The meaning of emotion

A very intense experience may create an emotional meaning, which may affect us positively or negatively later in life...

When I was in college, I was playing it smart and focusing almost entirely on school work for the first two years, but then, all of a sudden something clicked, and my interest in men emerged like a tornado. I didn't even have a boyfriend then, so I asked a friend to do me the "favour", which he did very happily. Unfortunately, things didn't go too well with him... we were friends, we had bargained for more that we could handle, and at the end we ended up losing the friendship without ever becoming a couple. So, lesson one learned there.

Then, the soccer player made an appearance... my very first relationship. He was a couple of years older than me, and a very popular guy in college. He was fun to be with, and I mean for everyone... he was witty, and handsome, and I can't remember what else. We were all the time together, and he was quite fond of me as a person, and more specifically of my body; but we both lived with our respective parents, so our chances of being intimate were rare.

However, we did managed to go out together every now and then... we went to college parties often, and generally, it was me who danced with other guys mostly because he wasn't very much into that. One evening, he picked me up to go to one of those parties; the ambience was very animated when we got there, and for us it went the usual way... we greeted everyone, we went together to mingle with his friends, then I would leave sporadically to talk to my friends. In between, I would also dance but with somebody else.

When I was dancing with whoever, I could notice my guy peeking on me persistently. I would go and talk to him to check if everything was alright, and he just smiled and assured me that everything was okay. So, I would just keep entertaining myself while he was fooling around with his friends. Then, the party became really loud... everyone was having fun, I was dancing, and he appeared from behind and held my waist gently and asked me to come with him. I sort of gave a good bye smile to the guy I was dancing with, took my boyfriend's hand and followed without asking.

He took me out of the party, and told me to get in the car, which I did. I felt completely safe with him, we had strong feelings for each other, and we had already been intimate. So, he drives around the neighbourhood, and I'm just there smiling, knowing all too well the reason why he took me out of the party. He finally decides to park under a tree on a quiet street. I'm sure he thought the shade was not going to betray our presence from the street lights. So, he starts kissing me, and I kissed him back, and I could feel the sexual tension rising (literally I guess) with every second that passed. Then, he stopped, and asked me to go to the back of the car. I was such a lamb back then, and I just did as told.

I was wearing heels and a nice skirt, so that sort of simplified things. So, I sat on the back seat and looked at him with a smile while he was getting in the car while shutting the door behind him. I just lied on my back on the seat with my legs slightly spread. He wasn't smiling alright, but he was undoing his belt trying to get his pants down. He then reached under my skirt, and noticed my panties, and just took them off and threw them away somewhere in the car. He was definitely enjoying it to the point of becoming completely unaware of the surroundings. I was also enjoying it, but as it's so often the case with younger women, I was enjoying the intimacy much more so than the sex. I could see the windows starting to get foggy with the heavy breathing, and I remember thinking that that could give us away, but then he started kissing me again, and I got lost in the moment once more.

We must've been into it for about 10 minutes, the windows were so damp, and the air was rare... then someone opened the door and I saw my boyfriend pulling away from me. Outside, I saw four armed men with guns and machine guns surrounding my guy, and I'm there sitting in the back of the car pretty much with my legs wide open. I pull down my skirt and looked for my panties... I saw them on the floor, but I didn't dare to move. One of the men asked me to get out of the car, I did and I stood right beside of my boyfriend. We were both scared to death, and for a moment, I thought they were going to kill my boyfriend and rape me, but we both managed to stay calm. Then one of the men asked for the car keys, my boyfriend gave them to him without saying a word, then the four men with their guns got inside the car and drove away with my panties.

It was quite a bonding experience I must say. I'm sure we must've turned the trauma into something more pleasurable because after that, something else clicked inside me and I started to enjoy sex with him like never before. There was something else that joined us and made us one somehow, we even managed to synchronize sensations without even talking to each other, and most of the time we ended simultaneously. I don't know what it was really... maybe it was fear, the circumstances of the incident, the fact that we actually cared for each other, or perhaps a combination of everything. Frankly, I don't remember the fear anymore, I just remember him and all the pleasure we had together plus all the inexplicable meaning of that unbridled emotion.

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Connecting with desires

«Who wants to play? Attached male looking for something discreet and dirty. I'm very attractive, intelligent, and love to be creative and wild once mutual respect and a sense of ease is established. Looking for someone similarly hot and wild.»

I read this personal ad the other day, and made me wonder how often people can be attached and not achieve the level of intimacy they need in a relationship. I've been attached in the past, and I mean very attached, and more than once, and yes, I do remember periods when there was something lacking... not to the point to leave a relationship, but maybe near enough to take the risk to initiate a conversation, and just let things take its course.

