Oh, now we're getting into fresher material ... this was from just eight months ago!
----------------------------
I've been very slow in getting back to people for a while. A little explanation might be in order.
For my entire life, I've had an ongoing problem with insomnia. There are a few reasons for this, one of which is an unwelcome quirk. Perhaps you are familiar with an experiment in which people were isolated from the outside world, denied knowledge of whether or not the sun was out, not allowed access to clocks, and then had their sleep patterns observed. I recall that the researchers found their subjects would, on the average, end up living on a 25 hour cycle. Their internal clocks were a little out of step with the rotation of the planet.
Mine is a lot out of step, my natural cycle usually being over 30 hours. This, at times, has had its advantages. It was great for doing all-nighters on class projects and staying up partying all night, but when I want to sleep, it can be a nuisance. Under the best of circumstances, I can end up sleep deprived, and bad circumstances can be made even worse.
A while ago, like a number of people, I ran into what seems to be one the latest big things on Fet: some of the people with whom I was socializing left me stranded in the suburbs late at night, forcing me to walk back to the city. By the time I reached the El (part of our public transit system), the sun was rising and I was ready to collapse. Getting my sleep schedule back on track has been a struggle, made worse by the aforementioned quirk. In order to move my schedule in the usual way - getting to sleep and waking a little earlier each day - I'd have to make my days unusually short, and given my natural rhythms, that's far more difficult for me than for most people. I'll lay in bed and just not sleep. Sleeping pills don't help, except for one - Ambien. From which I get psychedelic effects (and odd effects on my behavior), just like Mom did when she tried that drug. Maybe it's an idiosyncratic reaction. Maybe, like Primaquine, Ambien is just not a good thing to give to the Sephardim? I don't know.
The only thing that I've found will work is staying up later and later, until I've rotated my schedule so much that once again, I'm getting up when I want to, in the early morning. But along the way, I'm sleeping during the day, and as I can't hang drapes in my apartment, what I'm getting is low grade sleep in a brightly lit apartment. The next day comes, I've slept, but slept poorly, so despite my tendency to stay awake longer, I end up not being able to stay awake long enough, and progress does not get made.
Right now, I'm using iced coffee to help with that, which is not something an insomniac likes to do, but better alternatives are hard to find. When my schedule is back in sync with the world, I'll be doing the following.
1. I'll cut back on the caffeine.
2. I'll get as much exercise at the start of the day as I can.
3. I'm going to work on getting a better class of friends.
I mean, seriously - leaving somebody to walk home from the suburbs? There's no defending that. That just sucks. I'd name names, because it's called for and the warning could probably help somebody else, but if I did that, the caretakers would take action against my account, as at least a few people I know will tell you from personal experience. So, sorry, but I can't tell you who did this or go into much more detail about the incident. All I can say is "good luck, and hope you don't run into these people, even though you probably will, and do what you can to avoid the whole issue."
In my case, that means that since I don't have a car and can't afford cab fare, I just won't go to events in suburbs that don't have train service that will be available when an event ends. I have to assume the worst and build that assumption into my plans. Is something awesome happening in Mokena or Elk Grove Village? I don't care. I won't risk taking a trip, when the return trip is this iffy. I can't have my life getting disrupted like this. While paranoia is not usually a good thing to develop, on Fet it seems necessary for survival, which does raise a lot of uncomfortable questions about a lot of my fetishes. Let's be serious - if merely taking travel directions or accepting a ride from people requires a leap of faith that I no longer dare take, what just happened to the idea of letting one of them set me on fire? It begins to look more than a little crazy, doesn't it?
Which brings us to another takeaway I'm getting from all of this - I'm not going to so open to playing with strangers, as I was in the past. I'm generally going to insist on getting to know a top as a friend and building a real relationship of trust, before I do any more bottoming in the future. As for topping, I have much study to do before I do any of that, myself. Also, sauce for the goose - the woman or women with whom I play will have reason for caution, as well. If a woman expects me to earn her trust before we play, I completely understand and respect that.
