The 'Perfect' Relationship

 Adventure Girl searches for her perfect match

‘I have to keep telling myself that while this relationship seems perfect, it’s an illusion.’

Like most people, when I first meet someone, I try present my best. I hide my fears and insecurities, my frustrations, my limitations. I present the fun-loving sexy side of me: the person I want to be. This phase can last days, weeks, months, depending on the situation.

While I’m not ‘in love’ with the person I’m dating, or when I don’t want anything more, I like the person I am. I’m fairly relaxed, I enjoy my own space, I don’t make too many demands, and I keep things fun.

The moment I start wanting more, seeing this person as a potential primary partner, I become needy, demanding and picky – or worse, if I’m ‘in love’, I become insecure.

Insecure Me is every lover’s nightmare. I turn into HER, that jealous, psychotic bitch. Suspicious and questioning, I’m the girl who wants you to tell her over and over that you love her, that she’s sexy, that no one can replace her. But no matter what you tell her, it’s never enough. Never enough, because she had to ask first, because you used the wrong words, because the need in her is too great for you to fill.

I become someone I don’t like and don’t care to be.

On the other hand, if I’m with someone who makes me feel secure – either because I am not ‘in love’, and therefore not invested, or because they have managed to tame the jealous, psychotic bitch ME – I can not be needy or clingy. I can give my lover all the space in the world, but just as importantly, take the space that I need.

When I’m with someone who makes me feel comfortable, I don’t need to adopt euphemisms. I can be direct and articulate. I can have the difficult conversations without fear. But if I don’t feel comfortable, I struggle to hear my lover’s needs and to voice my own.

It’s the same with sex. I love being crazy, losing myself completely, but if I’m with someone inhibited, or someone whose opinion matters too much, I close up, and suddenly it’s all vanilla, or worse, there is no action at all.

These past six months or so, I have been exploring a more casual type of relationship, one where I don’t invest too much, where I actively choose to keep things fun and sexy, where I can offer friendship and support, where I can build my lover up, and only bring issues into the bedroom when I absolutely have to. I have been able to keep my jealousies and insecurities in check; I don’t allow negative emotions to activate; I have trained my brain to shy away. I have no right to feel this emotion; this is not my place. If I even start to feel jealous in a casual relationship, my internal dialogue turns the emotion away, rationalises it, and keeps it in check.

If my lover needs me, I am there, but in a casual situation, they will not demand too much. Similarly, I will ask the minimum from them, but take comfort knowing they are there when I do. While in this situation I have sought friends to support me, rather than demanding all my support from a single primary partner, and I have found strength within myself simply because I have had to.

This is the ‘perfect relationship’ my F-Buddy described: ideal, perhaps, but also, an illusion.

For some reason, when I am in a primary relationship, the same check-and-balance mechanisms seem to fail. They are bypassed by the part of my brain that says, ‘this is my partner; this is the other half of me, they must share and share all; I am entitled to more.’ I need them to love the other sides of me – see me at my worst and still want to be with me, love me unconditionally.

But why should a partner have to see me at my worst? Why should they have to pick me up again and again? I am not their responsibility. They are not a parent-figure who can put the band-aid on and kiss it all better. They are not my ‘other half’; they are their own person to whom I happen to have chosen to commit. Don’t they deserve to see the best in me, not only the worst?

I start to wonder if it is possible in a ‘full’ relationship to make the same choices I have made in casual ones, to keep the insecurity checks and balances in place, to make a commitment to bringing the best of myself to the relationship, to keep the space fun and sexy, and only bring the serious when it is needed. I wonder if it is possible to be less co-dependent, to maintain the strong friendships, self-reliance and strength I’ve established while being single. Because don’t I deserve to see the best in me, too?

Some people write lists and have images in their minds of their ‘perfect’ relationship, their ‘perfect’ partner. I’m not one of those people, but lately I’ve been wondering if perhaps I should be, mentally noting the types of people who bring out the best in me and the kind who bring out the worst.

But how does that translate into a list? And should it really be up to a partner to provide this?

That’s when I realise I am not looking for the perfect partner, the ideal relationship. I am not making a checklist of who I want them to be, but of who I am when I am with them. In a long-term relationship, a partnership, it's impossible to keep your worst at bay. It's part of who you are. But if I can make a commitment to being a person I want to be, and find someone who encourages me to be that, surely I am most of the way there?

