Old Tarts

For the past two days I have been simultaneously exuberantly happy about how things are going – my mid-thirties rock!- and slightly paranoid about some of things about which I am exuberantly happy. My mid-thirties are proving to be tarty, and while this is great fun, it also has me looking over my occasionally bare and enticing shoulder.

The paranoia started last night in my web design class. Every time I made eye contact with a guy in the room, in a small way I wondered: what if they think I am just here to pick up guys? What if no one takes me seriously because I am not obviously unavailable? It carried over into fiction class tonight. I told the instructor that I have to leave early next week because I am going to a reading, and against my better judgment, I told him that it was my alter ego reading a dirty story. The voice was louder now: no one is going to take me seriously because I only write about sex. No one is going to take me seriously because of my socks (otk black, gray, and pink argyle), and because I don’t wear a ring on my left hand.

(Digression: A short skirt and tights is not slutty. A short skirt and tights with argyle otk socks over the tights starts to step into slutty territory. This is a mystery of aesthetics to me, that I was able to take something from plain to borderline slutty by adding another layer of clothing. Argyle clothing, no less, that gets racier by being bigger. Argyle trouser socks: not slutty. Argyle otk socks: you get the idea.)

I know this is ridiculous. For one thing I do write about more than sex. For another, Updike infused sex into everything, and he’s Updike. Anne Rice wrote porn under two different pseudonyms. (I have never read an Anne Rice book, but I know who she is, and not because of porn.) And lastly, who cares what anyone else thinks?

That said, my mid-thirties are still damn tarty. Presently, this is what is exciting to me.

1. Getting my prize for the wordporn contest.

2. Reading my dirty story for an audience (and by the looks of it, a BIG audience).

3. Burlesque bootcamp!

4. HTML5

5. CSS3

6. Digging deeper into fiction writing and sharpening my skills.

Ok, so I guess this really only makes me half tarty. It’s a big half, though, and includes the half that picks out my socks.