A Case of the Uglies 
An affectionate ear-nibbler. 

17 Apr 4:35 pm 
I have to get off the puter, we are about to have a gullywasher.  It's oppressively hot and a storm is blowing up now.  I just want to hop on quickly and record my joy.  I have a job interview in NJ on Tuesday that sounds very promising.  Training employees on Microsoft applications.  I am doubly qualified for this work.  Ok, shutdown time, the lightning is getting nearer. 

9:16 pm 
Friday night CRT.  I'm goin to bed shortly, it's just too pathetic, staring at the screen again when I should be enjoying live music, beer, and the company of fun people. 
    The storm passed rather quickly and I got online to do a bit of work.  I was going through some action figure pictures for a client and right through my lips popped, "Wow, he even has the 'Waltons!'"  The Huz was in the room and asked something that in the noise sounded like "What?" but actually was "In what?"  My giving the obviously inappropriate answer led us into a misunderstanding, at the end of which, once he found out the problem, prompted him to harpoon me as intellectually deficient or mentally unhinged.  I wasn't sitting still for that and let him know it, but of course that only prompted him to explode, then stalk off in a fit of rage. 
    We didn't make it to shul tonight.  I poked around and would just have made it there with the boys, but Moomie's shoes were lost and I did not find them in time.  By that time, Huz had warmed over last night's soup with some noodles added and was ready for us to eat.  I picked at it, then gathered the dishes after.  He wanted the computer.  Let him have it.  After I put one kids to bed, the other having gone on his own already, I took the leashes and the dogs outside.  Misha I put on the trolley system, but Keeps came for a walk with me. 
    The freshly washed air wove around the trees coolly.  Keeper didn't drag me about, or even pull hard.  The prongy collar, you see.  I hadn't gotten the chance to try it for a long walk yet.  He smelled a trail that stopped for a minute or so at every vertical object.  He discovered a frog that surprised him when it leapt away, postured a bit with a huge white shaggy canine on a trolley of his own, and rubbed noses with a couple pups in a fence.  Around the other side of the block, a man emerged from an RV with a brindle boxer, heading the same way we were but ahead by a good ways, so we followed at a distance until we got to our corner and needed to turn.  Down the low side of the block we stepped around the puddles, his chuff-whuffing making ripples over the water. 
    I was lonely, am lonely, bored, tired, frustrated, in the need of newness, something fresh, something fun, to fall asleep exhausted but content. 
    Instead I will go to bed beside a man I used to love, when he was a different man.  I hate that. 

18 Apr 4:28 pm 
I am falling asleep where I sit, am the only one awake just now, in the afternoon.  Someone from where the Huz works called this morning to confess to having broken something and needed him to come fix it.  He had been planning on mowing the lawn, and then we might have gone to the park.  To hurry things up a bit, once he left, I got to work on the yard. 
    The mower we had borrowed wasn't starting, despite all my fiddling with the throttle and cutoff, gas and oil.  I finally called him and found out the thing had a primer button somewhere for the carburetor, so a quick three squirts and it was ready to go. 
    Most of our yard is a sharp slope full of holes and ruts and lumps all obscured by the grass.  I got about 65% of it done by the time he got back, then raked as he polished off the rest.  Then, without any reason I can explain, I wanted to take the dogs and kids for a walk, and we did. 
    Keeps was a perfect gentleman, though we met lots of dogs and kids.  Oh I forgot to mention last night, we passed a yard that had a small dog in it, and the dog was barking, but as we got closer the bark suddenly changed.  It was as though someone were playing a stereo and had cut the volume almost all the way down and taken the bass completely out.  It sounded like a chihuahua from two miles away.  "Bew! Bew!" it yipped. 
    I have been thinking a lot on ugliness the past couple weeks.  My dear, sweet friend claims to be dreadfully ugly, but I have seen his pictures.  While I admit his appearance is unconventional, I don't find him ugly in the slightest.  His blue-green eyes are so radiant, they could carve marble.  His skin is luminescent, his hair seems silky, though it's hard to tell from the photos; he has a ponytail going. 
   I have been reading a lot of Cory Glen lately too, who also says he is ugly.  I have never seen a picture, but am inclined to believe him as he has been terribly burned.  But physical beauty has never been that big a deal to me.  I'd like to think that physical ugliness wouldn't be either.  I find much that is ugly about my own appearance, but others don't seem to mind. (cont.) 

