53. Oldmaidenhood

I was just chatting with my last single friend and she told me that she doesn’t think she wants to get married.  You’d think this would give me hope that, should I end up being celibate for life, I won’t go into oldmaidenhood alone… but, well… she is hardly the first friend I’ve had tell me that they didn’t want to marry… and she was much less definite about it than some of my other friends.  I’ve had people tell me in no uncertain terms that they would never, never marry.  No desire for it whatsoever.  And some were quite specific about it; they would never marry because they really didn’t have any desire for sex.

The thing is, they are all now, without exception, married.  And I can only assume (without thinking about it too much) that they have had the dreaded sex.  

It really doesn’t seem fair, does it?  I mean, I’ve been told that celibacy shouldn’t be that big a deal – I’ve actually had the “What’s wrong with celibacy?” speech given to me, on more than one occasion, and by more than one person.  (All of whom are, again, married, by the way)  Yet how many people are actually voluntarily celibate?  Honestly, we were not designed for that.  Of course, now I’ve just opened myself up for the “we were not designed for homosexual sex” argument so… never mind.  

I tell people I’m happy being single, and I’m not lying… not really.  But I know it’s temporary, it’s kind of like being full.  It’s good, and you’re satisfied, but it’s not like you don’t know that you’ll be hungry again later… and if you never eat?  Well, you know what happens then.  My mother actually brought up the gay issue recently, saying she was happy I had “chosen a healthy lifestyle, but you can’t emotionally starve yourself forever!” And she’s right.  The only reason I can endure this is because I don’t think about my life… I think about right now, and maybe a month from now… or if I’m ambitious I’ll go as far as a year, but anything beyond that is too much to handle.  My mother’s solution, of course, is that I get fixed and marry a man… and well, if you’ve read any of this blog you know where I stand on that issue.

Anyway, it’s 3:11 in the morning here in Korea, and so I’m a little darker than usual.  

I’m getting more and more into the swing of things.  My class is actually starting to behave, and I already have my favourites (shhhh, don’t tell anyone!  Teacher’s aren’t supposed to have favourites, but we all do!).  And it looks like my biggest trouble maker will be leaving in about a month, which is something to look forward to.  I get along fairly well with all the other foreign teachers, and the newest one is actually a practicing Catholic, so that is cool.  I meant to go to the Seventh Day Adventist Church this morning to check it out and get back to her, but I’ve come down with bronchitis and have spent the day in bed (watching my Battlestar Galactica DVDs and sleeping).  

One of the other teachers, whom I shall call the Punster, cause, well, he tells horrific puns all the time (i.e.: “This looks like a traffic jam, I prefer strawberry jam so I’m going to go home”) happens to also be one of the sweetest people to have ever existed.  He took me out for lunch the other day and in the process of telling me a story about a previous teacher at the school informed me that coming out here is tantamount to asking to get fired.  Apparently this particular teacher taught at our school for about 3 weeks and quit, and then proceeded to get fired from about 5 different schools when they found out he was gay.  He was apparently not very discreet.  Of course, I knew this before I came, but it was interesting to have it confirmed.  

Oh, and an update on the little, so-called, ‘lesbian girl’… I’m beginning to agree with the other teachers… this little girl (who is actually about 7 years old, not 5) has had more (voluntary) girl on girl action than I have at 30 (of course, that’s not hard to do as I’ve had… uh, let’s see… about… none!).  She kisses other girls all the time, and I don’t mean little innocent pecks, I mean “Holy crap, are those two girls making out?” kind of stuff.  The girls she kisses just giggle and joke about it, but she appears to be quite serious.  It’s not uncommon to hear “Girls! Stop kissing!” coming from her classroom.  

In other gay news (heh), I think I got gaydared last night.  I went out for supper with some of the teachers from my school, and they invited this girl from another school who I think pinged me.  I could just be being paranoid though, because she’s rather pretty and is the first girl I’ve caught myself giving the once over to… and I think she caught me doing it too.  I actually only caught myself because I caught her catching me. (Does that sentence make any sense outside of my head?)

Anyway, it’s now 3:36 in the morning and I really should go to sleep.  G’night… or G’morning, whatever.