I love her and long for her in an intensely physical way, and even though I identify myself as bisexual, it is not sexual as I recognize it.  She is . . .like home.  When I am near her I just want to touch her, breath the smell of her skin and the oils she wears.  I want to sit at her feet, lay my head on her lap.  I want snuggle between her breasts and be safe.

But, seriously, there’s no sexual element to this at all.  When I think about people who I am sexually attracted to there is a desire to kiss them . .and more.  But for her I just have the longing to be near her, touch her and be safe.  Like a child is safe within her mothers arms.

It was getting to know her that first got me thinking about how all touch has become so sexualized in our society.  Some how we’ve gotten to a place where all touches are “bad touches” and we live isolated from the contact of other humans by the fear that we will become perverts if we hug someone.  Caregivers must keep children at arms length, lest a pat or a squeeze be construed as being sexually pleasurable to them.  So children fail to be nurtured, fail to get the positive physical contact countless studies have shown they need to thrive.  Adults medicate themselves to replace the simple contact that would help them moderate their moods and have a sense of belonging.

I don’t think it was that way in earlier times.  As I’ve pondered this, I’ve gone back to art I once considered “lesbian” and realized that the women depicted were not lovers.  They were simply together, touching, caring for and supporting each other.  And I wonder how we can get to a place where Western women again feel safe with their own gender?  Like our young girls are, when they pile together at slumber parties and other girls only events, combing each other’s hair, hugging and even kissing.

I know I would appreciate having a few women friends I trusted like that.  Ones who accepted me and trusted me back.  But I have no clue how to go about finding that place, when most women will act like the woman I love and recoil because they see my love as a desire to have sex.

The following is the philosophy of Charles Schultz, the creator of the ‘Peanuts’ comic strip. You don’t have to actually answer the questions. Just read the e-mail straight through, and you’ll get the point.

1. Name the five wealthiest people in the world.
2. Name the last five Heisman trophy winners.
3. Name the last five winners of the Miss America.
4. Name ten people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer Prize.
5. Name the last half dozen Academy Award winners for best actor and actress.
6. Name the last decade’s worth of World Series winners.

How did you do? The point is, none of us remember the headliners of yesterday. These are no second-rate achievers. They are the best in their fields. But the applause dies. Awards tarnish. Achievements are forgotten. Accolades and certificates are buried with their owners .

Here’s another quiz. See how you do on this one:

1. List a few teachers who aided your journey through school.
2. Name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time.
3. Name five people who have taught you something worthwhile.
4. Think of a few people who have made you feel appreciated and special.
5. Think of five people you enjoy spending time with .

Easier?  The lesson:  The people who make a difference in your life are not the ones with the most credentials, the most money, or the most awards. They are the ones that care . Pass this on to those people who have made a difference in your life.

“Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It’s already tomorrow in Australia” (Charles Schultz)

You say, tell you facts and feelings. Well, facts first, they’re easier. Clem’s A.A. Battery is quartered in a girls’ school, from which he writes superbly funny letters. The girls are absent, of course, but their school-stories are there, and he is finding these a fascinating study. His favourite chapter-heading, so far, is “Monica Turns Out a Decent Sort”; but at present he is absorbed in a last-war one about a games mistress who was a spy in disguise and used to write code messages on tennis-balls and throw them into the North Sea. He says he can hardly wait to get to the end. He is also making a collection of graffiti, which are all quite touchingly mild. Things like “Gwenny T. is a Big Pig” and “Molly B. is a Brat.” There is a very dignified one, which simply says: “I think Gwenny T. is the most hateful person I have ever met.” And another, arranged like an equation: “Violet W.+ Gwenny T. = Lovey-dovey. Ha! ha!” Clem says he was so relieved to find that somebody liked poor Gwenny T. after all.

It’s an excerpt from Mrs Miniver, a short story by Jan Struther.  Partly it was amusing to see my name and initial.  Partly it made me think about how my name has gone through phases.  Unlike Mary, Linda and the like, Gwen is a name that comes and goes, popularity wise.  When I was a child it was very uncommon.  It meant I seldom could find cute little personalized items with my name and I remember not liking that.  So when I named my children, I gave them more common names.

It’s kind of funny that I am starting to be known everywhere as Gwenny, as well.  I hated being called Gwenny by everyone but my grandfather.  Through my teens and into my 20s and 30s, if someone called me Gwenny I would frown and say, “It’s just Gwen.”  Even my sorority sisters, who I gave a lot of freedom in how they treated me, were not allowed to call me Gwenny. It’s a cute, I think, story about how I journeyed to a place where I know only allow it but work hard to keep the first page of returns for Gwenny on Google.

Back in 1992 I was introduced to the Internet.  I started seeing a guy who was active on BBSs and he helped me get the Commodore 64, which I had gotten in trade for an extra week of visitation with the youngest but that is another story, hooked up to several local BBSs.  Let me digress for a moment to explain what a BBS is and how it works, since older folks were likely not connected at the time and younger folks will never have heard of them.

A BBS, or Bulletin Board System^wiki, was a private computer running software that let other people log into it via a modem and play games and participate in forums, called echos.   You could also get mail via “echo”.  It was called “echo” because your message was bounced from BBS to BBS, keeping the cost down for local sysops.  Periodically a sysop who ran a “hub” would dial out long distance and bounce all the accumulated messages to another “hub” which would not only distribute it locally but bounce it further.

