Galena, IL and Sexual Fantasies

A native Chicagoan, I’ve been taking trips to Galena IL my entire life.  It’s a gorgeous rural territory, rolling hills with elegant cottages and very few people.  I came here with either parent at least once a year until Feb 2007, my last visit.  Life (monogamous relationships in which selfless maintenance took place of self-love) just got in the way.  The birthdays of my lover and I, though, are very close to each other and as we now live 200 miles apart, we agreed to come/cum here..

As a child, I was a near-constant daydreamer.  Inner fantasies kept me going and 99% of them took place in Galena.  This wasn’t an intentional decision, my mind just settled here.  Upon puberty, my daydreams became more erotic.  Most of my imaginary stories involved overly dramatic, highly romantic sexcapades there.  I figured that these would someday become my honeymoon, as I’d certainly keep myself clean until marriage XP

And now I’m actually having my Galena sex vacation.  The resort doesn’t ooze seduction, but the relaxing atmosphere and utter seclusion welcome it.  And our cottage has a jacuzzi!  This actual sex vacation doesn’t line up at all with my adolescent daydreams, mostly because there’s no interest in marriage and we don’t look like actors in early 90’s music videos (think Total Eclipse of the Heart and I Would Do Anything For Love).  Fantasies, not just a teenager’s, rarely involve emergency runs to the general store or watching South Park when you’re exhausted from sex or wet willy wars - unless you’re into that kind of thing.  Those imagined stories wouldn’t be as great in real life anyway, as it’s much more romantic to imagine someone who would do anything only for your smile/orgasm than to actually deal with such a person in real life.  Fantasy serves its purpose, arguably because it’s unrealistic, but this trip has been absolutely incredible even with reality :)

Painting Consistency

Summer '98, I picked up the paintbrush and acrylics that had been in my mother's storage for decades and just started painting. No prompts, no education, I just began painting. That's the only consistent thing between my life then and now.


My goal, until late college, was to marry and have children.  As a 12 year old in an extremist parish, it was expected that I would marry within six years and then have a baby less than two years after that.  Travel, feminism, higher education, writing, etc. didn't fit into any of that.  If I could tell my self fourteen years ago about my life now, she would be terribly disappointed and shocked at my independence.  It took breaking ties with unhealthy, abusive people to understand personal control, self-reliance and self-love.
Painting would be the only thing of my life now that would please my 12 year old self.  It all started with random experimentation.  I found that I was able to communicate things that can't be put into words, though my reading and writing were already at a 12th grade level.  And I did it for myself.  Kept alone indoors whenever I wasn't in school, this was a way of making my inner world come alive.  That hasn't changed, though it's a way of communicating with both others and myself rather than primarily as a means of self-soothing escape.  My 12 year old self would be thrilled that I have a bachelor's in art and that I create almost daily.

My second painting, a mural in my bedroom.  No prompting, no reference, I came up with this completely on my own:

Albuquerque

Milwaukeean originally from Chicago, I'm very interested in moving to Albuquerque next year.  Milwaukee's population size is perfect for me, and it's almost the same as Abq's.  Low rent on studio apts, good job availability (I'm fine with starting off at a call center until I get more settled), bike friendly and queer friendliness are my priorities.  I understand that Abq has terrible drivers, gangs, drugs and a high crime rate...but I've lived 22 years in Chicago.  Any advice?

27

In 11 days I'll turn 27.  Despite certain bullshit, the mid 20's aren't that bad.  Right after college, everything was awkward and terrible.  College drops you right on your ass and you're supposed to be an adult now but you have no money and you don't know what you're doing without some kind of set framework - it sucks.  Then things calm down and you can party and figure out what your actual options are.

When I was a kid, I was led to believe that I'd marry before 20, preferably at 16.  Once I reached 14 and 15 and not only had no suitors come along, but also my peers told me that I was so ugly that the only way anyone would have sex with me was through rape (they didn't know that this was actually happening at the time).  I was distraught, thinking that I was unlovable and had failed my authorities by not fulfilling their mandates.

Once I figured out that marrying by 16 is usually a horrible idea and that my education came first, I set my goal to 28 for both marriage and parenthood.  My mother was heartbroken.  I'd find a monogamous partner, we'd have fun and explore the world, we'd gradually intertwine our lives codependently, then we'd marry and have kids.  After a few attempts at this, it finally dawned on me that monogamy is not for me and codependency nauseates me.  Marriage and parenthood hold no appeal.

Although I shed all age-related goals and my personal wants have changed dramatically - they may again, who knows - that marker of 28 still holds significance.  It was an arbitrary choice: I watched Friends and thought it was what normal young adult life was like and they were all around 28, right?  Nevertheless, onwards to another year of adventure!

