3L's Fortuitous Epiphanies

The Magic Plate: A True Valentine’s Day Story

In February 1996, my girlfriend and I had been together for almost a year. We were in our mid-20s, and she and her two daughters lived with me. Like every school day morning, everyone was busy getting ready for the day. Since it was Valentine’s Day, my girl ensured that both girls had all their cards and whatever else they would need that day. With the kids settled and eating breakfast, my girlfriend and I exchanged gifts, and I headed for work. One of the things that my girl had given me was a ceramic, heart-shaped plate with a glossy red finish piled high with milk chocolate “lips” wrapped in red foil. I took the plate to work to share some chocolates with my coworkers.

I worked in a pseudo-office setting for a company that wrote automotive technical publications. People in the front half of the building had a traditional cubicle setup, including my boss and her administrative assistant. My crew was in the garage – nicknamed “the zoo” due to the loud music, mischief, and various antics - where we could sit at a desk and write and jump on vehicles related to whatever we were writing.

I grabbed several chocolates off the plate and then set it down next to the coffee maker. It was normal for anyone in our office to set shareable food next to the coffee for anyone to enjoy. By the end of the day, the plate was empty, so I tossed it into the trash and went home. I did not think about that plate for one second.

A year went by, and it was Valentine’s Day once again. I arrived at the office, and sitting on my desk was a ceramic, heart-shaped plate with a glossy red finish piled high with homemade chocolate fudge – the rocky road kind with marshmallows and walnuts. It took maybe ten seconds for me to realize it was the exact same plate as last year. I laughed and took several pieces of fudge for myself and set the full plate next to the coffee maker. By the end of the day, the plate was empty, so once again, I tossed it into the trash and went home – it must be a magic plate since I can throw it away, and it comes back full.

Another year has passed, and it is Valentine’s Day. Sure enough, the magic plate is sitting on my desk; this time, it is homemade chocolate chip cookies. Now, I love some homemade chocolate chip cookies, so I scarfed down several before putting the plate next to the coffee maker this time. The plate was empty by mid-morning, and as I picked it up, I heard two female voices say, “Don’t you do it!” My boss and her admin – the powers behind the plate. One said, “I could NOT believe you threw that beautiful plate away two years ago, so I fished it out of the trash.” The other said, “From now on, just give one of us the plate back.” We laughed and talked.

That spring, I was asked to transfer to another location about 10 miles away to head up a new group. Yet, sure enough, the magic plate was sitting on my desk when Valentine’s Day rolled around. I told my new crew the story as I shared the treats with them. A few weeks later, when I took my former boss and her admin to lunch, I returned the plate. The following year, the plate made its annual appearance once again.

By the summer of 2000, I had been single for over a year. I left the company to work as a project manager contracted to Ford, which immediately shipped me to Europe, where I lived and worked for a few years. Believe it or not, on Valentine’s Day 2001 the magic plate arrived in a UPS box. A note from my former boss said, “Happy Valentine’s Day! Unfortunately, customs said I couldn’t send anything homemade without jumping through a bunch of hoops, so you’ll have to settle for a commercially wrapped box of chocolates.”

I returned the plate at the end of the year while home visiting for the holidays. I also announced that I would be getting married to a woman I met while living abroad. My former boss was also being transferred to California to lead a new office opening there. I received an email from her on Valentine’s Day 2002 stating that the Magic Plate would now be staying at the new office in California for her employees to enjoy each year and that my new wife would now be responsible for taking care of me each February 14. As far as I know, the plate is still there, making an annual appearance.

What is the old saying? Out of the mouth of babes? The greatest compliment I ever received was from my 5-year-old sister-in-law, but you must understand her mindset to really understand. You also need to know that I go by the name Jay, though it is not my given name. My (now ex) wife grew up an only child. Her mother become pregnant with her only sibling when she was already 20 years old. We had been together for two years at the time.

My ex-wife loved her baby sister like she was her own child and her baby sister thought that my ex-wife hung the moon and stars and that the sun revolved around her. My ex said that when growing up her mother never really treated her like a child. She talked to her much more like an adult and now she saw her mother doing the same with her baby sister. By the age of five her baby sister could do math problems, read books, and carry conversations in a manner similar to an adult.

