Me: (reading the sticker in the back of our neighbour’s car) The harder the better. Is it just me or does that sound like a statement of sexual preference?
Arkem: I don’t wear my statements of sexual preference on my car.
Me: Do you wear them on your shirt instead?
Arkem: No.
Me: You barely wear your statements of sexual preference in your mouth.
Arkem: I don’t think that came out quite right.
Me: It came out exactly the way I intended it to.
Arkem: Well then you’re not quite right.
Me: That’s been true for some time.
I wish it was possible to just ask people deeply personal questions without coming across as disturbing or kind of skeevy and making them back away from you. I’ve pretty much inured my parents to it by posing creepy or startling hypotheticals at them until they stopped twitching and wondering if a question prefaced with, Hypothetically… is going to turn out to be the opener for my confession that I’d become a serial killer.
But most people you can’t just ask straight out about their kinks, or suggest that they speculate on what it would be like to strangle someone to death and if it would feel less personal if you were wearing gloves.
People have gotten used to the idea that I want to get shot, but they mostly don’t understand why. Don’t understand that while it’s true, it’s also a conceptual place holder for all the things I’ve never experienced and would like to understand the visceral truth of. I don’t want to know if your tattoo hurt, I want to know what it hurt like. How it felt and what went through your head. And if, in your memory, the high overwhelms the pain, if the blur of blood and ink melts together with the adrenaline, the tension, the frisson of satisfaction…
One of the very best things about having good friends is the trust that goes with the raised eyebrows. A lack of fear that I’ve gone completely around the bend, or the assumption that I was there already.
And sometimes they answer.
Kandace Mavrick
Paul McLaughlan
platform thing 
Claire
27/01/2012
Answering your queries opens my mind to things I may not have thought to consider.
It also allows me to voice the oddities I have considered but not mentioned for all your above reasons.
I am not a writer and have lived conventionally for the past 20 years so I don’t have the freedoms you enjoy until you quiz me.
Yet.
Kandace Mavrick
27/01/2012
Okay, now you’re just ASKING for trouble. (Note to self: try to refrain from asking serial killer questions, may be okay to ask more personal questions…)
Wendy White
27/01/2012
You know, I don’t think there’s anything I won’t talk about, possibly this is due to an unhealthy addiction to hearing myself babble. Although to be a little more truthful I’d say it’s because I actually really enjoy it when people get me. That, and I like understanding other people’s motivations, too. It makes human interaction much more fun.
Asking the weirder and more probing questions tends to help me find out if someone is a worthwhile person to get to know further, too. A little like those “boyfriend test” questions you mentioned recently 😛
But there’s are plenty of things I’d never, ever bring up unless I was directly asked. (Out of politeness – some people really don’t want to know.) And even then I’d preference my answer with “Are you certain you want to know? Because I will tell you…
I think I talked about some stuff I’d never actually said aloud last time I was over. That was fun!
Kandace Mavrick
27/01/2012
I am glad. On all counts. It’s tricky though. Cause there are things people don’t bring up, cause they’re TMI, and there are things people don’t ask because they’re personal. Which leads to all kinds of subjects people don’t talk about. This is one of many things where I wish people came with subtitles that filled in the gaps. ‘Yes, you can ask me about this, I am single/straight/looking, vegetarian, phobia of clowns.’ You know.
Wendy White
28/01/2012
The gub’mint needs to get on with the whole dystopian future thing, so that we can all have those chips in our brains that record our preferences and make them publicly searchable on the interwebs. Problem solved with no negative consequences!
Also then I can begin my rebellious crusade against the system and become a hub of power because I’m the only one with all the can openers.
Yep. Got it all worked out.
Kandace Mavrick
31/01/2012
Seems legit…