Because it’s not just about choosing a partner, a relationship; it’s about choosing who I want to be, regardless of who I am with.

--AG

When the truth lies

Adventure Girl takes stock of a toxic truth

‘Just now I held up the fingers of my hand to you. You saw five fingers. Do you remember that?’
     ‘Yes’
     O’Brien held up the fingers of his left hand, with the thumb concealed.
     ‘There are five fingers there. Do you see five fingers?’
     ‘Yes.’
     And he did see them, for a fleeting instant, before the scenery of his mind changed. He saw five fingers, and there was no deformity. Then everything was normal again, and the old fear, the hatred and the bewilderment came crowding back again. But there had been a moment – he did not know how long, thirty seconds, perhaps – of luminous certainty, when each new suggestion of O’Brien’s had filled up a patch of emptiness and become absolute truth, and when two and two could have been three as easily been five, if that were what was needed. -- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four.

‘For a compulsive liar, telling the truth is very awkward and uncomfortable while lying feels right.’ -- The Truth About Deception.

'Even when confronted with the cold facts, a true compulsive liar will never admit the truth. Attempts to make the person do so will result in further lying and perhaps even emotional outbursts designed to deflect attention from the lying.' -- Love to Know, Symptoms of Compulsive Liars.

It started with small things. We met and exchanged stories. He seemed open and artless, confiding a lot in a very short space of time. I opened up in return, drawn in; it was like I already knew him, or part of him, from somewhere before.

His history was touching and incredible. Perhaps too incredible. The way he spoke reminded me of a child who needs to exaggerate in order to feel special, to feel needed. The child in him spoke to the child in me.

He wasn’t much to look at: brown hair, brown eyes, generally innocuous; it was his wit which caught and held me. I guess you could say we bounced. His energy matched mine and his flirtatious banter had me wanting more.

As we spent more time together I noticed he would forget things. Things we’d done together, things he’d told me. A memory problem, he explained, from a childhood spent on Ritalin; later he blamed various injuries he’d sustained, injuries that also explained his chronic migraines and mysterious aches – symptoms I have since identified as withdrawal.

He admitted to having taken drugs in the past, but not for a long time. His medicine cabinet told another story. I quickly learned not to take anything from his ever-evolving store without examining it first – that box of ‘Panamax’ was as likely to contain OxyContin as Paracetamol.

We continued dating, exchanging more stories. I was having trouble reconciling the person he described then with the person he presented now. Trying to see the path his life had taken was virtually impossible. It wasn’t a progression, an evolution; he appeared to have been Person A at the same time as being Person B, and also Person C, when each personality was entirely incompatible. I didn’t need a timeline, I needed a Venn diagram!

Anytime I questioned him, an explanation toppled forth. Whatever the circumstance, he was always the victim; his name change (witness protection), his scattered work history (avoiding child support for a child he later ‘proved’ wasn’t his), the estranged family (responsible for his messed up childhood), the list goes on. He presented himself in one way, but behaved in another entirely. And another. And another. I joked that I would never know which ‘him’ I was going to see, but putting up with the anxiety his unpredictability caused, his extreme shifts of mood, wasn’t all that funny.

Still I stayed. He excited my imagination. He was crazy and sensitive and fun.

He was also selfish, vain, and a vindictive coward.

Over time I saw the many different faces he presented to many different people. He took care to keep his friendship groups separate. I was the exception, allowed to meet a selected few people from different circles of his life. It was enough for the cracks to become gaping holes. Stories he’d told me about them, and that they told me about him, didn’t add up. And it was little things, sometimes, things that shouldn’t even matter, like the cost of a ticket, who had said what, or where he spent his Sunday afternoon. Other lies were more significant, evidence of cheating, of misrepresenting our relationship, or the type of relationship he’d shared with others. Social networking made matters worse. I could see his interactions, his activities online: a picture at odds with his version of reality.

By now my gut was constantly screaming. A part of me knew it couldn’t last. I kept forcing fights, picking at old wounds like scabs. It wasn’t a question of whether I would leave, it was a question of when.

I could see how messed up he was, but more importantly, how messed up I was. It was as though he had this wound carved somewhere so deep in him, that was somehow so familiar in me. In his damaged psyche I found the mirror I had sought.