One day my five-year-old sister-in-law was reading a book aloud to her mother. When the book was finished, she said, “I don’t understand, this story is supposed to be about a princess.” Her mother said, “It was about a princess. She lives in a castle, has many animal friends, she has horses and a carriage.” My baby sister-in-law looked at her mother and asked, “If she is a princess, then where is Jay?”

The logical conclusion is that she firmly believes that my ex is a princess. BUT it also means that you cannot be a princess without ME. I've never been objectified before but I could get used to being a status symbol. Evidently, I am the defining factor in whether somebody can be a princess. At least in the eyes of one little girl.

Humans are inherently lazy. Mentally we like to use terms to identify groups even if the term is technically inaccurate. Now, I admit that my career has included 25+ years of detailed technical writing, so I tend to pick out discrepancies in the use of words and view language with a technical lens. We seem to need to put labels on groups and subgroups just to quickly categorize and file away information in our brain without taking the time to get down into the weeds. It's funny, because we often don’t put ourselves into such groups, but we think nothing of doing it to other people. In the words of Anthony Michael Hall’s character, Brian, at the end of The Breakfast Club, “You see us as you want to see us, in the simplest terms, with the most convenient definitions.”

Yankee Doodle Dandy

While in England I was occasionally called a Yank because I’m an American (we’ll get to that term in a bit). Yet, people native to southern US states feel that Yankees are northerners. The term Yankee Doodle Dandy was aimed at residents of the thirteen original colonies just prior to the US Revolution. Today, Yankee isn’t considered a negative. Many people in the US know the words to the song, “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy” which was created by commandeering a common drinking song of the time and putting new words to it. Something that humans have done for ages. Lil ole' church ladies are absolutely mortified when I start talking about their favorite church hymns having been created in the same manner, changing words to tavern songs to give them a place in church on Sunday.

But what is a Yankee Doodle Dandy? Well, if we look at slang being used in the mid 1700’s we quickly discover that Yankee was NOT intended to be a compliment, nor a term of endearment. A dandy was a well-dressed young man, or a happy boy. A doodle is the penis of a boy, or a small penis on a man. A Yankee is a masturbator, or someone who likes to masturbate. Put them all together and the literal translation means, “Someone who is happy to masturbate their little penis.” I often wonder if the Steinbrenner’s know their professional baseball team has a dual meaning (The New York Masturbators). Given that it is the most financially valuable sports franchise on earth, I’m sure they don’t really care. Plus, it can be lesson about how the target audience of a term can take an intended negative and embrace it, own it, and change it to a positive and over time the original definition is lost to time and the evolution of the language.

Using Continents to Identify People

Asia is the largest and most populated continent on the earth and includes over fifty countries being either wholly, or partly, on its land mass. Some of these countries include China, India, Saudi Arabia, and Russia. If we created a line-up of native residents of just those four countries, would they all visibly look the same? Nope. But people think nothing of saying “Asian” and ONLY meaning the people from countries in the south-eastern portion of the continent. What, nobody else is important enough to be included? Plus, if you asked an individual to self-identify, most of them are going to say their nationality, such as Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, etc., not “Asian.”

Africa has less population, but a similar number of countries, and African has the same label issue as Asian. People from all those countries do not all look the same. A client of mine is passionate about educating people in the US regarding diversity and inclusion within various groups, whether that be in business, communities, religious groups, etc. It is a very respectable and important endeavor. As she travels around the United States speaking to groups and teaching classes, she often has to feel out the target audience as to whether to use the term “African American” or “Black.” Some people like to feel tied to their African origins, while some feel that their ancestors have been in the US so long that they feel no connection to Africa outside of their genetics. Toss in the idea that most Americans are mutts, and it really gets convoluted.

The ancestors of my father are English, Scottish, and native American. My mother’s side are pretty evenly split between Swedish and Chippewa Indian. The US is sometimes called the great melting pot because within a few generations of coming to the US nearly none of the offspring are “pure bred” anything, we are mostly mutts. Another thing to think about is this; according to anthropologists, homo sapiens (modern humans) first appeared in Africa 300,000 years ago. Our modern brain was in place 100,000 years ago when the earliest homo sapiens left Africa to populate the earth. So, doesn’t that make ALL of us Africans?

