I can have it if I wanted it...I think.

So I'm 6 months in to my "no boys allowed" resolution. The only action I've had are innocent hugs hello/goodbye from my guy friends. While a dry spell is nothing new to me, (my longest being two years), this one is self imposed and that makes it all the more difficult to endure.

It could be all talk, but there are three guys who have been suggesting shenanigans with them. So far I've successfully deflected the question but it does make me wonder why. I'm a red-blooded American woman who enjoys sex and the feeling of a man's hands on my body - feelings that certain solo recreations cannot recreate in any tangible sense. So why not give in to the desire and jump into bed with one of them? The rub, and thus the hesitation, comes from the fact that I cannot help feel that I no longer have a toe over the line, that now it's a foot planted solidly on the wrong side of 'ladylike' - and that's something I am not comfortable with.

But 6 months is a long ass time to go without... anything, and my resolve is beginning to break down. So now I'm stuck in an inner battle that doesn't seem to have a 'right' and a 'wrong' side.

Part of the dilemma is easy to solve, after an entire summer of being as invisible as a ghost, Benedick suggested we meet up - and seems to forget that the last time we were at this crossroad he was the one saying he didn't want a friends with benefits situation. I know that I can't go down that road again solely because if I do I clearly have no self respect. I'm not a high maintenance girl but I'm also not a blow up doll you can stuff in a closet and forget about for months. In this day and age of massive technology overload there is no excuse for him not to keep even irregular contact with me between April when he last saw me, and September. I may not know a ton about boys but I am pretty sure that if a girl is on a guy's mind, even in the slightest capacity, he'll get in touch with her. And if I'm not on his mind until he needs to get his kicks, he's (to borrow the catch phrase that spawned a book and soon a movie) just not that in to me; and a guy who can stop thinking about me is a guy who doesn't deserve to see me naked... period.

Bachelor #2 comes across as a little cold on some levels, a player, but deep down he's a good guy - and in the moments that mattered since I've known him he's shown that he's got a good heart. He's been talking up his game for much longer than any guys should be strung along but I've never been able to decide what I think about him. I'm attracted to him but I feel like we didn't jump into bed soon enough, that it would only be awkward at this point. And I'll admit it, it feeds my ego to know that he and I have never done anything more than flirt and hug yet he's still, after way too long, showing interest. The longer my break from guys goes the more I think that perhaps I should let him step up to the plate. The catch is all it would be is another friends with benefits situation and while that's better than nothing and it would solve certain frustrations I have, it's not what I want.

Bachelor #3 is... hot. He's hot, he makes me hot, the chemistry (the weeks of flirting and especially the two occasions we got naked) between us was hot. Mr. Tight-end (and his body was tight) is a guy that is out of my league and even now it blows my mind that he wanted anything to do with me. But as with all too good to be true situations, Mr. Tight-end was/is a juggler who has a main ball but keeps more than one in the air with ease. Hearing him tell me I'm a good kisser, talk about the time we shared, to hear him suggest we have a little reunion, does more for my ego than I care to admit. He is the one man who literally made my knees weak with a kiss and that's a feeling I haven't had repeated. I've been flirting with him again lately, more for a personal ego boost than anything else. We've talked about having some fun but I can't tell if there's any seriousness behind the talk. Today he blatantly asked me if I wanted him and then told me to let him know if I decided I wanted to hook up again. Y'all know he still has a girlfriend, I know he's not a single man, yet on chemistry alone I'm toying with the idea. But like with Benedick I know that I am better than being the other woman who knowingly sleeps with a taken man... no matter how good we are together when clothes come off.

Yet it all boils down to the fact that if I so chose, I could be having sex. Isn't half the plight of a single girl the fact that she can't have some adult fun with an attractive man when she needs to without going down the sketchy road of going home with a stranger she met at a bar? Here's 3 guys I've known for years, aren't these roads better to travel than another unknown one? It's only a matter of time before the offers are off of the table and I'm trying like hell to talk myself out of taking any of them up on their offers while I can.

I can't help but hope that if I hold off, and don't embark on another friendly hookup, that I'll actually meet someone who wants to claim me as their own for mind, body, and soul. The dream doesn't make the dry spells any easier to survive though.

Then again, who knows if the bachelors are all talk and no action. This could all just be an allusion of sexual offers that none of them ever plan on following through with.

In the end, what's a single gal to do?

You Spin Me Right Round Baby, Right Round...