Tumbleweed

Anyone who's ever watched Looney Toons and other hokey children's cartoons are probably familiar with scenes in which a small tumbleweed rolls across the scene to signify boredom.  The visual equivalent of crickets chirping, a tumbleweed emphasizes the emptiness of what's happening.

In real life, small tumbleweeds like that, about the size of a basketball, roll around so long as there is a slight breeze and/or slope.  Fullgrown tumbleweeds, however, can grow to the size of a pickup truck, and it takes powerful gusts to roll them across the landscape.

Tumbleweeds are actually trees with very shallow roots.  Their branches grow very low to the ground and in a round shape, holding in thousands of seeds.  When the wind is strong enough, the tree dislodges from its spot and rolls across the landscape and the seeds scatter - kamikaze propagation.  Larger tumbleweeds can cause terrible destruction in high winds, as rolling dries out these trees and they shatter explosively upon impact.

A tumbleweed will see many remarkable things on its travels across the desert, only to continue the cycle of shallow roots and self-destroying reproduction.  Would one come to rest on rock rather than sandy soil, the cycle would be broken.

Body Positivity: Figure Drawing

My cousin-in-law is an artist and, when I was 11, she began taking me to a figure drawing studio every other Sunday.  This continued until the studio closed six years later, but then I took honors art classes in high school and those involved figure drawing.  And then I kept doing figure drawing throughout college.

It took a few years, especially since my mother poked my belly and called me fat when I was in middle school, but this exposure to naked bodies dramatically changed my beauty standards.  In figure drawing, the most interesting bodies are "flawed" - fat, saggy, scarred, and marked.  Drawing different bodies so frequently shifted my understanding of the "ideal" body, so I rejected the mainstream standards in favor of every body.

The best way to develop body positivity, especially in children, is to see every kind of body in a welcoming setting over a long period of time.

Sexual Objectification EDITED

I admit that I was frustrated and flustered when I wrote the original Sexual Objectification blog entry, therefore it isn't well written.  Here is the edited version, beginning with some definitions:
sexualization: prioritising the sex, sexuality and sexiness of a person.
sexual objectification: treating a person as a sexual object.
feminism: the belief that people of all genders and sexes should have equal opportunity and choice.
the women's movement: the history of feminism, particularly in America in the 1960's/'70's

http://www.livescience.com/21609-self-sexualization-young-girls.html

A friend posted this on her facebook.  She and her peers are religious, involved mothers and they all commented about how relieved they are that being religious, involved mothers combats early sexual objectification.
I pointed out that I was under the impression as a child that I would marry by 16.  My mother and the mothers who volunteered at my Catholic school (which, I discovered much later on, was an extremist parish) all emphasized that little girls should prepare for marriage constantly until they're at the altar - sexual objectification was encouraged, though in manners less obvious than skimpy clothing.  Religious, involved mothers can do more damage than good - another lady commented about how her mother actually pushed her in the opposite direction and hated sexuality.
Nobody in this discussion on the article replied to my point, but eventually one of them commented "It's as though the women's movement created more objectification than less of it."

Because of the correlation between the women's movement and shifts in advertising, this can appear as a causation.  In the years leading up to the women's movement, sexual objectification in advertising was minimal - women still appeared in advertising as service objects, only fully clothed.  The levels of sexual objectification, particularly of women, in mainstream advertising are at a disturbing high today in American culture.


However, women were more sexually objectified, to the point of being considered property of father/husband before the women's movement.  Higher education was discouraged for a woman because it made her a less serene servant - and nobody saw the problem in proclaiming this conundrum bluntly.  Women themselves chose to abandon education in order to objectify themselves.
So I replied to this lady " the women's movement made it illegal for a husband to rape his wife...so no."  What more obvious example is there that the women's movement gave women human status?
She replied "that's a law, this article is about culture."

.....WHAT?!?!?!?  Don't most laws come about through cultural shifts?!?!?  The women's movement is incomplete, it isn't finished.  It gave women choices, that's what feminism is.  However, because woman-as-sex-objects are still very highly valued in our culture - as evidenced by advertising - many women make the ill-informed choice to objectify themselves.  I argue that a choice made without awareness of other options isn't an autonomous decision at all, which is the difference between sexualization and sexual objectification.  If you want me to elaborate on how I know these women's decision-making, please ask.
Feminism is still working to elevate women's minds to equal societal value.  I hate to say it, but the women who choose to be sex objects, as opposed to sexual human beings, are perhaps the biggest obstacle to feminism.

And yes, I'm aware that my privileges are showing...I'm working on it.