From: rhialto@falu.sneakernet (Olaf Seibert)
Subject: Re: Wow
Organization: Olaf's Own Amiga
X-Newsreader: Ann 0.8m
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 02:45:11 GMT

In article <1992Sep26.084746.11264@news.acns.nwu.edu>,
	Albert-Lunde@nwu.edu (Albert Lunde) writes:
>In article <1992Sep25.225219.6093@u.washington.edu>
> jwad@milton.u.washington.edu writes:
>>In article <19uk2iINN2tj@agate.berkeley.edu> rsr@soda.berkeley.edu (Roy S.
>>Rapoport) writes:
>>> And we hugged ...
>>Hugs are the best.
>>> Yes, to 99.999% of you, hugs are probably not a big thing.	They are to me
>>> ....
>>make that 98.999% cause, at least for me, hugs are incredible and I've been
>>getting quite a few lately :) Actually, until very recently I wasn't getting
>>my daily dose of hugs and they really do make a difference.
>
>I would also like to put in a word on behalf of hugs ... speaking as one
>who has been known to go through serious bouts of hug withdrawal ...
>I'm not adverse to combining sexuality with sensuality, but at the
>same time I feel like I need human contact more than sex as such.

Yeah, but I think I miss both. (Having said this, I must take care not to
let this develop into a terrrible, depressed mess, though fortunately I
have been quite cheerful overall for the last many months, but the fact
that I think about the possibility should still mean something)

>I have tried to fit this into my regular routine -- for example, I go to
>a church where hugs are part of the regular sunday ritual.

Gee, if there were any such church here I might be tempted to give up my
atheism! :-)

>It's hard to get people to take seriously both the hugable cuddly side
>and the lustful sexual side to my personality -- not that I'm especially
>good at sorting things out -- I want to offer people what they want
>and I don't want to deny one or the other, but it's a lot easier to
>get people to focus on one or the other.
>
>Perhaps this is also related to a tendency to be either rather shy
>or rather blatent...

Yeah, I can be pretty blatant from time to time. Conversation fragments
like the following are not unheard of:

Setting: room of one of my friends, late at night, back from the pub(s).
He: Time to go to bed...
Me: The same bed, huh?
He: (no response needed)

where we both know we like to deliberately take each other's words too
literally and "mis"understand each other. Would I seriously want to ask
someone to sleep with me, I'd only know how to do it something like this,
but alas, that's too blunt for general use. As a result I try to remain on
the "safe" side of not being intrusive, pushy, etc. I wouldn't want to
offend anyone in situations like this, especially if I like them. So I take
the "shy" approach (or maybe this is a rationalisation of my inherent
shyness, and it isn't any rational choice at all), and nothing ever
happens. (On the other hand, one of these conversations actually /did/ end
up in bed, but that's a different story, with a very depressing twist).
This shyness effect gets stronger the longer I know someone, because I'm
afraid that any advances might result in the end of the friendship, or at
least would make it never the same again. Rationally I know that this
usually wouldn't be the case, but still.

Therefore such things like soc.bi parties are great, because one e-knows
the people who are there, so one can feel at ease between them, but the
nasty, barrier creating effect of knowing someone hasn't set in yet.

> Albert Lunde

-Olaf
--
___ Olaf 'Rhialto' Seibert  B4f+-t-w--g+k+(+)svmrp+
\X/ It'sneveragoodideatoarriveinthepastwithyourpantsaroundyourknees -Sam
Newsgroups: soc.bi