I love the standup comedy of Josh Blue and he takes full advantage of this technical disconnect to use it as a running joke in his routine. Although “white” he was born in Africa and after his parents finished up their stint in the Peace Corps and moved back to the US, he was an American, so he self-identifies as a “white African American.” The way he incorporates this into his comedy is genius and unique to him and his experiences in life.

American

Umm, you understand that the entire Western Hemisphere of the earth is “America,” right? There is the north American continent and the south American continent. Named after Amerigo Vespucci who spent a good deal of time creating some of the earliest maps of the area. The word “of” in the English language is used to denote a portion or a subgroup of a larger whole. Thus, “The United States of America” therefore means a specific country within America. Yet, my passport says American. When people say they are going to America they mean the USA. Again, like the word Asian, I have to ask, is nobody else important enough to be included? Every country in north and south America is technically part of America and in my mind is an American.

Latino

Often when someone says they are Latino I ask them how much Latin they can speak. The quick witted often say something in pig-Latin and I bow to their cleverness. The term is actually fairly new. Whenever an empire takes over a large swath of land it spreads its influence from one end to the other. So, it should be no surprise that the Latin language has influenced many languages that were once part of the Roman Empire. This includes all of the “romance” languages such as French, Spanish, Italian, and the numerous Slavic dialects, just to name a few.

The intent of the term was meant to identify people living in the area around central America that were non-English and non-German speaking Europeans since this area was heavily colonized by Spain, Portugal, and France. Evidently, the only common denominator that people could think of at the time was that Latin had influenced those languages a thousand years prior. Really? That’s the best that we could come up with. That would be fine if the term was "Latino American", but when it is just Latino, it brings into question all the other languages influenced by Latin but whose people did not colonize the America's. Because today, just 70 years after the term was first used, people that are ignorant of the meaning often apply it to people of a certain look regardless of where they actually come from. Just another one of those things that may amuse only me and leave me shaking my head.

I am not the first person to pose the hypothesis that the Y chromosome carries within it a gene that gives EVERY human male the innate ability to be a complete and utter asshole! Like with Bruce Banner, this hulk-like condition lurks under the surface just waiting for an excuse to make an appearance at a moment’s notice. It can be debated whether the condition is triggered by insecurities, anger issues, substance abuse, excessive testosterone production, a need to control, or something more trivial.

Regardless, a primary differentiator among XYer’s is the ability to control when, even if, the asshole makes an appearance. At one end of the spectrum are those who exhibit eternal angry teenage-like tendencies who have no emotional control and are prone to violent outbursts and/or poison-laced verbal tirades. On the other end of the spectrum are the James Bond-like characters who epitomize what it means to be “calm, cool, and collected” at all times. Demonstrating such a perfect mastery of their emotions that they may crack a joke in the face of adversity, such as, “I seem to have a slight itch down there, if you don’t mind” while being bound and threatened with ball mutilation.

Similarly, it seems that the combination of two X chromosomes carries within it a gene that gives EVERY human female the innate ability to go totally and insanely bat-shit crazy! When this happens the XXer’s think they are still being both logical and pragmatic, but even their closest and dearest best friend can see that the cheese has definitely slipped off the cracker. Any pretense of rationality has evaporated into the ether and their bestie is about to have a Kathy Bates in Misery like moment.

Early warning signs of the actively moonstruck include seemingly senseless and twisted logic such as, “I never ever want you to take me out to a place that you’ve taken other women,” while you contemplate whether she means the bedroom too, since you definitely still have the same sex organ that you had with those other women, and if she won’t even go to the same restaurant then she sure as hell doesn’t want whatever you put inside those other XXer’s to also go inside of her.  Another sign that you should RUN would be if within the first three times you’ve gone out, she starts to make “adoption” arrangements for your pets because she doesn’t like them, and of course, in her mind she is obviously a much higher priority for you than the pets you’ve loved for years.

Likewise, what differentiates each XXer is the ability to control when, even if, bat-shit crazy Kathy makes an appearance. At one end of the spectrum are those that are so hormone imbalanced that any irritation causes an emotional outburst that would rival even the most destructive female-named hurricane. On the other end of the spectrum, there are those women that calmly take a deep breath and smile as they imagine you being slowly eaten by a white shark, miles from shore after she cuts off your balls (or tits for those so orientated). Whether you are XX or XY, you DO get credit for thinking about releasing the inner beast while choosing not to, and that’s the whole point.