He threw tantrums and had violent meltdowns. I was at once repelled and drawn further in. Somehow this was fascinating. Always there was just enough to keep and hold me. It was as though he could sense when I was about to leave, and so tossed me a treat, a glimpse of the ‘him’ I knew to be in there somewhere, if only I could convince him to let it surface.

When things got too bad I would pull back, and he would say, ‘You’re the only good thing in my life.’ He had a way of making me feel that if I didn’t stay and be exactly what he wanted, another would quickly take my place. I knew no other could take his place with me.

Friends would want to know why, why did I stay? When he was at his worst, I would reply, ‘As soon as I get him to a psych, I’ll leave.’ When I was at my worst, it was, ‘I’m scared if I walk away he won’t follow.’

‘In some ways, you’re the better, more rational part of me,’ he once wrote. I know now it was partly self-hate that kept me there. Loving the worst parts in him was a way to accept those parts of me. If I could forgive the liar, the cheat, the histrionic, narcissistic, selfish, wounded, hurtful, nasty him, see those traits and love in spite of them – even because of them – I could forgive and heal those parts in me. But how could I explain this to my friends and family, that the worse he treated me, the more I loved him, when I didn’t even understand it myself?

I only knew that something was keeping me there, and that as long as I was there, I had to reconcile the fragments and the lies that simply didn’t add up. And so I went digging, trying to find independent sources that verified what I knew to be true. I needed the facts to line up, to turn my Venn diagram into something that worked.

It was dangerous and thrilling, fuelling an intense anxiety that became like a drug. I was searching to find the missing pieces that would somehow make sense of it all. I became the detective who can't rest until the mystery is solved. He was my mystery.

Afterwards, in my shame, I confessed my discoveries. He made me feel guilty and irrational for questioning things that were patently untrue. Yet I could be holding hard evidence that proved his lies, that showed who he was and who he wasn’t, and still he would explain it away. Because in his fractured mind he could hold multiple identities, multiple realities, and believe them all. He was using Doublethink, and I was the one going insane.* This was not a mirror I could continue to see.

In my desperate refusal to leave, I developed mechanisms for dealing with his behaviour, with this ever-shifting reality. I made excuses for him, to myself, and to others. The big lies were ones he needed to tell himself, and the little ones...well, maybe I could live with those.

Now I know my anxiety wasn’t about suspicion and mistrust; I was suffering from prolonged cognitive dissonance** which doesn’t let up until the mind can reconcile or purge it. Even now, I replay rusted conversations in my mind, making an inventory of all the facts I’ve gathered, the conclusions I’ve drawn, fantasising about reaching the point where reality lines up, when I can say, ‘See? Here. THIS is the truth,’ and have everyone acknowledge it.

I was digging not to find the truth for myself, but because I needed him to tell me that he knew all along he was holding only four fingers, that I wasn’t crazy, that he drove me to act crazy, and believe it.

I needed him to say, ‘I lied.’


--AG

P.S. I got him to see a psych in the end. And he didn’t follow.

*This phenomenon can also be described as 'Gaslighting'. According to Wikipedia:

Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse in which false information is presented to the victim with the intent of making them doubt their own memory and perception. It may simply be the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred, or it could be the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim.

See also Robin Stern’s, ‘Are you in a gaslighting relationship?’, published on May 19, 2009.
 
**According to Wikipedia:

Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance. They do this by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and actions... Dissonance is also reduced by justifying, blaming, and denying. It is one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology.

The Rules of the Game

This is actually the first piece I wrote for Rhonda Perky's Bits, but held off publishing for obvious reasons. It came to mind just now given I am re-entering the Game, hopefully this time, better equipped!

Happy reading.
--AG

 

'Six months in a leaky boat'

Adventure Girl learns how to swim

So you’re in this relationship, and it’s had a bit of a rocky start, travelled some rough seas, but finally you’ve reached calmer waters, and you can see land up ahead.

In real terms, this is the point where you know you love them, and they love you back. They say it and they show it and you feel it. You’re floating, and it’s thrilling, and it’s peaceful. Then BAM.

The storm.

Out of nowhere you’re throwing a 15-year-old tantrum, all the while aching for them to hold you, to reassure you, to carry you to shore.

Of course they don’t. You’re behaving like a child.