It was simple, elegant and mostly free.  You could send a message to someone in Australia or the UK or anywhere Fidonet went and within a few hours they would receive it.  There was one small drawback.  Mail would be distributed to anyone with your username.  And there was no way to ensure you were the only user with your username.  I had originally chosen the name “Poohbear” since that was what I had been called for years by sibs and others.  It was cute and girlie, *I* thought.  And so I proceeded to make friends and converse with them.  One of the echoes I got involved in was Merry Meat, an adult erotic/flirt echo.  I quickly attracted a following and received a dozen or more private messages a day from admirers. (I am an accomplished flirt and have a wicked wit, if I do say so myself.)

Then one day I received a message from another Poohbear.  At 6 foot plus male bouncer in an Industrial bar in the midwest.  He asked, nicely, if I would mind changing my username because he was getting my mail and he was . . . well, he would prefer NOT to get those messages, thank you.  Even if he had not had the name first, I would have complied.  But that left me with having to come up with a new name.  My sysop, a woman running a BBS called The Domestic Engineer, came to my rescue.  “Why not be Gwenny the Pooh,” she suggested.  I was charmed by the name!  Yes, it meant I would be called Gwenny but . .well, it was so darned cute.

Thus was born Gwenny the Pooh.  Many were the adventures of Ms GTPooh over the next few years . .adventures that included having her breasts deified by atheists and having a dolt try to “warlock” her from the Usenet group alt.pagan.  Over the years Gwenny the Pooh became unwieldy and I shortened it to Gwenny when available or gtpooh when someone had gotten Gwenny first.

It’s hard to believe that this all started just a bit over 15 years ago.  When I think about the changes that have come about since then . .when I think about all the wonderful people I know from all over the world because of the power of social networks and forums, I am grateful to all the geek boys who work so diligently to improve the process and bring us every closer.

That’s my story.  I’m sticking to it.

One of the things my mother did to relieve the tension was to send my father out hunting. It got him out from underfoot while the work was being done and tired him out so he didn’t have as much energy to rampage if things didn’t go right. Where I grew up men hunting on Thanksgiving and Christmas was pretty common, so other women must have used that ploy as well.  It caused me to wonder how many of our customs are sneaky ways for women to keep men busy and out of the way.

Many years ago I remember reading about an anthropologist or some other scientist type person asking a Navajo woman why the Navajo women allowed themselves to become enslaved by their men.  The woman looked confused and the scientist told her that the women do the cooking, cleaning, gardening, weaving, herding . . .almost all the tasks are done by the women, while the men sit around and smoke or go out hunting.  She continued to look at him quizzically but said, “But the men aren’t fit to do our work.”

That’s a serious paraphrase of the article, but I hope it conveys the gist.  In any case, it was an epiphany for me, because it’s true!  The west just puts an odd slant on it and makes women think they are forced to be “enslaved” when, in fact, we don’t WANT men in our business.

Come on, women who rise up in ire at this, how many of you WANT a man screwing around in your kitchen?

Anyway, when I was too young to help in the kitchen, I often went hunting with my father.  I actually like hunting–the walking, the stalking, the watching–it’s the killing part I hate.  So I was quite content to follow along behind him, proud bearer of the various bits he might need like ammo and the hunting knife. The hunting knife that would be the cause of my first, and still most traumatic, lie.

I must have been four or five.  I’m leaning toward four because I did not have my own rifle yet and I got that my fifth Christmas.  We set out on Thanksgiving morning for a perfect hunting day, it had just snowed and that would make tracking easier.  As was always the case, I was taken to a safe place and told to wait while he scouted the area.

So there I was, alone, with the incredibly enticing brand new hunting knife.  The knife I had been told on pain of death, not to remove from its sheath.  So, of course, I gently slipped it out to gaze upon its beauty.  Shiny, sharp and sleek. It was a lovely simple little skinning knife. Then suddenly, and sound in the brush startled me and I jammed it back into the sheath. It was so sharp it went right though the sheath and into my hands.  I corrected it and stood there looking at the blood, unsure what to do. The cut through the leather seemed invisible to my eyes and I wondered if anyone would notice.

I never made a peep, just waiting, holding my hand, until my father returned.  He was quite distraught and asked me what had happened.  I looked at the knife.  I looked at him. And I lied.  I said I had cut myself on the thistles I was hiding in.
The lie cut my heart worse than the knife had cut my hand. They say children don’t know right from wrong until they are eight or nine.  I knew that what I was doing was wrong and my heart burned inside and the tears I was crying were not from physical pain but from mental anguish.  But the truth would have gotten me beaten and I was a child and afraid of the anger of my parents.

So we went home.  I don’t recall whether I needed stitches or whether it was minor enough that they just wrapped it up.  I did live in fear for a few days that he would figure out my lie and there would still be a beating. I got it past Mom, who was much smarter than Dad.  And after a while when nothing happened I figured I had outsmarted them .  But I never forgot that lie and I made a pact with myself that I would not lie to protect myself again.

Many, many years later I was helping my mother move stuff and came across the knife.  Surprisingly, the cut in the sheath was still barely visible and I could believe he never noticed it or associated it with that day.  I thought about asking to have it, but then decided not to.  It had already done its job, I grew up to be a fanatically honest person, I didn’t need to have it to remind me.

‘Spring and Fall, to a Young Child’

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

— Gerard Manley Hopkins