had fair skin and an angular and ethereally beautiful face. Problem was, she had a boyfriend and she smoked; the first issue might have led me to tell her "here's my number - contact me if you find yourself otherwise unescorted" but the second issue was a non-starter, one I've never been able to accept (see the Alison story). One of the more prominent female parts in the show was played by a New York ballet dancer, who was in town with her dancer boyfriend, whose mother choreographed the show and was a bigwig in the theater management - she was kind of a pixie-type, but with an ass you could bounce quarters off of (more about her later). Her boyfriend could have rolled me into a ball and jammed me into a toilet, so I scratched her off (probably not a good idea). There was one other girl with a sweet, soft face and short hair, but I had her age estimated to be maybe 17 (ow). No one else really caught my eye (aside from the lighting director, who was this transplanted New Yawkah with a beautiful body and a thing for wearing tube tops, which I've always found to be highly sexy), but I resolved to be open to any other woman that likewise seemed open.

And, it turned out, there were; there was one who was kind of butchy-looking and a smoker who I got to be friends with (she took on the job of helping me change basses between songs when she and two other women came down to the pit to sing backup on a song), but, naturally, no joy with her.

One night before a show, I was down in the orchestra pit and I was about to step out of the doorway that led underneath the stage and down some steps when the violinist appeared in the doorway coming the other direction, in a bit of a hurry since she had just gotten to the theater and we were only about ten minutes to curtain. I noticed two things about her with no small amount of surprise: she was wearing an odd outfit with suspenders and a blue tuxedo-like blouse, and especially with the help of those suspenders, I saw that she had a pair of rather large and firm breasts on her otherwise beanpole-ish frame (later, she would tell me that she noticed that I noticed them!).

This cast was so fun-loving that they were having cast parties at the *beginning* of the show's run. During one of my rounds through the green room on opening night, I overheard this one guy saying something about a cast party, so I stopped him and asked if I could go. "Sure," he said, and he told me how to get there. Now, I don't do well at parties because I'm introverted; I tend to wind up off to myself and the experience tires me out even when I'm having a good time. But, I did go, and when it turned out that there was a cast party planned the next night, cast members were asking me if I were going. So, breaking the wall worked and worked well, introverted though I was.

I remained aware of my surroundings and circumstances. After one show, the violinist was down in the pit while I was still packing up my axes, and she said that she was supposed to have pizza with some friends after the show, but they weren't there. I guess that I had ingrained it into myself that "any port in a storm" will do, so I just blithely came out with "Well, I'll go get pizza with you" and boom, we were off.

Sue was ten years older than me - 35 to my 25 at the time - and she wasn't really attractive in the face. However, she had a nice personality and a southern-belle drawl that was pleasant to listen to. She wasn't highly educated or well-read, and she wasn't high-tech like me, but she did have a quality that I admired and that was what seemed to be an awareness of self that included her own emotional well-being. Our impromptu pizza date isn't something that I remember very well, but it went okay. It was near the end of the show's run, which meant that if this was going to go anywhere, we needed to be on good enough terms at show's end that we could reasonably stay in touch afterward.

This is kind of an aside but it's a cool sub-story. I mentioned the ballet dancer from New York. She and two other girls were in a scene where they wore something along the lines of Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders outfits: short-shorts, vest, strapless bikini top, open vest, hat, boots. While one of the girls talked to a reporter, the two others - and the ballet dancer was on the left - did a cheerleader-type dance routine while holding a long bar across their shoulders. On either end of the bars were near-life-size floppy-limbed dolls in similar dress, and the gag was that basically that the dolls would flop their limbs around not terribly unlike cheerleaders to lamely give the impression that this was a whole line of cheerleaders and not just two.

Sunday matinee shows were the worst. The after-church crowd would pile in and the average age would be about 70. These shows were the worst not because they came from church or that they were so old, but rather that they came from church and were so old that they were basically comatose. They were acoustic absorption material, mounted in the seats. Only piano played through this cheerleader number and so, having heard it and seen it through the slats in the stage apron over the pit for so long, this number was typically just an interminable bore for the rest of us. As it especially was this particular Sunday with an audience clad in polyester, Brylcreem, and talcum powder. Sitting idly on my stool with my bass balanced on my thigh and staring off into the blackness that was the pit walls, I heard the music director, George, say with a hint of surprise into the headset intercom mic: "What? Oh, my God." I looked up at George and he had suddenly gone bolt upright, both his eyes directed ahead of and above him, through the slats, up at the stage action.

