2001-04-16 - 9:53 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "You Shook Me All Night Long", AC/DC. This song plays on the classic rock station far too much.

So, my Easter consisted mostly of sitting around listening to my mom and aunts making penis jokes and laughing hysterically. One of them had some little termite-killing sticks in a rather phallic container that she kept waving around, and between that and the other aunt and her boyfriend's Balls (Marine Ball, Policeman's Ball, etc. that they attend), it was quite entertaining.

Aunt Cassie also mentioned that during a visit to the cemetery, she observed a couple lying near a gravesite, all "intertwined". They were fully clothed, but it was broad daylight. Marianne speculated that they were kinky people who liked the thrill of possibly getting caught. Yeah, but broad daylight? I thought cemetaries were about spookiness. I might have sex in a cemetery at night if I ever thought I could persuade Poindexter to do it.

That made me relate the tale of the time some hippie couple was boinking alongside the informal bike path back by the creek. Right out in the sunlight, only two feet from the path. I was about 12 or 13 at the time. My brother and his friends were lucky enough to observe some fellatio in progress, and told me to ride my bike back there and check it out. When I saw them, he was sitting cross-legged on the ground and she was straddling his lap and they were just kind of rocking. Since they were mostly clothed I didn't get a good look at anything.

We went to Mass at 11am on Sunday. It was packed. Since I can't understand a word the priest says (the place echoes like you wouldn't believe), I usually either daydream about Ewan McGregor (blasphemous, I know; I swear the fantasies don't go past first base, though) and watch the kids misbehave.

This time I was lucky enough to sit by a family that had, at a minimum, fifteen kids in it. The kids ranged from about six months to late-20s, and the two or three of the older ones were there with spouses and their own children. The family had white parents, and all the kids were black, asian, or latin. One kid and the father appeared to have cerebral palsy.

It was amazing. Despite the fact that no one looked anything like anyone else, and they took up seven pews, there was no doubt in my mind that they were all one family. It was obvious in the way they were pestering each other and looking after one another. The older ones, the teenagers, were obviously responsible for helping take care of the young'uns, and the young'uns were passed around a lot. Everybody was hugging everybody else and sharing Ritz bits and passing bottles to someone three pews up.

Can you imagine what it must be like to be in a family like that? FIFTEEN KIDS? I was feeling sort of jealous, sitting there watching them interact. I think I would have loved being in a big family. Despite the fact that there are more people to annoy you at any given moment, and that you have essentially no privacy and have to fight for attention, there's something really comforting about having all those people around. I really love it when my extended family gets together -- full turnout means something around 20 people crammed into the house. And the things I complain about in having my family visit -- feeling like my house is being taken over and isn't mine anymore -- are not things that would have affected me growing up.

Sometimes I daydream about having my entire family -- both my and Poindexter's sides -- living on the same block in the city. I'd still have my own home and private space, but I could drop in on anyone at any given time, and I could be a really useful aunt/cousin-once-removed, providing babysitting services on short notice. People could just drop in for dinner and then go home. It would be cool. It will never happen, but it would be cool.

Background: My neighborhood has a lot of male gay couples in it. I see them out walking their dogs a lot, or just out walking, and one couple has a baby still in the stroller stage. They're not physically demonstrative at all, though. My mother, bless her oblivious heart, would never notice that they were gay.

OK, so, the last night MIL and SIL were here, around 9:30, the four of us were sitting on the top of the steps outside (at the second floor level of the house). We were discussing some friend of theirs, whom I'll call Len here, who suddenly came out of the closet at the age of 32 or so. Unlike most cases, when you're sitting around waiting for them to come out, Len's coming out was a complete shock and surprise to everyone.

So we're sitting there gabbing, discussing Len and his partner, and the surprise, and all that, and Lynn is just about to tell us a story about a party she attended which Len and his partner also attended, when a couple strolls by, very close to the bottom of the stairs.

Two guys. Holding hands.

It was sweet, really -- you know how I like my PDAs -- but the timing was unbelievable. Lynn had to go inside to avoid a laughing fit, because what she had just been about to relate in her tale was the point at which she blurted to Lynn's partner, "Are you gay? Are you and Len getting serious?" Imagine if she had actually said that just as the guys walked by.

All of us were so flabbergasted at the coincidence that we fell silent, with a few mm hmms here and there, leading us all to worry that the guys thought we were reacting to their passing by in and of itself, which was not the case. I hope not.

So I was reading some stuff in Caro's journal, about men and women. Do a sort by topic and pick "on being a woman", and read all of it, because it's all incredibly fascinating.

The most recent discussion under this topic is about what women look for in men. She says that very few women she has known are looking for wealth, power, and dominance in men. I can say the same.

What I'm attracted to in a man, though, is two things: his face and his personality. They interact quite a bit, too -- a fairly plain face can become beautiful when it's combined with an expressive personality (such as Ewan McGregor, who really is downright plain). And a pretty face can become ugly when there's nothing special behind it (a la Leonardo DiCaprio, who is really kind of icky).

From the neck down I honestly don't seem to have much of a preference. I know that I turn to look at skinny guys, but I'm not sure if that's because my husband is skinny (and I've known him and been attracted to him since I was 16, so he could have imprinted me somehow) or if it's an innate preference. I've been attracted to guys who weighed in excess of 300 pounds based on the face/personality thing (I had a little crush on Chris Farley, for example, in addition to a few people in real life). And floppy hair will get me every time (think Johnny Depp in his "21 Jump Street Days" or Ewan in "Shallow Grave"). But the beer gut thing doesn't make a difference one way or the other.

The thing that attracts me the most to someone is an expressive face. Someone whose face rarely changes expression just isn't going to do it for me. Show me a guy who with a genuine laugh always bubbling near the surface and whose face lights up when he smiles, though, and I am a sucker. The good thing is that guys like this also tend to have great personalities, so I don't go too far wrong with that. I also tend to be attracted to guys who are nice. Long ago I suppose I was attracted to bad-boy types, but now I'm all about sweetie-pies. Not doormats, but sort of fun big-brother types, in that they may tease you a lot but you know they have your best interests at heart.

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