a short question about penises

I've wondered, for a long time, when guys' penises stop growing. I find it a bit odd that no guy I've talked to can ever answer this question. Joe suggested I ask the question on my blog.

actually, that wasn't what I was going to say...

I never tell a guy I love him first. I always wait until they say it, and then usually wait a while to say it back to them. I would never tell someone I loved them if I didn't.

But, sometimes I find myself in strange situations. Take, for instance, this guy that I dated a while ago. After I got divorced I didn't go on a date for two years. Then I met this guy at the gym and he bugged me until I went out with him. Our first date was kind of strange. When I met up with him for dinner the first thing he said to me is "I'll give you 20 IQ points for free". I was like what the fuck are you talking about? He assumed I guess, because I'm a woman, that I'm stupid. Even though he hadn't even graduated from high school and had a college "degree" from some unaccredited university in Colorado.

But, I was bored, and he seemed like he was really in to me, so I went on another date with him the next night, which was christmas eve. We went to the gym and then back to his apartment, where he made dinner. We were sitting on the sofa and he started talking about how he had been in love with this girl who died climbing. Then he started sort of crying. I wasn't sure what to do so I said that I was going to leave.

He didn't want me to leave, and, as fate would have it, it had just started snowing really hard. He suggested that we retire to his bedroom (the sofa was tres uncomfortable) to watch the snow from the huge window in there. So I sat down on the side of the bed and watched the snow while he excused himself to go to the bathroom. It was cold in his apartment so I put a blanket from the bed over my legs. He came out of the bathroom but I didn't turn around. Then he slid under the covers and pulled me under with him.

That's when I realized, I seriously am NOT making this up, that he was naked. Totally naked. I was like "Dude! What are you doing????" He thought he had made it obvious what "going to watch snow in the bedroom" meant. Apparently I missed the message.

As if things weren't already strange, he started making out with me. I hadn't made out with anyone for two years so I decided to play along for a while. But things weren't right. In fact, they were, shall we say, flaccid. I am not used to kissing a guy and not having his tackle poking me in the stomach. I wondered what the fuck was going on.

After about an hour of making out, I decided to ask him. Earlier in the evening he had made this dramatic declaration that we were going to be together forever and that I should be able to tell him everything and not keep secrets from him. It seemed like an ideal time to test his sincerity about that.

But, first I decided to go to the bathroom and compose myself. I splashed my face and then drank some water, trying to figure out the best way to phrase my question. I had decided that I kind of liked the guy, and I didn't want to screw up my second date in two years.

So I went back into the bedroom and crawled back into bed. The guy had propped himself up on some pillows while I was gone. I tried to put my head on his chest but he grabbed my shoulders so I couldn't hide my face.

He looked at me and he said "You. Are. A. Coward." I tried to look away but he wouldn't let me. Then he said "Since you won't say it, I'll say it first." Thank god, I thought. Now I don't have to ask what's wrong with his penis.

He said "I love you."

I was so shocked that nothing really came to mind to say. He pulled me into his chest and wrapped his arms around me. He said "You don't have to say it back to me now. Because I know some day you'll say it." He kissed the top of my head and I started giggling uncontrollably. I tried to stop but I couldn't. Finally, realizing I was on the verge of laughing hysterically and not being able to stop, I told him I had to go home.

He said he would walk me to my car, and if there was more than an inch of snow on the pavement that I would have to stay. We got outside to discover that the wind had been blowing so hard no snow had accumulated on the pavement. He raised his hands up to the sky and yelled "Fuck you snow!" For some reason, I found that incredibly charming.

It was 3 in the morning by this point, and he insisted I talk to him on the phone the hour drive back to my apartment because he was worried about me. Then he told me he would come by to see me in the morning. We were having christmas dinner with my friends Eva and Dan, a dinner we called "three jews and you". I got to bed at 430 in the morning, and was awakened by him knocking on my door at 8 in the morning. I was like what are you doing here, and he told me he came as soon as it was morning because he missed me.

I'd never dated anyone who seemed so dedicated and who wanted to spend time with me. I got sucked in, especially because he would say things like "30 years from now we're going to do (whatever)". Every guy I had ever dated was incapable of making plans even a week in advance.

But, later everything went to shit. He dumped me by email and then married someone else 4 months after we broke up. I saw him twice after that. The first time he said to me "I'm pretty sure that when I said I loved you I meant it. But only at the time I said it." The second time I ran into him at a deli near my work, and he offered to buy me a salad, but he did it in an insulting way, as if buying my lunch was going to make up for him breaking my heart.

Guys. Fucking stupid.

the broken vase

Last night I had a dream that I was in a tv show. It was supposed to be a comedy. The first part of the show I had signed up to do a bouldering competition at my ex's gym, but it wasn't really his gym because it was outside and it was on this small jut of land that had cliffs on all three sides. But I couldn't climb because every time I touched the holds on the wall they would fracture into a million pieces. Everyone was yelling at me that I was ruining the competition. My ex told me I should have known I couldn't touch plastic since I had frost bite. So he grabbed me and threw me into this copper metal pipe and I was falling through the pipe not sure where I was going to land.

The pipe finally dropped me into a huge metal tub full of water. Drew Barrymore was there, and she told me she was going to be on the show with me. I told her I didn't know how to act and that I didn't watch TV and she said "look, I can blow bubble bath out of my mouth". She started blowing these weird iridescent bubbles out of her mouth. I was like "can we talk about the show please?" but she kept blowing bubbles and just giggling instead of talking.