The ballet dancer's strapless bikini top, having by definition no straps, had begun a steady descent, like the big lit-up ball on Times Square at New Year's Eve. This wouldn't have been a big deal and a stage actress would have been able to skillfully and without much fuss dealt with the situation. But the situation was atypical in that her arms, like the arms of the girl next to her, were splayed out at a 180-degree angle across the top of the bar that held up the floppy dolls. She could not use her hands to pull up her top, pick her nose, or do anything else without disrupting the routine, perhaps even dropping the bar. She never missed a step; she never stopped smiling. But, out came one bright pink nipple and then the other, and by the end of the scene, her bikini top was around her waist, and her rockin' firm headlights were hardly concealed by the open vest at all.

And the hell of it was, no one out there seemed to notice.

When she came out of the dressing room at intermission, all of us in the green room gave her a standing (erect?) ovation.

One thing happened later that was really cool - and this is one thing that told me that some women simply existed way outside the inaccessible and deflective women that I was used to. At the cast party after that show with the wardrobe malfunction, a bunch of us were playing volleyball out behind someone's house, and she was playing on one team and I was on the other. We'd rotated such that she and I were facing each other at the net, and she of course knew that I was one of the pervs who had gotten to see the whole shootin' match with the bikini top. She decided to "distract" me when our team was serving by flashing her tits at me, to which I said, "look, I've already seen those today; you're going to have to do better than that." She teased back with "Oh, *you're* the type where once you've seen it, you don't want it anymore, *huh*?" I realize now that even though her boyfriend, like I said, could have pretty much kicked my ass and tied his shoes at the same time, I actually might have been able to follow up on that comment and show her just how much seeing it in no way diminished my wanting it, even if I did so as part of a threesome, foursome, or more-some.

I remember the wrap party being very, very nice. It was held at a cast or crew member's house - a smallish but elegant and old place along one of the town's major streets. The lighting was low in the occupied rooms within which two or three dozen acquaintances and friends convivially shared one last evening together after several weeks of hard work. I did chat with Sue and we exchanged phone numbers. The tall, slim brunette, into whose eyes I had occasion to look directly into from about five feet away while she sang her solo number over my fretless bass work, was especially beautiful that night. Her hair was braided and coiled atop her head, and she wore a spangled top with a light brown harem skirt, and when I told her goodbye that night I wrapped my arms around her smoothly curved waist such that my hands rested on her hips.

But, I did call up the violinist, Sue, and we arranged to go out on a movie date. I picked her up in my car, which at the time was a fairly posh European sedan. She confessed to being a bit nervous, not having dated much since her divorce, as she told me. Sue lived in an apartment and kept her daughter (her only child, about 9 years old at the time) when school was in session. She made her living through music - giving lessons, doing weddings and similar gigs.

We had another date, and it was clear that we had a mutual attraction. Sue wasn't terribly pretty but she had a Southern-belle sweetness about her coupled with a certain transparency of emotion that I would come to appreciate later in my next girlfriend, who I would later marry. At Sue's apartment after that date, an end was put to that four-year empty gulf in my sex life. We were clearly two people who needed intimacy and thought each other suitable for it. I found myself being suprised at her eagerness and the degree to which she lost herself in the act, even when just getting acquainted with me manually. This was a sensual woman, and she wasn't afraid to demonstrate that and she didn't require the near-begging for affection that I seemed to think necessary.

There were issues with our relationship, which lasted just until the fall, not long after her daughter returned from spending the summer with her father out of state. I was a high-tech, forward-looking, and forward-thinking man; Sue was a country girl at heart. Her musical sensibilities and mine really did not jibe; she played bluegrass for fun whereas I couldn't stand the stuff, and whereas I liked jazz and played it on both of my primary instruments, her attempts at playing jazz piano sounded extremely ham-handed, as though she never really listened to the masters of the style and/or didn't grasp the subtleties.

One thing that did bother me about Sue was that, as was quite plainly obvious once we started taking each other's clothes off, she had gotten breast implants. It was, frankly, a botched job. What looked so nice separating her suspenders that one night right before a show were overlarge and unnaturally separated for her bony build, very tightly stretched, and spoiled by four-inch-long and half-inch-thick raised scars under each one. It wasn't just that the result was unattractive; they were awkward and off-putting to interact with, and it all just seemed to call her basic judgment into question. She liked them squeezed a lot harder than I was comfortable squeezing them.