It gets worse. You panic. You’re grasping. You don’t just want to be rescued; you’re drowning and feel like you can’t get to the shore without them.

But they pull away. If you’re lucky they offer you a life-raft, but most times they’re reaching for one for themselves.

‘See?’ you tell yourself. They don’t love you, not really.

The storm might come in the form of that nagging thing they once told you that still doesn’t quite add up, or yet another text message from the Ghost of Shaggers’ Past. You ask AGAIN for an explanation, you want to know AGAIN why she is texting him. Not, as he supposes, to find the worst in him, to prove that he’s lying, cheating, but to be reassured that he’s not.

It’s a test not of him, but of his love for you. You’re looking for cracks and testing if the boat is watertight.

Because can he really love you? I mean, REALLY? Love YOU? Doesn’t he know who you are underneath it all? Won’t he run screaming when he finally discovers the truth, when he finally sees who YOU are?

So you push and you squeeze and you test, but it’s not about not trusting him, it’s about not believing in you.

If you think of the relationship as like being on a leaky boat, you see yourself running around trying to plug and test every last hole. But when you test the holes, you put more pressure on them, and most times make them bigger. Do it too often and chances are there will be so many holes the ship will sink.

The other part of you, the secret part, doesn’t just test the holes that are already there. This part wants to be sure that the boat can withstand an attack. This part steers the ship into the storm instead of away from it, to see if you can weather it, and punches new holes to see if together you can plug them up and keep afloat. Eventually, if you punch enough holes, or steer into enough storms, you’ll both be grasping for life rafts.

Deep down, you know where the fear comes from, a history of sunken boats as long as the Shipwreck Coast. Too many people have been in love with you, but not loved you. Because they didn’t know you, didn’t see you. They saw an idea of you. You felt like a fraud and it never worked out. Because the more they tried to love you, the more you were convinced that they didn’t. Or rather, couldn’t. Because they never saw who you really were. Never saw the rocks beneath the surface until you rammed your boat into them.

But now you’ve found someone different. Someone who sees, who knows. Who has seen your flaws, and still loves, just as you have seen his. He can even tease you about them and make you laugh at yourself. This time you want it to be different. You want to BE different.

You’ve learned your lesson.

Instead of trying to plug and test every possible gap, instead of punching new holes, you will try to accept that nothing is watertight, that the ship can have a few cracks in it, and still stay afloat.

Because even if you do manage to seal the boat completely, there’s no guarantee it won’t one day break down. The motor could simply run out of steam.

And if it does? You might be battered by the sea and swallow water until you choke, but you will make it onto shore. You’ve done it before and you can do it again. And again. And again. You have a life raft, and a vest, and you know how to swim.

-AG

why Wing Men are more fun

Adventure Girl learns a lesson on dating in-the-flesh

Have you ever been out on the town, keeping an eye out for possibles, as they hunt you, but when you finally get your chance to meet, talk, drink (and hopefully a bit more), with your Target, you end up spending the night talking to his best mate?

The best mate is most likely his 'Wing Man', on a mission to talk your Target up, break the ice, and keep you interested, all without making a move himself.

Now there's nothing inherently wrong with this. In fact, it helps you as much as your Target, particularly if you're as shy and hopeless at talking to strangers without a bottle and a half of Sauv Blanc in you as me. The Wing Man is easy to talk to. He tells you the pertinent details, like where your Target is spending the night, what he pretends to do for a living, and what he is posing as for the evening.

You play along, make up something equally as banal that you do for a living. I usually go for the zookeeper or fluffer, or a fluffer at the zoo. This interaction gives you the advantage of appearing fun and flirtatious without putting your skills directly to the test. The Wing Man has no vested interest in you, and so can be as absurd as you are prepared to go along with.

But there's the crux. You realise several drinks into the night that you might actually prefer the Wing Man. Hell, your target has barely said two words to you. They're just standing there like the undertaker their best mate has proclaimed them to be. And you're left chatting, laughing and flirting with someone who is not only off-limits under the Wing Man rules, but is more than likely already taken (hence their willingness to play WM)!

And so you leave without your man-fluff on your arm, and possibly even without having given over your phone number (false or otherwise) with some fond memories but an empty bed, ready to meet your next potential Target the following week... as long as their WM doesn't prove more fun.

