Relentless Inquiry

Frustrated to the point of tears, with a combination of my own experience level, hormones, idiocy, and sheer cowardice. Fucking dammit.

Any advice on the whole 'learning to date for the first time, post-closet-era' thing?

I am so fucking sick of feeling like a total moron around women. I have been ultracloseted as bi for many years, 'out' only in a half-joking sense. While I don't claim any kind of Casanovan finesse in dealing with men, it sure as hell beats my social interface for dealing with women.

I hate being embarrassed, being gauche, feeling and reacting like a teenager. I don't know what the hell to do when I get that fizzy feeling in my head, like bubbles in champagne. I think I'd rather never get to the point of being able to date women regularly than to suffer all the feelings of stupidity, naivete, and embarrassment that I'm going through these days. I'm going to do enough lameass things just on account of being human, do I have to add going through dating puberty in my fucking forties to the list?

When I had everything safely repressed, I didn't feel like a jerk nearly as often. Now that I'm not repressing stuff, I guess if I repress it again then I'll still know I'm a jerk, whereas if I go through all the learning curve stuff I might evolve beyond it. Or not, in which case I'll have left a trail of social wreckage and/or ridicule behind that will look like Sherman's path through Georgia, and I'll *still* be a jerk.

What set this off? The very nice woman I've been chatting with at the munches lately inviting me to come with her to the Santa Clara County Leather Association meeting. At least I didn't SAY out loud my first reaction, which was “I can't go to SCCLA! I'm not a 'real' bi/queer person– I don't ride, I'm only a 'service' top (not wired for pain myself), and I'm too chickenshit to ask girls out! ”

Most of my response patterns to women seem to be more XY than XX even though my hardware is XX. The odds of acting like a complete cretinous oaf seem vastly high, especially with the fizzy hormone factor.

Ah, fuck. Sleep now.