A little while back, I asked the readers of my notify list to send me questions for me to answer. Anything, I said, I'd respond to (in public, no less) anything!

And questions I did indeed get.

1. From jade: Which Beatle are you?

This one's actually pretty hard. Probably John. He was the broody one, right? Yeah, John.

2. From Andy: What is your favourite food or treat to have with coffee?

Depends on my mood. I love scones with coffee if it's morning and i'm trying to wake up. There's just something about the sweet of the scone and the bitterness of the coffee that wakes me right up. If it's in the evening (and that had *better* be decaf!) I love a little chocolate with my coffee. Especially Godiva truffles. Or truffles in general.

3. From Imoreh: Does history really repeat itself, or is the needle just stuck on the LP?

Needle's stuck. Unfortunately, the force needed up give the universe a good whack on the side would also extinguish pretty much all life and we'd have to start ALL OVER AGAIN.

4. From Gabriel: Goddess-worshipping matriarchal cultures in prehistoric days. Fact, legend (as in fiction based on fact) or marketing tool? Also, the current wave of books debunking this notion. Discuss. I hope you're taking notes because there's gonna be a quiz next period.

Somewhere between legend and fact. There is no distant-past feminist utopia, much as I'd like to believe there is. There may have been cultures where the enviornment encouraged things to be more equal between the genders, and there are quite certianly cultures who worshipped a goddess/several goddesses, but I think that a lot of the "there were societies where women were revered and in all of the positions of power" is really wishful thinking. Mqybe wishful thinking with research behind it, but still wishful thinking.

As for the current wave of books, i'm afraid I can't comment because I haven't read them. Alas.

5. From Jay: What do you expect the afterlife to be like?
Extra credit, from Andy:
Do you think there will be a) coffee? b) lawyers?

Andy, you are obsessed with coffee and lawyers, aren't you? Coffee. Lawyers. Lawyers drinking coffee.

Anyway, I expect the afterlife to be a big cool green space where I can not wear clothes all the time. I want to be comfortable and naked after I'm dead. I also expect there to be horses, for some reason. I'm thinking something like a big meadow where there are horses to ride, it only rains in the afternoon when it gets warm, and the grass is soft enough to walk around in.

And then I'll be rudely yanked from my little meadow and plopped screaming into a doctor's hands, whereupon I will promptly forget everything I know for a few years. (It wouldn't be interesting if I didn't know I had to go back for another go-round, would it? Eternity is boring.)

There will be coffee in the afterlife, probably. But there will be no lawyers, because I'm going to be *alone* in my little afterlife meadow. Yes.

6. From Andy: If lawyers all go to hell, where do paralegals go?
a) limbo
b) purgatory
c) heck
d) That would be legal advice, and I can't give any.

I'd say I know some very nice paralegals, but I think I actually know some very nice legal secrateries, who are all going to [insert good afterlife of your choice in here]. I'm going to have to go with d).

7. Stari asks: If you had a sex change, surgical or magical, would you then be gay/straight/bi/?

Considering that a sex change would be against my will...Heh. I'd probably be mostly straight, with a little bit of bi thrown in for good luck. My sexual orientation wouldn't *change*, really. Women would still rock my little world.

8. Velvet asks: What did you ever want from me & why couldn't you tell me what it was, back when it was really important?

Er. Um. I dunno?

I think part of it was that while I knew and loved you, I didn't really *know* you. I didn't have a visceral understanding of how you worked on the inside, couldn't figure out what turned you on, and, well, there's only so long a girl can go without HOT MONKEY LOVING before she starts to feel just an itsy bitsy bit unattractive. (which was directly related to the "visceral understanding" issue.)

But those aren't the sort of things I can ask someone for. Either I get them, or I don't. So, eventually, I wandered away.

[Also, see the paragraph on poly issues, below.]

8. A couple of people asked: So why did Karawynn and you end your relationship, anyway?
[the askers were Dorothy and someone else who will remain anonymous.]

I thought it was interesting that people wanted to know about this one; I realized after doing a quick read-through of my entries leading up to August that it was pretty obvious I was unhappy, but it wasn't clear what I was unhappy about.

Partially, I was having poly issues; I was getting all of the bad parts of a poly relationship [planning around other people's schedules, benign neglect, coping with a wistful envy of other people's arrangements which seemed to work so much better than my own] without any of the good parts [being free to have crushes on/fall in love with other partners, regular sex, the ability to form non-traditional family groups]. I realized, during the course of this relationship, that I don't have the energy for more than one partner at a time, so if I'm in a relationship I need it to be one that satisfies a relatively large number of needs; this one didn't, really.

It didn't help, at all, that she and I were wildly incompatible sexually; it makes it hard to really emotionally connect with another person if you you don't have any common sexual ground to stand on.

I also was getting tired of being an emotional philodendron. I can be, if I want to be, the ultimate low-maitenence girlfriend. I'm self-contained, self-entertaining, and I can arrange for all of my emotional and sexual needs to be taken care of by myself. Water me every couple of weeks, stick me in a window, and forget about me. The problem is, of course, that providing emotional support to both myself and other people is really incredibly tiring. And, unfortunately, I couldn't bring myself to be *more* needy; I'd set up a pattern that's incredibly hard for me to shake once it's set.

So I got more and more depressed, due to fretting about my issues, feeling really unattractive, and some other issues unrelated to my relationship. I really ought to have taken care of things before they got so bad that I couldn't think of any way to break it off other than the way I did. Which, yes, I feel badly about now; I understand it was the only thing I had the courage and energy to do, but it was still not at all the best way I could have handled the situation. [I broke up with her over the phone, which was a sucky way to handle it. I *am* sorry.]

I really don't bear any ill will towards her, but I *have* needed quite a bit of time to feel really connected with my own life again.

okay, so there are my answers. Any more questions?

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