-AG

A lesson in taste

Adventure Girl learns it's all about the boy

'See that guy in the pin-stripes? The one who looks like he's got his shit together?'

My friend nudges me. I follow her gaze to the high-powered, stiff-shouldered, beefy suit with a cheese-board chin, who despite spending his life under the fluorescent lighting of the 35th floor, miraculously manages to maintain a tan.

'That's who you should be dating.'

'Wow. He's hot.' Except I'm not watching the after-work suit, I'm watching the gangly bar-tender. Pale, slightly effeminate ('arty', if you prefer), struggling to fill an undersized op-shirt.

Eyebrows raised – I’m sprung. 'That's the kind of guy I would have dated in my early twenties.'

(This is the same friend who sent me a link to datingpsychos.com, so clearly she has an inflated opinion of my taste).

She's right, of course.

But there must be something, some primal part of my make-up that believes it will benefit by sprogging up with someone barely capable of catching a spider, let alone whisking me away from the clutches of an over-sized tiger. I'm also one of the least maternal people I know, so perhaps my survival instinct just isn't that strong.

Or maybe it's that my mould was cut catching the bus at thirteen with my first pasty crush. Mmm that concave chest and scrawny arms, that alabaster English lack-of-tan, drifting bohemian-like from art class to orchestra...

‘What is it with you and pasty boys?’ another friend wants to know.

I delve into my psyche in new and uncomfortable ways, say something about non-threatening physicality and a prancing father...

'No!!!'

'Too much?’

‘Wrong much! I want to understand the attraction, the appeal. See what you see.'

'Oh! You want pasty porn!'

‘Yes. Well, sort of'.’

But how do you explain the subtleties of attraction? It's an imagined sensation, like a memory-scent.

For some it’s the appeal of an I-can-work-with-my-hands tool-belt, the rescue-me-dominate-me uniform. For others it’s the I-can-take-you-on-that-cruise-with-diamonds power-suit.

But not for me.

I long to see a guy who will embrace a guitar, a microphone, a keyboard, not arse-sniff their field-mates in an animalistic neck-throng. I want someone who will attack a blank page or a canvas, fill it with mind-spray, not piss up a wall playing fisticuffs. Give me elbow patches, English-department glasses and an op-shop corduroy suit, or a sweaty black T with mussed up hair.

I describe the line of a narrow waist, the feel of limbs encompassing without the push and shove of intrusive convex beef-cake. A gentleness – not weak, or passive, but free from inflated aggression. A hardness that yields... or something... (I’m drowning in clichés here).

Because when it comes right down to it, I like my catalogue cast.

I tip back my glass and head for the bar. 'More suits for you,' I say.

-AG

When like meets like

Christine Priestly shares why you should never date a writer...

Over the years I have watched lovers watch me 'in progress' during one writing fit or another. Working to deadline, real or imagined, letting my body moulder. During these fits, food becomes sustenance, sex a kind of manic release, and excercise something you do when your retinas begin to burn. You shower and dress only when you are forced to leave the house, and any outside contact seems alien and slightly awkward. You also, oddly enough, lose your ability to speak. Your verbal vocabulary vanishes into incoherence, and you struggle to maintain the most basic conversation.

These are things I have known about myself for years, but struggled to make known to and understood by my friends, family, and partners. All they see is an anti-social, ill-tempered, crazed bitch who lives on stale crackers and refuses to get out of her manky pyjamas for stretches at a time. How often have I caught myself saying, 'I'll be human again soon, I promise.'

More recently I have had the opportunity to witness this from the other side.

My lover - a fellow writer - has attracted the interest of a publisher, so for the past month my phone calls have become rude interruptions, Saturday nights have been spent in the throes of lap-top passion, and I have been haunted by a vague scent-impression of male deodorant and the image of my lover wearing something other than cruddy track-pants.

I’d love to say that tumultuous madness is part of our charm.

'You're lucky I didn't tell you to fuck off for an entire two weeks,' he told me.

He's right; in his shoes I might have done the same.

I find this curiously alluring. We develop our own habits, our own process, but the one thing we share is obsession. In the lunatic hours of the morning we call it a hobby, a craft, a desire, but the reality is it's so much more.

...And I thought our self-absorbed delicate egos were the things to watch.

-CP

‘No strings, yes please…’

Rhonda Perky goes under-the-covers to blow a load over Red Hot Pie.