Talking about your deepest desires and basic needs is not as simple as it sounds, we need to bear our souls, but at the same time we don't want to be judged or have our feelings trivialized. We don't want to hurt the ones we love, we don't want to make them feel that they should doubt us, we just don't want to fail, period. Yet, we have these emotions we yearn to express, and we cannot find a release to do it.

We blurry our own selves by having these inner incoherences, and we feel restless. Placing an ad might seem like a shout in the dark with the hope to alleviate the current state; and even though it might be sexual in nature, I wonder if that is really what is sought. After all, sex is just a layer of connectivity. Maybe what we truly need is to express our true desires to help us resolve our own inconsistencies. So, let me just ask: Would you consider talking to a stranger to achieve this?

So, we walk around portraying an image that may not be entirely consistent with our inner personna, and that may hurt or just make us feel uncomfortable. I don't want to pass a judgement on infidelity... I think that is a moral statement each one of us needs to answer on our own, but I do see why it might be necessary sometimes; and I say this even if I think it's unfair to the rest of us, who are unattached and would like to share a certain touch with somebody, no matter how tenuous it may be. However, what I think is fair, is that people try to find their own authenticity when relating to others.

There are certain barriers to this... mutual consensus to start. Maybe in the past it was permissible or understood that a man could find himself a mistress, or a concubine, or simply pay services with a sex professional. Now, other configurations have entered the scene like friendship with benefits or simple fuck bodies. Personally, I would always prefer an unattached man even if it was for a casual fling. The main reason is again, that I wish to have that authenticity for myself. Maybe I wouldn't be looking for a relationship at all, but at least I want that moment for me and for me alone. Selfish, I know... but I prefer not to have an inner conflict.
Going back to our attached male, I wonder if just talking about his unfulfilled desires would help him regain that connectivity to his loved one... Maybe he'll recover the perspective he needs to feel authentic again. I truly hope he does...

So, who wants to play?

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Music: Caetano Veloso in "Talk to Her"

If you listen to Caetano Veloso in "Talk to Her", chances are that you would never trace his style to British rock...

As a young musician during the 60s, Caetano was politically involved, and his activism had him arrested during the military dictatorship in Brazil. That made him move to London where he lived a few years in exile, and then returned to Brazil in 1972. Asked about his experience in London, Caetano said, "London felt dark, and I felt far away from myself." However, he improved his music there while working with British music producers. He's been labelled one of the greatest songwriters of the century even though he sings mostly in Portuguese.

Caetano appeared in "Talk to Her", one of Pedro Almodóvar's films, where he performed "Cucurrucucú Paloma", a Mexican folk song about longing for a lost love. This is arguably the most emotional rendition of the song ever, and a definite theme for the story of the film which revolves around the difficulties of communication between the sexes, loneliness and intimacy, secrets and infidelity, and the persistence of love beyond loss.

The actresses who work with Almodóvar are labelled "Almodóvar's women", which I find somewhat ironic because most of them are beautiful women like Victoria Abril, Penélope Cruz, and Almodóvar is a well advertised gay figure. Maybe that is why he's been so successful in his directing career; he always seems to find a space where love is immaculate no matter the circumstances, and that is a beautiful thing...

Dicen que por las noches
no más se le iba en puro llorar;
dicen que no comía,
no más se le iba en puro tomar.
Juran que el mismo cielo
se estremecía al oír su llanto,
cómo sufrió por ella,
y hasta en su muerte la fue llamando:

Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay cantaba,
ay, ay, ay, ay, ay gemía,
ay, ay, ay, ay, ay cantaba,
de pasión mortal moría.

Que una paloma triste
muy de mañana le va a cantar
a la casita sola
con sus puertitas de par en par;
juran que esa paloma
no es otra cosa más que su alma,
que todavía espera
a que regrese la desdichada.

Cucurrucucú paloma, cucurrucucú no llores.
Las piedras jamás, paloma,
qué van a saber de amores?

Cucurrucucú, cucurrucucú,
cucurrucucú, cucurrucucú,
cucurrucucú, paloma, ya no le llores.

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The search for love

What are your chances of finding true love in life? Maybe being a hopeless romantic is not a lost cause after all when the search for true love is approached with a certain strategy...

Depending on your personal persuasion, and if you're really serious about finding true love, you may decide to learn from religious advice; or to consult an astrologist that will ask you a number of questions for a fee; or possibly consider counseling of some sort, which undoubtedly take you to the realization that the problem lies in yourself and not on others, and this, at a considerable expense. Then there's also that important aspect of beauty. Wouldn't it be nice to find love in someone who's considered above 8 in the beauty scale? I'm sure you all have examples of celebrities that would fit this quality, so I won't even bother in mentioning names here.

And we all know how things are these days with internet dating. I don't know about you my male friends, but I think it's fantastic. I sit at home, in front of my computer, usually late at night in my pj's and really, not looking hot at all, and I usually find someone I like in just a few clicks. Ok, I grant it, my odds as a female are a lot higher just by the sheer disproportion between men and women in some of the sites I visit.

