Perverted Pleasuring

There’s one aspect of sexual harassment that has me scratching my head. It’s all these reports about men getting their rocks off by forcing their victims to watch them get their rocks off. Surely these men don’t think women are turned on watching men “pleasure themselves.” Or if they did think this on their first outing, wouldn’t they eventually have figured out that the ladies’ facial contortions did not reflect the throes of ecstasy? After all, based on the reports, these aren’t one-off occurrences.

Obviously it’s the men who are turned on, and the logical explanation is that it’s about control; it’s a power trip. I let this notion percolate a bit. Then I asked myself: If I were a predator and wanted to force a male to watch me do something he’d find repulsive, what might that be? It didn’t take me long to come up with a list. Needless to say, none of the items involve me “pleasuring myself” sexually. That would no doubt be a turn-on for these offenders. My pleasures lie in things sufficiently abhorrent to qualify as payback.

First, I’d make him sit with me to look at chick flicks on the Hallmark romcom channel. If I were in in a really spiteful mood, I’d then turn to COZI TV and subject him to four back-to-back episodes of the original Will & Grace sitcom. In my area, that show runs from 10 pm to midnight. This seems like an ideal window for a predator to stalk prey, which means a double whammy of two hours of gay humor combined with missing out on prime opportunities for his own predation. I get a tingle just thinking about this torture.

Next, he’d have to look at me eating a huge helping of Breyers vanilla bean ice cream with dark amber maple syrup drizzled all over it. If this sounds like a turn on to some of you, you’ve never seen me dive into a container of ice cream. I don’t have the patience to wait for it to get soft. I attack it with a metal scoop. It’s not pretty. And I don’t share.

If I were feeling particularly perverse, I’d log onto my computer and force him to watch me enter data into the Excel spreadsheet I’ve set up to track what I spend each month. I get excited just thinking about spreadsheets. My columns run all the way to AF and I have close to 1000 rows already. I’d provide a running commentary while formatting breakouts within categories that can be tax deductible (at least until the Republicans pass their new tax plan) and insert subtotals. If your eyes are glazing over right now, just imagine having to sit through it.

At this point, I’d move on to a yoga session. Seeing me wrestle my yoga pants onto my rolls and love handles may not be as revolting as the sight of me excavate myself into a pair of Spanx, but what would come next would be a surefire turn off. My go-to exercise would be the Pawanmuktasana, or as I like to call it: the Breaking Wind Pose. It helps get rid of excess stomach gas. You lie on your back, arms and legs extended; draw your right knee tightly to your chest and clasp your hands around it until you break wind; straighten leg. Reverse and repeat. And repeat and repeat… You get the idea.

Finally, I’d tie him up and practice my saxophone for at least an hour. Ten minutes of this would be observing me wet my reed. While this might get him aroused at first, the next ten minutes while I try to affix that reed to the mouthpiece just so would leave him softer than the reed would be after all that sucking. The remainder of the time—when I would actually be playing—would do him in completely.

Oh, yes. I’m prepared to subject any sexual predator who crosses my path to repulsive pleasuring of my own. I guarantee it will be a long time before he can give himself a happy ending again.

Copyright 2017 Elaine M. Decker

Hoarding vs. Collecting

A recent local news item reported on an elderly man who perished in a fire in his home. Firefighters had difficulty controlling the blaze because the man was a serious hoarder. The house was filled with papers and other combustible material. He also had a gunshot wound, but there was no follow up on how that might have been a factor in his demise.

As I listened to this story, I glanced around our family room and wondered: How do you know whether what you’re doing has jumped the shark from being just “collecting” to being “hoarding?” My husband has stacks of papers, catalogs, direct mail fliers, and books he has either been given or has purchased (sometimes from offers in those fliers). He would probably never throw any of this out if I didn’t nag him about it periodically. (Pun intended.)

I’ve always been a collector. I don’t think I’m a hoarder, but I’m not yet in my eighties. Is hoarding lurking in my future? One of my earliest blog posts dealt with my collecting habits. “I always felt that one of something was lonely and needed a friend. Once I made the pair, I was sunk. Because whenever I came across another related item, I was compelled to bring it home to introduce it to the others.”

I was forced to jettison some things when we downsized, but visitors to our condo who never saw our house in Providence would find that hard to believe. I’ve come up with various ways to display my collections that should dissuade anyone from calling them hoarding. For instance, I’ve arranged my antique evening bags (13) and gloves (11) in four shadow boxes. Scattered among them are old compacts (8), buttons (8) and circle pins (9), thus making these boxes objets d’art hanging on the living room wall.

I still fall victim to the urge to begin new collections. When I started playing the saxophone again, I decided to get some Christmas ornaments of figurines playing saxes. That evolved into cats playing them even though they weren’t suitable to hang on a tree. After the holiday, I expanded my search techniques and stumbled across clowns playing them, too. I also discovered that some sellers misspell the instrument as “saxaphone,” which doubled the number of searches I made.

Two months and many EBay surfing hours later, I have: 3 cats playing sax (Felix is earmarked as a Christmas gift for my instructor); a tiger, an alligator and a sheep all also playing the horn; a clown playing sax and one with a concertina (they were sold as a pair); and cats playing bass fiddle and drum—too cute to pass up, even though there was no sax player in the group. Besides, I’m now jamming in a small combo, so why shouldn’t I celebrate that?

I had to move my collection of miniature teacups and saucers from the display shelves to make room for the band menagerie. They’ll still require dusting in their new locations, so I plan to sell them on EBay. Since that money will wind up in my PayPal account, I’ll probably use it to buy more must-have finds for my musical menagerie. Note to self: look for animal piano player.

As I write this, it’s evident that there are some gray areas in my defense of my collecting addiction. And yes, I just used the word “addiction.” I admit that a collecting addiction is probably just a few glasses of wine away from a hoarding disorder. NBC had a feature this week on the “Sip and Click” phenomenon. It’s the habit people have of coming home after a late evening of drinking with friends, logging on to their computers and buying all sorts of things they don’t need and wouldn’t buy if sober.

I’m not in danger of that happening, but there’s one hoarding habit for which I’m probably at risk. That’s becoming a Crazy Cat Lady. We recently adopted a senior cat from a local rescue shelter. We had picked out a senior brother for her, but he has developed health issues that could be too serious for him to be adoptable. If he recovers, we’re definitely taking him, but it could be weeks before that’s resolved.

In meantime, our new girl is in need of some company (besides me). That could mean we’d be back to three cats at some point, which is where we were when we had Pansy, Lily and Luke. I look at the shelter’s website every day to see who else has shown up. “Oooh! That one’s so cute. But she’s too young. I want an older cat.” Lord help me if they ever get several seniors surrendered at once.