someone needs to leave me alone because

i am not my hair....



there's no religious or moral injunction that binds me to wear my hair the way that everyone else does. the ruff, tumbled look reflects a part of me at the moment, so why won't these older people just leave the hell alone?!!!!!

and now they try blackmail. arghhhhhh! i am too old for this!!!

amazing

6-1, 6-0 (43 minutes) Serena Williams is on fire!!!

because our Father understands all tongues

amazing, isn't it?

words

come a little closer,
let me tell you how special you are
my baby,
if you were a song,
i would sing you with all of my soul,
i would caress every syllable of your being
with sweet, delicate affection,
every inflection and note just right,
because you would deserve nothing less.

if you were a song,
you would be a love song,
a beautiful expression of joy
and explosions of passion;
you would be the masterpiece that serenades my soul

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LONDON BUKI!!!

on virginity (provoking yet another lynching)

there's a line in one of 2face idibia's new songs that proclaims, "i can't believe she's still virgin"

it's from the song "if love is a crime", extolling the virtues of this woman who has somehow managed to navigate the murky, shark-infested waters of love and relationships without sacrificing or compromising her personal ideals. speaking from a purely musical perspective, i think its a beautiful song.

the full verse goes thus:

she said to me, do you want to be the last man standing?
she said to me, do you want to be the one that them complimenting?
(oh yeah)
girl, i want to be your beginning and your ending
oh, i want to be the only one that you be sending

i can't believe she's still a virgin
lots of guys have been up to her but there was no compromising
she be strong she be keeping herself until the day of her wedding
under the right ceiling
with the right person,
a person deserving of her special kind of loving

that album is the only thing i have played since i first listened to it last monday, and i haven't gotten bored of it yet. trust me, i've been raving about it to all of my friends as well. anyway, i played this song to a couple of friends, and the reaction from the women was a touch unanimous when they heard the line about the girl being a virgin until her wedding day. one or two commented openly, while the others just muttered something under their breath about that one. clearly, it got a few people bugging, but i completely understand. i think it goes back to that societal and moral thing (religious too) about remaining "pure" until the day of your wedding - it made me smile that one.

it also made me re-visit my view on the whole virginity/past history thing. i have said frankly so many times that the past matters very little in the scheme of things, because we all have walked different roads to get where we got, and its unfair to judge someone based on something that went on yesterday, when today and tomorrow are all that matter. what this song reminded me of is how little the whole virginity thing means to me. nothing. zilch. zip. nothing. i don't set a high price on it at all. i don't seek it out, because i simply don't care.


this is the point where some people will reach for their machetes and come calling for my head. i am not afraid. anyone with serious opinions on this issue had better look away now, because i might walk all over your sensitivities. i might be an immoral man, but who is judging?

i don't think virginity is necessarily proof of anything other than the fact that the person chose not to have penetrative vaginal sex. that's the only obvious case that it makes. it says nothing about whether or not the virgin is chaste or moral or particularly "good". afterall, there's no physical evidence that they might or might not have engaged in other sexual activity. i suppose there might be a dress out there someone with protein stains that might prove lewinsky-esque activity, but that's not always the case. face it, not everyone has the incentive to keep a dress soiled with "presidential fluid". the rest of the time the things that we do in the dark remain there, forever a secret kept between two people and some inanimate objects. so who knows what you (or i) have been doing?

everyone has heard the story about the girl who is nominally a virgin, even though she has had sex in all other descriptions of the term. i actually know her. several of her. i suppose she's still a virgin if she's only been having anal sex with her man, or oral sex; yes, you could very well be considered a virgin, since the all-important hymen is unbroken. yet, i think that somewhere in all that "innocent" activity, the spirit of the whole chaste movement got horribly broken, and with it was lost the right to stand on a moral high-ground. if she has had anal sex before, is she still a virgin? you be the judge of that one.

but you might as well admit to being as flawed as the girl who openly has sex with her man, except that the shadow of hypocrisy hangs darkly over you, if you then portray yourself as pure, when you are not. so being a virgin is not proof of purity. at least not on its own. its only the personality of the person that can prove whether they're good or not, and then i ask, does the fact that a person has had sex before marriage make them bad? i don't think so. i know that they have violated religious injunctions to remain pure, and that counts for a lot, but do you know how many sins we commit daily?

don't get me wrong. i am not saying that there's something wrong with abstinence - it is admirable, in this world of tantalising temptations. i respect anyone who can resist the pressure to have sex; in this day such strength and determination to stand by your own convictions is all too scarce. all that i am saying is that its a personal choice which noone should lord over anyone else either way. noone should be condemned for abstaining, or indulging, unless you do so from a pulpit that's unsullied itself. its funny how society always applis its double standards on this issue, but you know, being celibate does not mean that a person could not have caused some people emotional hurt in the past. this goes for guys and girls alike. its not only when you sleep with someone that you can hurt them, all that it takes is for them to invest their emotions in you.

i know a lot of women who have a chip on their shoulder that's based on the fact that they couldn't wait, for whatever reason, until their wedding day to have sex. it grieves me to see someone beat themselves up over this, not because of what their faith tells them, but because of how society might judge them, and that makes me smile. what society? perhaps the same one in which a good number of our mothers were pregnant before their wedding day, or the one where middle-aged men are openly cavorting with girls the same age as their own daughters. honestly, i'm waiting for the blameless to cast their stones.