19 Apr 12:42 pm 
(cont.)  It's very hard for me to say what I mean on this subject without using cliché or sounding trite.  Let me give an example. 
    The absolute ugliest person I ever met was this guy in my barracks.  Raffiani was highly opinionated, and the opinions were repulsive.  Everytime there was a conflict somewhere in the world, he wanted us to just nuke the whole area, make a glass parking lot, be done with it.  He wanted us to nuke today's Germany, in retribution for the Holocaust.  He loved to graphically describe the torturous deaths of noncombatants and children ("They carry the gene, the gene; their grandparents did it.  They could do it.  Kill em all.") in these scenarios, and these weren't the only topics he loved to spout about, just the two that stick out most strongly in my mind.  My roommate used to spend hours trying to talk some sense into him, but that was futile, and I knew it.  Everyone who knew him found him ignorant and hostile.  Repugnant. 
    On the outside, he was gorgeous, to drool for.  It didn't take long, though, for his sneer to seep through and ruin any pleasure his looks might have given.  He was ugly.  Hideously ugly. 
    This kind of ugliness I find much more disturbing than anything physical. 
    Cory Glen has a dark side.  I have a dark side.  We all do, but some of us are willing to actually take it out and look at it, while others try to hide it even from themselves.  There is a difference between having some ugliness on the inside and being ugly on the inside. 
    Russ used to tell me how ugly he was, before I met him.  He used to tell me he was monstrously fat with grey and thinning hair, and heavily wrinkled from far more mileage than years.  When I met him, he was somewhat fat, and grey, and wrinkled.  He wasn't ugly.  I didn't find him ugly.  I saw the twinkles in his eyes, and the warmth of his infectious smile.  But then we had a bond already, a friendship of many months, and when he spoke, I recognized my friend. 
    Do these things mean I can get past appearances when I already know the mind?  Maybe. 
    My ex was also very scarred, facially, and very thin with fleeing hair and dental problems.  He'd been in a horrible motorcycle accident, long before I met him, that had destroyed much of his face and hand.  He used to be my boss, and we worked closely on a great many projects, and the more I knew him, the sexier I found him.  He turned out to be a magnificent lover, and a helluva friend.  I enjoyed him on a lot of levels and through a lot of strange times.  He did not seem ugly to me until after he left me, ostensibly to take an overseas job, but in reality to live with his other wife.  He had forged the divorce papers he'd shown me.  He'd defrauded me into marrying him.  As I spoke on the phone to his other, first, only legal wife, finding all of this out, he became ugly to me.  In that instant. 
    These instances are not the only examples I could give, there are others. 
    This is really a very long-winded way to try and explain that I am attracted to Cory, because of his words and his feelings, and that I'd hope (and I believe) that his appearance wouldn't shake me up, if ever I saw him, which isn't likely since I don't see any opportunities for being in Texas coming up anytime within the foreseeable future.  So why am I worrying about this? 
    Because someone as deep and intriguing and attractive as Cory might be trapped inside a scarred shell in an apartment in my very own town, might be buying groceries in the very same store I do, and I might never discover it.  Because as often as I have overcome unusual physical appearances in the past, it's because I had some bridge.  I already knew the other person from online, or was in a situation where I had to work closely with that person, forcing me to get to know them.  Do I have the guts to make that bridge out of nothing?  I fear not.  And that is an ugliness in me. 

5:41pm 
Oh how disappointed I am.  The Gus sold the painting I loved so much, and he sold it for a tiny fraction of what I wanted to offer him for it.  It was the first thing to sell at the opening, which does not surprise me.  I should not be too sad, it was obvious that it would take me a long time to save the money that the painting was certainly worth.  I had no idea he would show it right away, and offer it so underpriced.  My loss.  I am heartbroken. 
    A dream from last night: it had been a spy novel multinational intrigue type of thing, with city-states and rulers in danger of assasination.  I had just managed to avert a disaster, earning the approval of my superior, a thin, older, English man.  We were rushing off to the next stage of the operation.  Somewhere in transit we had a moment somewhere, like a safe house, to catch our breath.  He suddenly was kissing my neck, my breast, his breathing fast and hot.  I was surprised and pleased and arched into him, returning his kisses, our hands wandering over each other.  We were instantly naked, as often happens in my dreams, and the feeling of skin on skin was dizzying.  I felt something entering me, curious but not unpleasant.  He murmured about how attractive I'd become to him, how seeing me so capably handle things increased the attraction enormously.  As we got hotter he stopped short and looked me in the eye, discomfort and concern on his face.  He was about to ask me something not knowing how I'd react.  "Later, if you don't mind, when it's crucial, I'd like to ask you to..."  He made a gesture with his index finger indicating a small circle, then poking it.  I took this to mean he wanted me to massage his prostate, from the inside.  I reassured him that I had no problem with it, to his great relief, and he attacked my nipples with even more ardent kisses.  As we shifted about, I could see that what he had put into me, and was stroking me with, was a tiny dildo, obviously made for anal stimulation.  Finally he entered me himself, filling me, and it was euphoric.  I knew the time was becoming critical, so when my hands wandered over his smooth cheeks, I sought out the tiny hole and began to gently massage it, preparing it for entry.  I felt it tense up in a peculiar way, and then to my horror I found something exiting!  "No!  Stop!  Wait!" I shouted, but he just continued defecating.  I leapt up and ran into the bathroom to wash my hands.  He came in with this wounded air of being unjustly persecuted, saying he was sorry about the accident, but I didn't have to make such a production out of it.  I told him that if indeed it was an accident, that was not what I minded, but that he hadn't tried in the least to warn me, to back away, anything. 
    I woke up very grossed out.