This brings me to another point. You try to maximize your chances by looking in the right places... I heard of a matching site exclusive to fit and beautiful people, and maybe some of you might want to give it a try, but not me... not that I fit the bill in the first place, apparently the site has only just over a thousand members, but there's something eerie about being picked only by your looks. It just doesn't feel right... Would you date someone who's considerably more attractive than you are? You begin to reckon so many things... For instance: Will this person leave me for someone more attractive? Does this person have deep emotional problems that I should know about? Is this person hiding something? Oh yes, those feelings of insecurity and aversion to risk start boiling in your head.

Maybe some of you had the chance to see the movie "A Beautiful Mind", a story about John Forbes Nash, a mathematician and economist, who had something to say about how we build strategies to find love by applying game theory concepts. Just take a look at the explanation given in the movie.

So, the scene basically makes the point for a stag hunt with all the guys at the pub, so they can all get laid by not choosing the stunning blonde in the group of girls that just stepped in. Wow, it seems that for the girl in the movie, being the prettiest meant being the loneliest.

Now, that was a strategy designed for the sole purpose of getting laid, but finding true love in life is definitely a higher endeavour... but before we should take some time in defining what true love is. I'm sure this might mean different things for different people, but one thing is for sure... unless we're impossibly narcissistic, we would need somebody else for true love to happen. So realistically, maybe we should consider that we can only find true love with someone who's willing to date us. If you have a better idea, please let me know.

Of course, when you do this there's always the ubiquitous time factor. You simply cannot look forever for your perfect love, but you can't pick the first one that comes along because really, you figure that you'll miss a better chance if you do that. You might get lucky if you decide your first date is your true love, but that's a big risk. On the other hand if you wait too long, the pool of possibilities can only get smaller because potential mates settle with somebody else and they are not available anymore.

I suppose the practical question is how many dates or relationships should you end before you settle with the one. And with this, let me just clear out that at no point you should be accepting a choice that is relatively worse than those you dated before. I guess, the question becomes one of whether you'll make a decision to settle at some point. Well, I figure you can see where this is going, and even though it's only science, it might be worth considering it when you pick a potential partner.

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El Che, Maradona & Christina

The 60's in North America and in Europe were, to some extent, filled with social change with rock and roll, the civil rights movement, flower power, women's liberation, etc. Maybe you can fill the blanks better because this was completely outside of my periphery. During that time, Latin America was also experiencing great changes, but very different...

For the first time in history, there was a sprouting middle class, something that had never existed before in the region. The 60's were also the years of the ideal of a revolution vested in the figure of the Che Guevara. Yeah, Obama sounds like a Messiah these days, but I doubt he can compare to the ideals el Che embodied for all Latin Americans.

After the Cuban revolution, Argentine revolutionaries were trying very hard to lead their country into the revolutionary path. Only problem was that there were not very many recruits. So, they decided to focus on getting the money to fund their revolution first. They staged a series of spectacular kidnappings in different parts of South America, and ended up collecting millions of dollars. All this has become public by the way, and I can provide sources if you're interested. But still there were no many recruits in Argentina to conduct the final offensive against the military regime they had at the time. Havana suggested that the best would be to invest the money until the right time came. With some Jewish connections between Buenos Aires and New York, the Argentines invested the money in no other place than the New York Stock Exchange. Now, how's that for an irony...

The 80's came and there were still no signs of a sizeable revolutionary army in Argentina. In the mean time, civil wars were being waged in Central America... you might remember the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and the guerrilla in El Salvador during the Reagan administration . So, Havana called the Argentines, and the Central Americans to a round table. At the end, what they wanted to do is to give the Argentine money to the Central Americans, and they did. This is how an army of 5000 guerrillas managed to wage war to an army of 100,000 backed by the US gov't in El Salvador; and how the Sandinistas managed to repel the Contra offensive organized by the US.

Argentines are an interesting bunch. Their country is the motherland of el Che and Maradona. Whenever the Argentinean soccer team plays, its fans will bring a humongous banner depicting those bigger-than-life figures. But really, with all the hoopla of the US election, almost two years, a lot of people didn't notice that a woman had been elected president in Argentina, her name is Christina Fernandez. Not long ago, she spent a few days in Havana to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution. Fidel's health is very frail these days, but he managed to have this picture taken with Christina.

Cubans are somewhat excited with the election of Obama... I doubt Fidel will be a lot longer with us, and to me it means that the two conditions necessary to lift the US embargo are finally in place. A Democrat in office and Fidel pretty much out of the picture. Add the cathalyst of Christina in the equation, and you may see where this is going. This after 50 years... that has been a long wait.

So, I don't know... maybe things look awfully grim in some parts of the world these days, but I can see some signs of improvement in other regions.

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