In any psychology 100 course the headlines always go to Pavlov and his dogs (classic conditioning) and Sigmund Freud (the father of psychology as a legitimate science), which always makes me shake my head just a bit. I mean, Pavlov was a damn monster to more dogs than you can count. If you are an animal lover, you do NOT want to know about the things he did to them.

I’m convinced that if ole’ Sigmund was alive today he would be on a sex offender list somewhere. This is the guy who said that subconsciously ALL young girls wanted to replace mommy in daddy’s bed and that ALL little boys wanted to off daddy and take over the dominant role in the family. He called it an Oedipus complex after the mythical king of Thebes who unwittingly killed his father and married his mother. But Oedipus didn’t KNOW who his mother was, children with both parents being active in their life know who they are, subconscious thought or not. Freud doesn’t say all children MIGHT have these thoughts, he said we ALL had them starting around the age of four. I’m willing to bet that if I wrote out all of Freud’s ideas without ever telling you that they were his, you’d read through them and say to yourself, “Damnnnnn, and people think I’m fucked up for being into this lifestyle.”

The early psychology pioneer that I wish would get more coverage in schools is Viktor Frankl. Frankl was a peer of Freud teaching at the same university in Vienna Austria. Unfortunately, he was still in the country when the delightful and charming (sarcasm intended) Adolph Hitler decided to annex his homeland into greater Germany, and Frankl was Jewish. Frankl, his wife and daughter, and parents were put into one of the earliest concentration camps. It also happened to be the camp where another delightful and charming monster by the name of Josef Mengele, the angel of death himself, committed unspeakable human rights atrocities experimenting on humans.

All of Frankl’s family died in the concentration camps and he never saw them again once they were separated. Ever the scientist, Frankl took mental notes of everything he saw and experienced. During his observations he noted that it wasn’t the healthiest people who survived the camps, nor was it the physically strong, nor was it the most intelligent. He concluded that those that survived did so because they could see a future beyond the suffering and terrible conditions they were experiencing. The survivors could all see a day when it would all be over, like a prisoner serving a specific term, they just needed to get through this tribulation one day at a time, and freedom would eventually come. Even while he was being experimented on, he would mentally transport himself into the future and envision giving lectures to his students about the very tests being conducted on him.

Frankl would survive and go on to write over thirty books on psychology. I believe his greatest contribution is the idea that between stimulus and response is conscious choice. It may only be a microsecond of time, but in that time, YOU get to choose how you will react to the stimulus. We are NOT animals who simply go into a fight or flight mode. We get to choose. We get to decide our attitude and our response.

Just because someone is having a difficult day and tries to take it out on you, you do NOT have to join them in having a ruined day. If they tell you off, or call you a name, you can decide to react positively. Maybe even show empathy and say, “It sure looks like you are having a crap day, sorry it’s going bad for you, I hope tomorrow is better. I there anything I can do to help you?” We are humans. We have a full range of emotions, and you should experience them all. However, you don’t need to let them dictate your actions or your attitude.

Staying calm when other people are spinning out usually helps others to stay calm. Plus, it can throw them completely off their game. Make them think twice about whether they really want you to be the target of whatever negative thoughts they have in mind – your favorite tough-guy in the movies never gets rattled no matter what the assholes and crazy Kathy’s are doing – one of my favorites is Clint Eastwood in all of his no-name spaghetti westerns – that is just not the guy you want to fuck with and he is always calm, cool, and collected. Never loses his head.

Staying calm always makes them think twice about how big of an ass they are being in the moment. To just go off on them when they go off on you is like telling a judge, “Well, he/she shouldn’t have pissed me off” at your murder trial. You can try it, but I don’t think the judge is going to rule it as justification for your actions.

To my way of thinking, if I react negatively to someone who provides a negative stimulus, then I am letting them win. I don’t like to give other people the easy win, especially when they are being an ass and maybe even baiting me into confrontation. And, if by chance, I happen to be the person who caused them to spin out to begin with, you may be surprised how unnerving it can make them for you not to get excited and just stay calm while they are completely losing their mind. Sometimes I intentionally stay calm just to piss them off even more, because I won’t let them manipulate me. It becomes a bit of reverse psychology.