However, to this day, I value my relationship with her because she actually took me seriously as a man and she introduced me to aspects of emotional well-being that appeared to me as a new horizon. There were numerous nights and "nooners" (i.e., extended leave I'd take from work for a dentist appointment, not all of which time was spent at the dentist's office) spent making love that were really wonderful, liberating experiences. Unfortunately, though, the Sarah-engendered problems that I had had actually completing my part of the act interfered with the sex from Sue right from the beginning, and we simply did not have enough time together to work out the issue. We had also become close friends; I recall how she and I stayed on the phone with each other during one of the big hurricanes that were lashing the Southeast coast.

After Sue's daughter returned in time for school to start, seeing Sue on a regular basis did become a lot more difficult. I was not bothered by this initially; I was willing to see her a lot less often. In early October, I went off for a week for a two-family vacation that had become an annual tradition and when I returned, seeing Sue became as easy as getting in to talk to the Pope. I didn't pester, but I did continue expressing my interest until finally, she asked me to come see her play with the Mayfield Symphony Orchestra, after which we'd go for drinks. I went to the auditorium by myself and paid for my own ticket. From where I sat, I couldn't really even see Sue at all. After the performance, I waited out in the hall for a while and Sue eventually came out and we went to a restaurant.

I hadn't seen her for about three weeks by this time, and as we sat at a table with a beer and a Coke, I sensed that something wasn't the same. This was confirmed when she told me that I was a wonderful guy and that I should see other women. I don't remember much else about the conversation but I recall saying that I could adapt to her new time pressures whatever they were. I was genuinely heartbroken when I left, and after I got home, I spent maybe a couple of hours writing her a letter in which I expressed my love for her (which was genuine) and reiterated that I didn't mind a less frequent dating schedule. Not wanting to wait for the mail, I got in my car, drove rather self-consciously over to her apartment, and put the folded letter under one of the windshield wipers of her Honda.

She called me the next day at work and was simply furious at me for pulling "emotional shit." I don't remember what all else she yelled or what all I said. I did know, though, that it was over. When I think about it now, I can see how much desperation and loneliness I brought to the table in that relationship. I have always seemed to have a seriousness about my relationships with women. I can't just date them, maybe even have sex with them, and ramp down the relationship right afterward. I've always seemed to have needed relationships to go on until they're unsustainable. With me, the stakes are very high even from the first date. The stakes are so high and I have dated so little that I have never been turned down for a second date. The closest, I believe, have been a case or two where I have not asked for a second date simply because it seemed like a rejection was inevitable. Technically speaking, Elvira, Mistress of the Frigid Bitch and I only ever had one actual date, i.e., going somewhere together where there was some hope of a deepening love relationship.

I did not encounter Sue again for a while, not until after I was seeing my now-wife long-distance. Another Mayfield-area theater was planning on a production of Hair and I had expressed to the director a keen interest in playing drums for that show. The director told me that he would pass along my request to the music director, which, he said, would be...Sue. I was crestfallen at first, but I didn't want to bail on the show, especially not for that sort of reason, so I explained to him that Sue may not want me, because we had had a relationship that didn't end well. The way I left it with him was that I would work it out with Sue myself.

So, I called her, and I got right to the point: I could deal with her if she could deal with me. She said that she could and that she was glad to hear from me.

Sue and I actually had a bit of fun with each other at rehearsal of the sort that only two people who have shared some intimacy can have. We were all set up in a circle with our instruments, and during a lull Sue was trying to arrange a pile of show score across two music stands she had placed behind her little electronic keyboard and I happened to be looking right at her when she leaned forward and dropped her overpressurized boobs on the keys, making the keyboard go "GRONNNNK!" She looked up, saw me looking right at her and smiling, and she laughed and turned various colors. The second time it happened, I could resist no longer and I stood up, walked over to her, and leaned down to whisper in her ear, "Look, if you had left those things alone, you wouldn't be having this problem!" I started to walk back to the kit, and, knowing that she had started cracking up, I turned back to her and whispered, "Do you hear this snare drum going off by itself? No!" This little ribald inside joke did seem to break the ice between us.