Then I looked over and saw my friend Joe riding a unicycle on this metal railroad tie that was a fence to keep people from falling off the cliff. He was in a contest to juggle three green tennis balls while riding the unicycle on the narrow railroad tie. Also, they made him wear these glasses that were a swirl of white and black (like the cover of Vertigo) and every time he pedaled the swirls in the glasses would start turning. There were other people in the contest too but all of them fell off the cliff and died immediately. I could hear them scream when they fell off the tie and down the cliff. Joe was the only one who was able to ride the unicycle and juggle. Everyone was clapping and cheering, but I was yelling at him to take the glasses off and stop riding because he had won the contest. Then Joe fell over the cliff.

I was afraid he might have died so I ran over to my ex, who was reading a clipboard. I asked him to help me find my friend Joe but he ignored me. I got mad and started yelling at him. Then he looked up at me and I realized he was my co-author. He smiled at me and I saw that his teeth had grown together and he couldn't talk. I was scared so I ran away and found a producer for the show, and told him I wouldn't be on the show anymore if he kept changing people on me and killing my friends. So the producer told me to go to another set of the show, which was a house not on the cliff, but somewhere else.

In that house there was a couple from Jamaica. They had a vase made of black glass. The bottom of the vase was a black woman's head, and then there were all these pipes coming out of her head that went almost 6 feet up. Between the pipes were tied these off white china ovals, and each of the ovals had a face painted in water colors. They told me the faces were their relatives and the vase was sacred and had special powers.

There was a laugh track for a while because Drew Barrymore and the Jamaican man were joking back and forth, and then the Jamaican man accidentally bumped the vase and broke one of the pipes off. His wife got really mad and said that Drew Barrymore had to be punished for the vase. I said I thought it was unfair because her husband was the one who broke the vase, but she pulled out a huge knife and told me to shut up.

Then Drew said the woman could cut her hair off with the knife as punishment, and she leaned over and put her forehead on the table where the vase was, and pulled her hair forward so that her neck was completely exposed. The wife pulled back the table cloth on the table, and I saw that the table was actually a grave full of dirt. I realized the woman was going to kill Drew. And then I heard the producer whisper "you see, it isn't a comedy at all".

Then I woke up.

freedom to fall

In August of 2005, I had just moved into my house. I had spent 3 days, at the tail in of my last chemo treatment and defense of my thesis, running around trying to unpack and fix things because my dad was coming to visit me. I had gotten maybe 10 hours of sleep in those three days, and then had a party. I rolled into bed at 4 am, and had to get up at 8 am to pick my dad up at the airport.

I woke up before my alarm, and found a guy sitting on the edge of my bed. I was startled and asked who he was. He asked "you're a climber?" and I said yes. He said "I used to be a climber, but I died." Then, he was gone.

The dream was so vivid that I wrote it down, and that's when I started documenting my dreams. Anyway, 2 years later I had taken over as the president of my HOA and was talking to a woman who lives two doors down from me, Carol Hampson. I had only really known her as a neighbor, sharing only idle chit chat with her. I have a lot of climbing pictures up in my house, and she was asking me about them. She told me she was writing a book about her son, Chris Hampson, who died climbing in Yosemite in 2003. The book is called Freedom to Fall. I am sure that the guy sitting on the edge of my bed that morning was her son, and I was able to describe him to her even though I had never seen a picture of him. It created a sort of bond between us.

Today, we had an HOA meeting, and she brought me a copy of the finished book. We were looking through it and she was showing me some pictures taken by Jonny Copp. Jonny climbed with her son, and when Chris died Jonny and Carol had formed a close relationship. As we waited for the last person to show up at the meeting, she told me Jonny had died in China two weeks ago.

This is how small the climbing community is: a friend of mine, Mike Pennings, was good friends with Jonny. Though I didn't know him personally, I was shocked by his death. I wonder how Mike is doing. There is a fund for Jonny set up at adventurefilms.org.

It seemed appropriate this afternoon to start reading Carol's book, although in a way I was dreading it. It's never easy to talk about loss and death. Carol said to me today "You guys have friends die, and you just keep trucking. But there's a process you need to go through to grieve." I thought about friends I had lost not just climbing, or doing other sports, but also at work and in the war, and how I normally just try to forget about them rather than crying and being sad. The third chapter of Carol's book is about dealing with loss, and it's very raw emotionally, from journal entries and letters about her son's death.

I decided I couldn't read that chapter, so I just started randomly opening the book and reading. The first thing I opened to was a story about the first year after Chris' death, on his birthday. Carol had gone to J tree thinking she would climb because she felt she had to do something for his birthday. In the end she didn't climb, but watched two of Chris' friends climb. The passage moved me to tears:

"One twenty-eight. I am waiting for a sign. I yell up to Greg and Sarah, "In ten minutes Chris was born!" They say, "Oh." It is a tense moment on the wall. Sarah, a newcomer to climbing, is frightened. She can't find a hold. Greg is standing on the ledge above, encouraging her. They can't hear each other because of the overhang. I yell their messages back and forth, thinking Chris will help her up. She will step on the ledge at 1:38-that will be the sign!

The wind and cold are fierce. More yelling as Sarah lifts, descends, pulls, gropes, and hugs the immense, unyielding rock. I am mesmerized, waiting for the next words to shout. I'm part of the team. I glance at my watch. One forty-five. Sarah is not going up, not this time.

I meander a long sandy trail, then go back to the car and weep.

...Chris gave up his attachments for a higher truth. He loved all earthly things and being, and still he let go. That was the greatest achievement of his life."

Carol has self published the book. You can buy it, and read more about Carol, at www.morningsongpress.com. Her purpose for the book is not to make money, but to use it as a way to help people deal with loss. I think the book has a very important message, even for people who aren't climbers. She has been on a road trip, and will continue on her trip, to share Chris' story and to talk to people who are going through the same process she went through when she lost her son. I think what Carol is doing is amazing, and want to support her any way I can. I hope you will tell everyone you know about the book so they can check it out.