VIRGO It's like the people around you are talking in code. This is an unhealthy tongue. You will open the communication and find a way to coexist happily with one another.

I hope so. This temperment of mine is hard on me and on others. I woke up remembering that I simply walked away leaving my share of a whole table's dinner bill, with Sunnie trailing me since we'd driven together so she left hers too since she hardly had a choice, and I didn't actually manage a full "bye" as I did that. I wasn't feeling "bye", I was feeling nothing but "getoffame".

Well, unlike some people I know, I do not believe that a standoffish temperment like this makes you an island. You just have to be forthright and forthcoming, first and foremost by honoring your self and being clear about what you do and don't want in relationships of all kinds. I'll just have to suck it up, make amends on the money, and explain: "don't touch me, bar or no bar, friend or no friend, I'll touch you first if it comes to that, if I ever want to, which I probably just won't, and if you think that sucks worse for you than it does for me, you're wrong." Or something like that.

Meanwhile, the whole incident inspired me to share some sorta related thoughts with a couple other people, honest communication indeed is what I'm trying to cough up . . . I wrote to LMG this morning and he wrote back immediately "yes, I totally understand, (the temperment thing), I always feel bad that you're so nice to me because I can't repay it". Now he'll feel better knowing I do it cz he's an asshole like me some kinda way . . . "assholes" aren't assholes, they're members of my sub-species, and as such they are potentially very dear to me, in relationships of all kinds. Everybody has told me I should just shove my hand down that man's pants or not, but I simply haven't purely wanted to, and now that a mutual friend of ours is all over me like stink on shit it's damn helpful to be able to point to that and be understood. "Nice" and "I want you to touch me" are not the same thing, or they're not reliably the same thing, they might overlap, or they might not, it's iffy. I can explain these things, but it takes someone else built some sort of "modest" finnicky-tempered to empathize.

Now, I'm going to go do what I am good at: Work. (And while I was at that, commence the money portion of the custody stuff . . I'm on a bit of roll with the clarity thing, all around.)