Sexy is the thing I try to get them to see me as after I win them over with my personality. - a quote from Miranda, off Sex and the City, that I feel applies to me.

In other news, a topic that gets revisted by bloggers every 6 months or so on average: if you post something publicly, then you can expect that at some point or another, chances are someone you don't want reading it might very well read it. This is why I have a paper diary; if I want to write about my sex life, my thoughts, my feelings or just something that happened in my life that I don't feel like sharing with all and sundry, I do so. Not online. Livejournal allows you the option of locking your posts to only specific people; Blogger allows you the option of having a password-protected page. There are many options available to anyone who wishes to have a degree of privacy and still maintain a public journal (don't the concepts go together well?).

Anyhow, that's all I have to say about that. In other news, ararrgggh. I was going to write a bit more, but at the same time, I just want it to die. Quite simply, it's your life and someone else's life, and it doesn't touch on me, so why would you care about me finding out or not? Don't understand, and don't really care about it, to be perfectly honest. I don't mean that in a bitchy sort of way, just in an honest one.

So yeah. I just finished reading a book entitled, 'Generation S.L.U.T.,' by Marty Beckerman. To begin, I'm going to quote the publisher's blurb:

"It’s Friday night. Do you know where your clothes are? A mesmerizing blend of journalism and fiction that recalls the wild styles of Hunter Thompson, Bret Easton Ellis, and Douglas Copeland, Generation S.L.U.T. is a no-holds-barred look at the sexual lives of teens today--who’s doing it and why. Reported from the battle zone by a nineteen-year-old who is there, living in the thick of this promiscuous world, and writing about it, experiencing it. No compromises, comparisons, or sweeping statements here, just a revelatory and brutally honest depiction of the current generation’s relationship to sex."

The book is set up in three parts, as it were, all intermingled: one part is facts and quotes from articles and interviews with random teens; one part is a series of anecdotes from the author's life; and the third part is a fictional story of a bunch of teenagers.

Now, all of these are set up in such a way as to make it seem as if all teenagers (from about 12 or 13 to 19, seems to be the capping age) are doing is dropping out of school, hating life and one another, having lots of sex, and feeling totally disconnected from life. The book refers to "generation 'y'", meant to be the sequel to Douglas Coupland's Gen Xers, and GenY is supposed to be made up of 19- to 24-year olds. The author is currently 20, I want to point out.

So, my friends, my fellow compatriots, my so-called fellow GenYers (also often called the MTV Generation, the Me Generation, the "Why?" generation, as in "why care about/do anything?")... do we fit this model? Admittedly you have to go by my vague description of the book in order to determine whether or not we belong, but...

I'm reminded of how, when I was a teenager, I fervently defended teenagers to adults, saying, "Hey, we're not all that bad!" and "Not all of us are out getting fucked up and passing out every weekend!" and here I am, a few years later, no further advanced... except now I critique teenagers, feel terrified of bringing children into the world, with our hyper-sexualized society, fucked-up social mores, economic uncertainty, poor healthcare, poor education and declining environment... and still feel the need to defend my generation.

Sometimes I look at people who are on television shows where their ages are revealed -- for example, Blind Date -- or look at actors and actresses who are my age, and I feel as though they're light-years ahead of me in terms of maturity. I look at myself, and I don't see someone who's coming up on 24-years old. I feel like I'm still a kid, and that's how I'll always be regarded. No one is going to look at me and see a grown-up, just another floundering kid trying to make sense of the world.

I have some friends who are the age I am now when I first met them, and I didn't necessarily see them as years ahead of me, although many of them were living on their own at that time and had been for awhile. Of course, I'm living on my own right now, so I can't really use that as an explanation or excuse. But now many of my friends are 27 and 28, some are married, engaged or in long-term relationships, working full-time and/or going to school... but I don't see them as older than me, I see them as my peers. Yet there are other people I'll meet who are the same age as them or possibly even younger, and they seem like adults. Spot's one of those; despite his being only 28, he felt like an adult to me. Weird perception things going on in my head, I gotta tell you.

I know when I turned 21, the same age UBFM was when we started dating, I thought, "Would I be able to date a 15-year old?" and my immediate reaction was, "Oh my fucking God, no." Yet he was able to without any bad feelings -- in fact, he was fucking proud of himself, I know. Hell, I worked at the same cafeteria as him for a few months, and, according to him (if memory serves; it might've been something I saw for myself), there were old guys there who would congratulate him on dating me, a 16-year old (to his 22). That makes me sick.

