TheBanyanTree: The Women I am Not

[Maria Gibson]

Mother Hubbard, I ain't, I've said that ever since I had children.  I 
don't serve meals at a certain time, I don't do crafts and I don't sew.  
Or iron.  Isn't the dryer as good as any iron?  I have always harbored 
some snide feelings about domesticity.  I am really not domesticated and 
as I roam around the earth these days searching for myself, I don't 
believe I ever will be.  Thank God and all that is holy for dodging that 
bullet.  I hated volunteering at the school and after a few years I 
decided to quit doing it just because I felt I should.  I didn't bake 
cupcakes for the whole class and I never, ever, not even once, made a 
costume for a school play.  Not a den mother or a girl scout leader.  
I'm not bragging, here, I'm just relating the facts about my mothering 
and parenting.  There are good things about me as a parent and I have 
helped raise children who respect human beings and who do a day's work 
for a day's pay.   I'm just not conventional by any means.

I don't like home parties of any kind, I don't even if wine is being 
served or if there are door prizes.  In fact, I don't care for showers 
of the bridal, baby or engagement variety either.  Truth to be told, 
sorta feel like weddings are overrated especially when it seems they 
become commercial.  I don't even tend to gather with the women, I seem 
to gravitate to the men and their conversations which seem a  lot more 
interesting to me.  I can't stand talking laundry soap, the cost of lima 
beans at Food Lion as compared to Winn Dixie and how I'm going to 
decorate my house.  In fact, I don't especially do much of any 
decorating, it is sporadic at best and most definitely eclectic.  I just 
go with whatever strikes my fancy and live with it until I am unstruck.  
I don't wear a lot of jewelry and I especially dislike the look of 
expensive jewelry.  I'd much rather wear sparkley, fun, hookerish 
earrings that are dangley and tinkley and usually cost less than ten 
bucks.  I prefer jeans to dress pants, tennie runners or slides to dress 
shoes and I wouldn't put on a pair of panty hose even if I were paid a 
million dollars and got to keep the panty hose as a going away gift.  I 
prefer the company of other women who are also weird and wonderful, who 
are comfortable with being a woman and who aren't pretentious.  I like 
strong personalities so I don't overwhelm and they have to know I am 
frikkin' funny.  I don't fit in with many other types.

You want to know me, know who I am on the level of a woman?   I love 
kissing and could do it for hours, quite open mouthed and with a whole 
lot of tongue.  Lazy kisses, urgent, deep kisses, desperate kisses that 
threaten to swallow the other person whole.  I love sweat.  I love the 
feel of sweat on my body, I enjoy watching rivers of sweat pouring off a 
man who is running or biking.  I love to smell a man's sweat mingled 
with just the last faint wisps of his cologne and I will nuzzle an 
armpit to drink it all in.  I love sweat during sex and when it is of 
the sweat inducing variety, I am not quiet about it and I may talk a 
little nasty chatter.  I love the feel of sweat drying on me and the 
feel of scrubbing it off of my body.  I really love showers and coming 
out clean and smelling ultra sexy but only from really up close and 
personal.  I love fresh sheets when I'm naked.  I like being hormonal 
and going from bad to worse and back because I am alive with it all and 
I feel the most alive when I feel the most emotion.  I have a deep need 
to touch and be touched and I can't help showing how much I love it when 
I am being touched just right.  I laugh like a braying mule and, yeah, 
do the head back shrieking thing with tears in my eyes for the sheer 
love of humor.  I talk too loud and too much and I most definitely think 
too much.  I love others with such an intensity that they may be scared 
but, hey, it kinda scares me, too.  I am bitchy, I am compassionate and 
giving.  I have stalker tendencies when I feel I'm being ignored.  And 
although I am aware that I can be difficult to live with or tolerate, I 
am worth the effort.  I am a great friend to have and a pretty decent 
person to know even on a shallow level.  To know me is to love me.

With all this other kind of womanly stuff going on, I just don't have 
time for home parties.

Maria