So you’re keen to find Mr No-Strings-Attached for some regular fun, or maybe a Mr One-Night-Stand for an all night scratch? Forget the hit and miss of bars and clubs, friends of friends, or playing chief bridesmaid yet again. With dedicated online hook-up sites like 'Red Hot Pie' and 'Adult Matchmaker', you can be shagging yourself silly in no time.

To begin, set up a profile. Give yourself a username that expresses your personality, such as ‘hottitties’, ‘kokraver’ or ‘wetnwild’. Stuck for ideas? Try browsing existing members first. If your faves are already taken, don’t lose heart, get creative with your spelling, or use the tried and tested method of adding ‘69’ to an existing username.

To maximise your chances of meeting Mr Right-Away, give yourself a convincing persona as a walking, talking, f*ck machine, always wet and ready to go (think late-night TV commercials for the sad-and-lonely).

Next, provide your specifications including cup size, a description of your pubic hair, whether you practice safe sex ‘for all activities’, not at all, or only ‘if required’, your sexual interests (nipple play, anal play, dogging, etc), fetishes (role play, S&M), and what you’re looking for (men, women, couples, group sex, MMF, FFM, TV/TS), attached or otherwise. Go all out. No matter how depraved and unrealistic, users will be convinced.

Apparently ‘profiles with pictures get more hits’, so the next step is to give yourself a suitable body. Just a single body part, an arse, a boob, whatever, will do the trick. In fact, the less shown the better. A pair of perts, nothing more than a c-cup, will say enough about you as a person for over a hundred users to want to meet you within 24 hours.

If you’ve done your homework and put the effort into your profile – your ‘handle’ and profile pic are priceless here – chances are you’ll meet [crassusername1] who wants nothing more than to take you on an all-expenses paid weekend away. [Crassusername2] will likely suggest bending you over his office desk at lunchtime, while [crassusername3] may be tempted to offer you his whole 9 inches. Expect to be approached by couples, too – male involvement optional.

You may find the sheer volume of responses overwhelming at first, and of course you’ll need some way to separate the wheat from the chaff. How can you be sure Mr-One-Night-Stand isn’t telling any old girl he wants to ‘lick their lollipops’? In this case I recommend setting up a decoy profile, or getting your BFF to set up their own, tamer profile, and comparing responses. For this profile, post some glamour shots, just of your torso with underwear on and no rude bits. Still no face, of course – you don’t want your boss/brother-in-law/significant other to stumble across a picture of you with your hand over your crotch during their meanderings. That would just be embarrassing. Keep those pics for your by-invite-only 'Private Gallery'.

Then fill in the ‘about me’ and ‘looking for’ sections. Try something a bit more subtle, for example, describing yourself as recently single, looking for a bit of fun, but open to things developing into something more (yes – an allusion to the dreaded ‘relationship’).

I guarantee the response will be spectacular.

Next: how to filter. When the hundreds of messages and flirts fill your inbox, look for 'Replicators', users who cast the net as far and as wide as possible, sending the same message over and over to dozens of profiles without bothering to read them. Some clues are offers for ‘discreet encounters’, ‘in town for one-night’ and ‘strictly daytimes’, despite specifying that you are only looking for ‘unattached’ matches.

The next thing to watch for is ‘template’ responses. These may appear to have been written just for you, but when you compare profiles you will find your BFF has received an almost identical message, ever-so-slightly tailored, or one from an identical 'set'. 'Sets' are multiple templates sent by the same user to different 'types' of profiles. At core, these are all minimal-effort responses. The best you can hope for here is some clue your suitor has at least glanced beyond your pic.*

Despite their promos, don’t expect to find the love of your life on a hook-up site, unless you’re also listing ‘constant disappointment’ among your fetishes. If nothing more it is an experience to see just how many men and women out there spend days on end online trawling.** And who knows, once you join them you may find yourself a f*ck-buddy or three to share.

Oh, and let me know if you get a worthy bite ;)

-RP

*Hot tip: keep an eye out for [crassusername4]. This user poses as a couple, but makes his move solo, and apparently desires nothing more than to put his head up your skirt – no need for you to do anything ‘unless you require it’. He sends this message in various guises to EVERYONE.)

**Watch for people you know - you may see more of them than you ever cared to.