Anyway, my #1 Rule for any non-platonic relationship is “control your crazy.”  If you can’t do it, you won’t be enjoying my company long. Life is too short to surround yourself with negative people. I choose to cut them loose and move on. I recommend that you do the same. Maybe tell them about ole Viktor Frankl and choosing your attitude and your reaction. Many times, life is about maintaining perspective. I’m pretty sure that whatever they are going through that has them so spun up isn’t as bad as trying to survive in a Nazi concentration camp like Viktor did.

I'm just going to free flow this and see what comes out, from my head to my fingertips.

To this day I am not entirely sure what caused my fascination with the almighty female breast. Maybe it was all the times I swiped my uncles Playboy magazines as a kid to look at the pictures. Maybe it was because the two older girls who introduced me to sex at an early age were both busty and liked to have them sucked and played with. Maybe I wasn't breast fed as a baby, so I am subconsciously trying to get something back. I honestly don't know exactly.

I do know that when I started dating a lot in college if a girl didn't like her breasts played with or sucked, I tended to lose interest quickly in dating her. Not that it was the most important thing, but it was at least a priority for me. Some people will say, "If you've seen one, you've seen them all." I fall into the category of "If you've seen one, then you want to see them all." Most people who say they love breasts really mean aesthetically, they like how they look and enhance a woman's figure. It has always been deeper than that for me. I probably know more about breasts than the average woman knows about her own. How they work, various types of enhancements, good breast health, how to check for lumps, how to properly measure them and select a cup size, how to massage out the last pockets of milk to ensure they are fully empty.

All my relationships included women that liked breast play to some degree. . I had not really put much thought into enjoying lactation other than having distant thoughts like, "when I am married and have kids, I want to try my wife's milk," the idea seems cool and hot. My first experience with lactation was in my late 20s. She was a single mom of two girls, and she had just lost a baby due to complications and still had milk. We were in the bedroom fooling around for the first time some weeks later. I went to put my mouth on her breast and she stopped me and said they still had milk. I instantly thought, "gotta try it", so I did. It was delicious. I'd describe it as a watery version of sweetened condensed milk, like you use for baking some deserts. It was fun while it lasted but she dried up eventually.

The summer after I turned 31 is when I went to Europe doing work for Ford. Met my future wife there, a Russian born Ukrainian citizen. She enjoyed attention at her small breasts. Once my assignment was over there, I made arrangements for her to come to the US. Our wedding was in her hometown in Ukraine, but we had a small service here once I came home. We never used birth control for three years, but she never got pregnant. We started doing testing and discovered that she had bad PCOS and likely would never be able to have children naturally. It was disappointing news for several obvious reasons.

Not long after the diagnosis we were having a conversation around the fact that she wanted to breastfeed her babies but likely would never get the chance. I told her about always having wanted to try to my wife's milk. The next day I came home from work, and she had several websites bookmarked (this was 2004) and they were all about inducing lactation. She asked me to read them, and I started do research on various protocols.

Basically, any mammal can lactate - male or female. Obviously, it happens naturally from pregnancy, but it can be induced. Twenty years ago, there were not near as many protocols/options to inducing as there are now. We started a process to induce, which involved me sucking each breast for 10 to 15 minutes each, every four hours, 24 hours a day. We even woke up in the night to do it. She had drops start to come in about 6 weeks and by the 8th week was making an ounce or so. From there you need to decide how much of a flow you want. The breast works on a supply and demand system. If the breast is completely emptied the brain sees it as the "baby" running out of milk so the body makes even more the next time. So, constantly emptying them builds up the supply. This also calls for longer sessions to completely empty them. We backed off on the frequency - usually 3 times a day. Maybe 5 times on the weekends. But the duration would be 40 minutes to an hour.

My wife claimed that lactating was the best antidepressant in the world. Oxytocin is released in the body during orgasms and during lactation. So, all the feel good hormones were constantly flowing in her. She said she felt like she was on cloud nine constantly. It also kicked up the frequency of our sex life. I mean, you are scheduling intimacy multiple times a day and by the end of a suckling session we would both be ready and eager to go.

We enjoyed the lactation in our marriage for a few years. Once she finished college and started working fulltime at opposite hours from me our intimacy times took a major hit. After our divorce I did help walk a few other couples through the process of inducing based on my experience with it. Today it is not a deal breaking "must have" but I do enjoy the intimacy of breast play. It also relaxes the hell out of me when I am stressed out.