I only had one problem with Sue during this show and I admit to being a bit unprofessional about it. One of the tunes from the show, "Easy To Be Hard," became a hit for Three Dog Night. For some reason, Sue wanted to do it at a tempo far, far slower than Three Dog Night did it. I realized that Sue probably wasn't familiar with that version (only because of just being out of the loop on popular music of the early 1970s). However, the real problem was that she'd count the song in on one tempo and then start to play it in another. I struggled very hard to reconcile the difference at the start of the tune on many nights and one time, it got so bad that I just got up and left the kit. Being a bit of an easy-listening ballad, it didn't harm the song tremendously to have no drums, but to have had the drumming stop partway didn't come off well, I'm sure. I returned to the kit for the next tune, but after the show ended, I hid out for a while until I saw that Sue was otherwise unoccupied and I had it out with her. I didn't make any ultimatums but I just said that she needed to be careful about her count-offs. Would I have been such a hothead about this if she hadn't rejected me some months earlier? I don't know for sure, but I was pissed off for a musical reason. We patched up our problem and when the show ended (actually, it was extended past the originally-scheduled closing date, but for some reason I could not play and Sue got another drummer who I knew was definitely not up to the task), she sent me a little note along with my check saying that that other guy did fine, but I was terrific. We parted ways as friends.

I do remember visiting her one time before I moved away from Mayfield; no biggie, no "rekindling." I didn't really feel the same about her anymore. A few years later, after I had moved away and gotten married, I found out somehow that Sue moved to very rural North Carolina and I did talk with her on the phone. From her, I learned some interesting and disturbing things. First, she said that she had been diagnosed as a manic-depressive and that she felt that the arc of our relationship was part of that cycle (she had said before that summer relationships were the norm for her). She also told me that she had recently learned that her daughter, during her last summer stay with her father, had been cutting herself and plucking out her eyelashes. Her daughter called her from up there and told her this was happening, and, if I recall correctly, Sue drove a few hundred miles up there, got her daughter, and took her back to Mayfield and put her in therapy (good for Sue).

I have not kept up with Sue since then but some occasional Googling has shown that she has in fact returned to Mayfield and she has her own Web site to hawk her musical services. It is hard for me to describe how I feel about seeing her picture as she looks today, in her early 50s, even more schoolmarmy and frumpy than she was then. It's an overall sad feeling, and I have a sense of disconnection about it: I've watched that very face from less than a foot away as she practically lost consciousness while having an orgasm. I wonder what she remembers about us. I wonder about not just what it was that she truly felt for me, but why did she even feel it? And, I feel strange about having even shown an interest in her or having pursued a sexual relationship with her. Given freedom of choice, would I have chosen...that?? If I did not have freedom of choice, why not? Did I love her, like I said I did in that letter I wrote that made her tee off on me? Have I ever really loved anyone, even my wife?

That last question is a perplexing one and I have given it a lot of thought. I have concluded that it is akin to determining how many angels can dance on the head of a pin to contemplate if I "loved" this woman or that woman. Instead, I have decided that I have felt something both similar and different for all of these women I've described in this journal, and that there is no need to assign the name of "love" to some, all, none, or some aspect of those feelings. Yes, I'm a very lusty guy, no doubt. But I know with clarity that if I've even as much as had a conversation with these objects of lust, then the lust gets connected to something else. The more that goes down with someone, the more complex and broad those connections get.

I have found myself wishing lately that I could find these women, turn off their conscious minds, and get their authentic feedback about my relationships with them, warts and all. I would like to know what they would honestly think and feel if they knew that I still remembered them and cared about what became of them, and that I was still, to this day, trying to make some sense out of what happened between us. Being married, and trying not to damage my marriage in the process, that's difficult to even approximate by contacting them for real and trying to lay the groundwork for an honest exchange. Besides, these women have gone on with their lives; there's no reason to expect them to endanger their own situations or even spend their valuable time and energy on me and the process that I've been going through.

There's another aspect of this kind of exchange that I'm envisioning that just can't be made real. For a number of these women, there are questions I'd want to ask that any reasonable person would take considerable umbrage to. Elvira, why would you spend so much time with me when you didn't want me and you knew I wanted you? Warmonger Bitch, why did you turn on me like Roy's white tiger? Backrub Bitch, why would you get topless for me and then not make yourself at all available to me ever again? The fact of the matter is, I have determined for myself what some of those answers are, and I don't imagine that these women are particulary interested in or would gain any positive vibe from my own answers. I know full well that they don't care about what happened the way I do, and why should they?

After all, they got what they wanted: someone else. Or, preferable to me, no one at all.