Trena

Those are actually not spiky feathers at all! They sure do look like it, though, and that's likely the point- if I were a raptor looking down upon a pincushion, I would think twice about grabbing it with my bare feet.

However, it's a ruse! Just a marking on a feather

hee hee

debates i didn't know existed + a very humorous distinction

hostiles = antagonists that Murderbot is worried about 😳

I’ve always been a serial monogamist and my shortest long term relationships clocked in at three years. So perhaps that’s why when I finally broke it off with my ex I went insane on dating. Part of it was definitely just that between anxiety and loneliness I wanted to fill up my time.

This happened when I was living alone for the first time, no roommates, just me and my little cat Leeloo. I didn’t want to come home to an empty house so instead I set up dates.

Most of these were disastrous. I’m not everyone’s cup of tea and I had a lot more first dates than second because they’d seen enough, including the one where people aggressively complimented me.

But after a few months I had four people I was seeing simultaneously. I was up front with all of them that things were not exclusive, and they all agreed, so no infidelity took place here, just a lot of hijinks.

Here’s who was on the dating roster:

• An apprentice woodworker that we’ll call Jill. I honestly thought at 26 years old that her being 21 wasn’t a problem age gap and I quickly learned that there was a vast gulf of both maturity and life experience between us. Jill described herself as “heteroflexible” and had just dumped her first boyfriend to flirt it up with me.

• A married woman looking for a friends with benefits. We’ll call her Alice. I insisted on meeting her husband first to be sure I wasn’t part of a cheating mess and he gave me his blessing when I stayed over at her house. Years later when he and Alice had divorced I would go on to sell him and his new fiancée an engagement ring and we both realized at the end how we knew each other and it was wildly awkward. Alice was nice, but a hardcore vegan who insisted I brush my teeth if I so much as ate string cheese before I could kiss her. She was also unhappy in her marriage and was feeling out if I’d want to get serious.

• A bartender dubbed Snakebites, so called because of her signature piercings. She cooked me a steak so raw it was still mooing and some of the best asparagus I’d ever had. In our singular sexy encounter she bit my nipple and I never got over it. Really don't bite someone if you don't know their preference and work up in pressure. We weren’t terribly compatible but neither of us were willing to admit it yet. Truthfully I considered still dating her solely because I desperately wanted her bathroom. It had all black tile, black toilet, black sink, a rain shower in the corner and a jacuzzi tub. I may not have loved her but god I loved that bathroom.

And finally,

• My beloved, who I would go on to marry, who was dealing with a lot of personal stuff at the time. Obviously that meant I liked them the best of all the people I was seeing because we were both disasters at the time.

So that’s the cast of this little misadventure. Now, our story begins with Jill.

Jill was someone who heightened my anxiety. Each of the three times she came to my home she brought and left more stuff. A self help book, a ramen kit, the entire Teen Titans collection of DVDs. It was like she was trying to move in. She also liked to deride my taste in things, frequently calling me a pleb when I mentioned a band or show I liked.

She was working on a gorgeous little decorative table in her woodworking program. The main wood for the top had a beautiful dapple of knots like jaguar spots, and when she showed me a picture I exclaimed how pretty it was.

“Do you want it?”

“Oh- I mean it’s lovely, I wouldn’t mind having it, but you should sell it and make some money!”

But she was adamant. She’d give me the little side table. At about this time, Alice was starting to get awfully lovey for a FWB. I knew she wasn’t happy with her husband but I also knew we were not a good fit. Fun fact: Alice and her husband were step siblings with a pretty hefty age gap. They got together when he stumbled upon a kink photo shoot she’d done with vegetables. None of their family was happy about the relationship but they weren’t related by blood so it was fine.

So I was fending off more overt romantic advances from Alice, and feeling increasingly like I needed to break things off with Jill. Snakebites wasn’t ever initiating communication and I decided to pull a lot of plugs at once.

I ghosted Snakebites, told Alice that I thought we should cool it, and in a move worthy of a rom-com I asked my beloved if I could pretend we were exclusive to put off Jill. They agreed and I texted Jill to let her know that I was no longer single.

I was not prepared for Jill’s response. She. Was. Devastated. She flew off the handle. She’d just been waiting for the right time to tell me how she felt about me! How dare I do this to her!

What about the table?!

Back before I met my girlfriend I was very promiscuous, I was dating several people at once. One of those people was Alice who was married- we were just friends with benefits. I made a point to meet her husband before anything happened because I wanted to be aboveboard with everyone in the situation.

We dallied for a bit before she ended up leaving him for another guy and moving to Arizona.

Today I was helping a couple with an engagement ring. We had a nice time and spent like two hours together finding her ring and diamond, and the whole time it was just niggling at the back of my mind that he looked so familiar, something about him was so familiar. This is exceedingly unusual for me as I tend to be face blind.

Before they left I was like, “I feel like I know you but I don’t know how?”

