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I understood. Of course I understood. I knew intellectually that it wasn't about me, I knew it was just about the situations at hand, but of course it hurt anyway. Two awesome men, giving me the same message at once: This is too much, you're too extreme. A matter of their boundaries. Not about me. Of course it hurt anyway.

"Is there anything else you want to add while we're having this conversation?" I asked The Artist finally, as we wound things up.

He thought for a minute, took my hand. "Well, you're wonderful and beautiful, but you know that."

"Do I?" I asked, and made myself laugh to take the sting from my words.

* * *

An aside:

Occasionally, my mother has tried to convince me that I am at emotional risk in part because of the fact that I am forward about my sexuality. Because -- I think this is how the story goes, though she's never explicitly articulated it -- because it means that men will see me as a disposable toy; the hot edgy girl he likes but would never settle down with; the whore but not the Madonna. Cute enough to catch his attention and passionate enough that he'll call her back but ultimately, not "the keeper", not the girl he'd have any loyalty to in the end. I think my mom is afraid that I'll stumble out the other end of this brilliant razor-edged fluorescent beautiful funhouse that is my "young and attractive" years, that I'll come down like a girl falling through a distorted mirrored sheet of glass. That shards will burst everywhere and I'll collapse, covered in metaphorical blood, and turn my eyes up to the harsh white stars and wonder how I let men use me and why.

This is the stereotype that I think she's afraid of, on my behalf, the one that comes up on occasion when she comforts me through heartbreak. My mother is hardly a conservative slut-shamer, but she loves me and she wants to protect me, so she tells me this. And I'll admit it -- I fear it too, I feel those anxieties whispering behind me, thrumming through my veins during times like these. What did I mean to him? Did I matter, did I make an impression, does he give a damn? Would he be willing to Make A Commitment? He doesn't care, God, I don't matter, and I was just stupid because God forbid I allow myself to like or trust a man that I fuck, when everyone knows that men don't ever have feelings for the women they fuck --

But actually those fears don't make sense, do they -- they don't make any sense at all if I assume that men are complex humans who want to have relationships but aren't always sure about it (much like myself), rather than sex-seeking-stereotype-activated-robots. The fears don't make sense in the context of my own experience, which is full of friends and relatives and lovers who have been caring, self-aware, honest men. The fears don't make sense given the fact that very often, I'm the one who prefers not to have a serious relationship right now, or who can only compromise up to a point.

And the fears especially don't make any damn sense if we assume that I want to pursue my own goals, my own dreams, my own pleasures, my own sexuality on my own terms. If we assume that I have no intention of playing by the rules in a world that tells me

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