There are moments in my life where I feel very much like Bridget Jones - a girl trying to be the media's vision of what is sexy - and falling pathetically short of it. Bridget wore skin tight clothing that wouldn't flatter a slim girl let alone a stocky one in the attempt to win the attention of her boss. In reality Bridget is perfect... just the way she is in the eyes of Mr. Darcy (how fitting of a last name to be paired with Colin Firth once again).

My skin tight clothing on a pudgy girl comes out as me trying to be the bombshell hot girl when I'm far more of a pre-lesbian Willow than a Buffy. I try to exude hotness, to be sexy as hell... but when it comes down to it I'm a shy, dorky gal. But I'll keep trying in the hopes that one day I'll be able to dance like a Burlesque girl; because then I'd have the mindset to know what kind of guy I wanted and the ability to get him.

This hope of becoming sexy caused me to sign up for a 4-week intro to pole dancing class. It's the art of pole dancing not the stripperfied version. Class one I did okay and had fun, I even came home thinking I had seen a peak of the sex goddess within me. Tonight was a totally different story... I am sore, I am bruised, and I am frustrated with how I looked anything but sexy attempting to move my hips to the beat. I also failed at nailing the spin... and I have a ton of bruises on the insides of my legs to prove it. I looked out of place.... a fat girl in skinny girl's clothing and I had to thin, where is the fun in that?

Maybe it'll come together more in my third class, maybe I'll wake up and know that I have become the pole queen. Or maybe I'll wake up and realize that I need to embrace the bookworm girl next door qualities that I do possess and leave the sexy stuff to the girls who have the skills and the looks to pull it off.

Though my guy friends seem to all be very interested with the idea that I am taking on pole dancing and many have offered to give me their feedback. What is it with guys becoming horn balls over a woman who is comfortable enough with herself to pushing into the uncomfortable of dabbling in stripping/pole dancing for their own pleasure knowing full well they never would do it in front of a crowd?

Since it's 12:30 and my alarm is going off at 6am and I have yet to be able to sleep more than 2 hours a night for a week, I shall leave my thoughts incomplete and sign off.

Any bets on how bruised my legs will look come morning?

I Miss My Home

She is there waiting patiently;
I close my eyes and see her
Visions of vibrant green and crumbling stone.

There is an unshakable comfortable solitude within her arms.
The arms of a mother who has watched tragedy upon tragedy;
She has watched her children leave her for myths and tall tales.
Have you seen the streets paved of gold?

But she is patient as all mothers are with their children,
She knows they will return to her one day.
I made the trek once and found solace,
For a foreign place it felt unbelievably familiar.

I walked through the Burren that was so out of place;
It felt alien, unsettling, and fascinating.
"Don't step on a crack or you'll break your mother's back!"
A childhood rhyme brought to life at least somewhat.
"Watch your step on the cracks, you may fall through!"
We were cautioned as we wandered amongst the Giant's bed.

I walked the footsteps of my ancestors wondering about them.
Were they warriors or scholars?
Please tell me they were not cowards!
Were the men noble, but more importantly were the women defiant?
Fiery redheads determined to live their own lives regardless of rules.
Are they proud to count me as a kinswoman?

I walked among the stones, the remains of strongholds of old.
Within those ruins I could have spent a lifetime dreaming,
What stories do those stones hold?
I'm sure they are tales that would excite and terrify.
Tales of magic, greed, bloodlust, love.
Where did the little people go? Perhaps they are just laying in wait.
Yes, they are waiting for the right moment to appear again.

I walked through the Highlands and closed my eyes.
They are there, the ghosts of my clan.
Looking at the Crying Hills did they feel the same as I?
The tenseness of betrayal still echoes there.
It is a betrayal of clan custom just as dangerous to history
As Judas and Brutus were.

They are sisters really, the thistle and the shamrock.
Two Celtic women with histories so intertwined.
The Scots and the Irish have spent centuries fighting.
Yet I am equal parts a Scotswoman and an Irishwoman.
My loyalty is to both fair countries: I am of their soils.
I march to the beat of my own drum, a Bodhran: a Celtic heartbeat.

I belong with them, my two mothers.
I felt far more at home, at rest, there than I have here.
Does that make me less of an American?
No, for my bloodlines are older and deeper than America.
They are calling me, beckoning for my return.

I miss my home.
Yet I will return, of that I am sure.
And they will welcome me, a wayward daughter
Who has found her way back to her stoop
Yearning for the comforting blaze of the fire inside.
There I will finally be at peace.

~written in 2007