Argh. Sorry, the stories in that book started out bad and depressing and got systematically worse, so my perception is sort of fucked up at the moment. Not to mention revisting the morning's events (and learning a bit more) didn't help, which I did before I started writing this crazy stream-of-consciousness. Every now and then I read a book that totally fucks with me for a little bit; this one seems to have done it, and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita was another one that did for a few weeks. Hard to view anything properly when that goes on.

It seems whenever I have a really good something going on, I have to interrupt it and distract myself. Like, I wrote all of the above with no stopping except for digging up the URL to the book, and then I started looking at other webpages. Why? I have a spiel going on and I have the motivation to carry it through, so why stop? So I keep going.

I had my first running class yesterday. There are seven of us in the class, although only six showed up yesterday. We ran for about a half hour, and it was two minutes of running, followed by a minute of walking, then back to the running. I was feeling kinda huffy-puffy towards the end, but no cramps at all, and running with a water bottle in your hand isn't as hard as I thought it might be. My thighs were a little chafed by the stupid shorts I was wearing, but that's because I got all paranoid about my new running shorts and changed into my huge ones.

There are five girls in the group and one boy, and none of us seemed especially super-athletic, which is nice. On the way there, I was staying at the back of the pack, although I had to shorten my stride somewhat to keep from stepping on one girl's heels; the way back I was at the front, just because we flipped around. We chatted and so on while we ran (okay, jogged), and it seems like a good group. There are two members of the group that live within stone's throw of me, so I might even run into them (ha! ha! no pun intended) when I'm out doing my homework.

Oh yes, we have running homework. Basically, we're just supposed to get out for a run on Saturdays, and if we want, do some cross-training on Sunday. The instructor said we have to be careful not to overdo things when we first start, so I don't think I'll be incoporating running into my post-weights cardio until a little later on, but I will be going running on Saturdays. After all, there's gotta be a good reason to obey Thena's demands I not be able to sleep in, right? Right. Urgh. Demon spawn.

And on one of my little distraction episodes, I found this on Dear Abby, which addresses a column I wrote on the subject a little while ago...

DEAR ABBY: "Grossed Out in Florida" asked where older men "get the idea" they can date much younger women. For the answer to that question one need only look at the nearest movie theater marquee:

Harrison Ford (61) with Michelle Pfeiffer (45), Kristin Scott Thomas (43) or Anne Heche (34) -- a 16- to 27-year age gap.

Michael Douglas (59) with Famke Janssen (38), Frances McDormand (46) or Gwyneth Paltrow (31) -- a 13- to 28-year age gap.

Steve Martin (58) with Bonnie Hunt (39), Jean Smart (44) or Helena Bonham Carter (37) -- a 14- to 21-year age gap.

All of these relationships are presented as perfectly normal. Also, consider the fuss that was made about Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton in "Something's Gotta Give." How NICE it was to see contemporaries as a love interest! In reality, Diane is nine years younger than Jack. It's no wonder these men think that young girls will be interested because, hey, if it can happen in the movies, it can happen in real life, right? -- REALITY CHECKER, GURNEE, ILL.

DEAR REALITY CHECKER: Not only can it happen in real life -- it has: Humphrey Bogart married Lauren Bacall, Michael Douglas married Catherine Zeta-Jones, Warren Beatty married Annette Bening, Kevin Costner just married Christine Baumgartner, Harrison Ford is dating Calista Flockhart. And the reverse can be true: Let's not forget Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher!

The subject of the original letter was a waitress who gets lewd come-ons (getting her butt pinched, getting invited back to someone's house and so on) from men old enough to be her grandfather.

And on a tangent...

Wow, with one purchase of discounted furniture from Leon's (i.e., a damaged dresser that I paid $30 for, if memory serves), I became a "preferred customer." I love it, just like how my three-month status with Bell made me a "long-term customer." You people are full of horseshit, you really are. It's no wonder no one feels special or detects sincerity anymore because of stupid crap like this. Bleah. :P

Okay, too much time wasted doing nothing. Time to head to the gym and make the rest of my body sore (okay, so my legs aren't that bad, but I can tell I used them... not sure if it's from the lower body workout or just from the running). The joke that some of the girls in the class and I were making was that if running means we'll lose weight and look like the trainer running the class, we'll be all over it (she's tall and slim, whereas most of as are tallish, except for me, and carrying a bit of weight, or just not slim in the same way). :)