And we started brainstorming ideas. I asked him if he'd worked in mattress sales and he said no, he sold warehouse equipment. That sparked a tiny memory and as I was frowning trying to chase why it sounded familiar his eyes widened and he said, “Oh- you were Alice’s friend.”

I stared at him in horrified recognition, desperately wishing I hadn't asked.

I will attempt.

The first thing you need to know about me is that I love people giving me food. This will be relevant. Most of my life I’ve hovered around 90lbs and I think that contributed to the generosity I’ve experienced, people wanted to help fatten me up. I looked like I’d never been fed in my life despite consuming absurdly large portions at each meal.

I also have starving orphan energy when I look at food. I’ve been handed a napkin bundle of Olive Garden breadsticks out of a purse, and been offered a piece of a customers sushi roll. I never ever turn it down. I. Love. People giving me food.

So years ago before meeting my wife I’m on this first date with a girl at a nerdy restaurant. We’re waiting for our food and playing some kind of off brand Clue while trying to get to know each other. A man is sitting across the aisle from us, dining alone and playing on his laptop.

Suddenly a guy pops up next to me. I looked up in surprise, expecting to see the server with my burger but instead it’s a very awkward man wringing his hands. “Excuse me- you’re- you’re so beautiful. I don’t mean to interrupt- but is it possible I could get your number?”

I went bright red, and given that my complexion hovers around vampiric I was roughly the same shade as a fire truck. “I’m- that’s really nice but I’m on a date? Right now? With her?” I gestured helplessly toward my date.

I’ve never been someone who gets approached like that and I had no idea how to react. He looked mortified at this revelation. “I’m so so sorry- I had to take a shot, you’re just so pretty.”

To my further befuddlement my date chimed in with a flirty smile and agreed, “She really is beautiful.”

My blood pressure ticked another notch closer to an active volcano and I tried to smile while being at an utter loss of what you’re supposed to say when two people have their entire focused admiration on you. It was worse than stage fright, I didn’t even have lines I could potentially remember that would save me, I was adrift in this foreign place with no hope of rescue.

And then.

The man across the aisle, who had been observing said, “Hey man, I get it, if I didn’t have a girlfriend I would have made the same mistake, she’s gorgeous.”

If you’ve never had three relative strangers all staring at you saying genuinely nice things you have no idea how mortifying it is. It was not sincere compliments, it was an act of war. I wanted to crawl under the table or batter my way through the wall to escape, but I just sweated profusely with a fixed smile and said thank you until he went away.

When it was finally just my date and I again and we had gone back to cordially not speaking to the man across the aisle I still remained rattled and nervous, waiting for the next embarrassing thing to happen.

Every time I’ve told this story I’ve gotten eye rolls, but for me it was a sudden and bizarre shift towards a terrifying amount of scrutiny on me. I’m socially anxious and had no idea how to navigate what was happening and I’d genuinely wanted to cry in the moment.

The date progressed. We ate our food and I slowly relaxed from the intense need to flee. As we wound down the man next to us got something delivered to his table. Something that smelled absolutely divine.

Now normally, I wouldn’t interrupt a solo diner. But this man had been part of embarrassing the ever loving shit out of me and I knew he was kindly disposed towards me. So I asked, “What is that?”

“It’s their deep fried cheesecake bites.”

I looked at them. I have said before, I project a pitiful air of fixated longing when I look at food I want. Eight years with my beloved wife and I have never been able to turn off the energy I get when I desire something delicious that someone else possesses.

This man, eager and friendly said, “Would you like one?”

It was instant. I happily agreed and leaned across the aisle to share, forgiving him every moment of embarrassment for his willingness to share this delectable treatsie with me. “Make sure to try it with the dipping sauce!” I added the raspberry dipping sauce and it was absolutely delicious.

Later, I would go home and relay this story to Betty who I was living with at the time. Her face transformed into utter horror when I told her about his offer. “You didn’t just take that man’s food while you were on a date! What did she say to that?”

"Wie viele Farben hat ihr Wappen? Mehr als zwei? Sorry, das ist mit einer Sondersteuer belegt. Ach, und euer Wappentier ist ein Fabelwesen? Da müssen wir natürlich einen Aufpreis berechnen"

Aus irgend'nem Grund lieben Larper es nämlich, wenn man sie sehr offensichtlich über den Tisch zieht. Zumindest spielen sie meistens überschwänglich und mit voller Begeisterung mit, auf so überzogene Art dass es zu einer Monty Python Szene wird. Wenn wir alle so enthusiastisch wären sobald es um echten Papierkram geht wären Behördengänge nur halb so anstrengend.

Die Steuer, die hiermit berechnet wurde, war vollkommene Willkür. Just sort of saying numbers that felt right

She exchanged woman’s for man’s attire, and, no longer the most modest of maidens, began the life of a warlike rover. Enrolling in her service many maidens who were of the same mind, she happened to come to a spot where a band of rovers were lamenting the death of their captain, who had been lost in war; they made her their rover captain.