what i really want to say, is that if you wince when you hear this song, or any other for that matter, maybe you're being too harsh in judging yourself. say what, the past is done and dusted, and nothing you do can fix it. so the girl in the song is a virgin, and she's being celebrated for being that. that's her prerogative. don't hang your head in shame over that. and don't let someone tell you that you should be wearing a scarlet letter, because you don't know where they've been either. they might be "pure", but no man can see inside their skin. they might well harbouring secrets darker than your own.

before you come after me with a holy writ, remember what i have said: i didn't say virginity was wrong; i didn't say that its right to have sex; i said you shouldn't let people put you down just because they appear to live by a higher moral standard; i merely said that its unfair to beat yourself up over something that cannot be helped, because its past. its done and dusted, so why not just lift your head up and go on living?

2:17am

can't sleep.

MONDAY...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY UZO!!!

we were on the train, chivalry was not.

They got on the train shortly after I did, one evening in the earliest days of blissful summer. It was a lazy Sunday, one of those where you go out in your flip-flops and jeans, eyes (adorned) protected behind the trendiest shades, just so you could eat alfresco with friends, or spend leisurely at the park with a loved one. It was beautiful outside, and you could tell just by looking at the way we were all dressed. It was a day for simple pleasures.

Though it was bright outside, it was far from perfect where I stood, and where they came to join me. They were a couple, I say this in the sense that they were a man and woman travelling together, and not because they showed any signs of being romantically involved with each other. They might as well have been siblings, or casual friends, or have some other connection, but whatever that was, they were a couple travelling together on the train.

We were on the underground rail system, and it was far from sunny down here. It was slightly hot, so it was not the most comfortable place on earth. The train was also fairly crowded; there was no room for any of us to sit - in fact, there was barely room to stand comfortably. She was pretty, and he was a man. They spoke occasionally, but I didn’t listen to their conversation, partly because they stood to far away from me for it to have been possible to actually listen to their conversation, but mostly because of the duet that Fally Ipupa and Koffi Olomide happily played in my very appreciative ears, relayed through my ever-present iPod.

The other couple came to join us soon after. Once again, I use the word couple in the loosest sense; they were both women - well, a woman and a child. The Older was the mother of the Younger, she about 10 years of age, cute in that buck-toothed, bottle-thick nerdy-glasses kind of way that you prayed she would outgrow along with the baby fat that clung tightly to her form. She bore a very close resemblance to the woman; hence I was able to conclude that they were mother and daughter. She (the mother) also had the buckteeth and tiny slit-like eyes that are all too familiar to me, having stared at a pair of my own in mirrors all of my life. Yet, both their eyes made mine look like a pair of huge saucers; by comparison to theirs, my eyes were huge windows that let you peer into my person.

The miracle of genetics meant that the child looked like a biological facsimile of the mother. I could not tell what the mother had looked like as a child in terms of her weight, but I could tell already that my other wishes for the daughter were hardly likely to become reality. Whilst she might yet outgrow the thick glasses, she could never change the tiny eyes, nor indeed the teeth – her mother’s features pretty much guaranteed that.

The mother was heavily pregnant. Not being experienced in these things, I would estimate that she was at least about 6-7 months gone, her due date certainly closer than the date when she first conceived the seed that was planted inside her fertile womb. She was a mother already, and by Heaven’s unending Grace, she would be a mother yet again. Amen. What struck me as she took her place opposite me in the carriage was the fact that she also had to stand, like me. Surprised, I cast my eyes around the train, hoping and not-quite-believing that no-one had offered her their place. There were young, able-bodied people occupying seats all over the carriage, yet this expectant mother was expected to stand as the train rocked and lurched in all directions in the course of bearing us all to our respective destinations.

“How could this be? What happened to basic human compassion; how could we let this happen?”

The question bothered me as we approached yet another station. She had been standing in plain sight for more than 5 minutes by this time. In the eyes of the ones who raised me, it would have mattered not that she was heavily pregnant; they would have expected me to give up my seat to the elderly and infirm. Even if she had been all of two days gone, as long as her blessed status was obvious, it would have been required of me to stand uncomplaining to my feet, and to offer my seat with a smile. Even though I had no seat to yield, I wished for one, so that I could fulfil what was taught to me a solemn duty. I have given up my seat for children and women, even if they were scarcely older than I. Such is the overbearing burden of my upbringing by my elders, but I have no complaints. I would willingly give up my seat as many times as there are people more deserving of it than myself.


Yet the lady stood, her child beside her. She also cast expectant looks around the carriage, but no-one paid her any mind. We arrived at the third station since she embarked on the train, and finally places opened up. To my surprise, the first couple I had observed immediately took them; though it must be said in their defence that they were propelled most likely by the same instinct of self-preservation that overrides almost all others – at least until reason kicks in. it’s the suppression of this instinct by compassion that drives parents to place the needs of their offspring before their own. Without a doubt, it is the denial of the same instinct that has created many heroes in countless situations since man first faced danger; from the mother or father who goes back into a burning building time and again to rescue their children, getting hideously burned in the process, but never giving up (God bless you Folusho), to the soldier bravely remaining at his post while his comrades escape to higher ground, resolutely providing covering fire, all the while knowing that by his counter-intuitive choice, his life was placed at greater risk.

So they took the seats, and when all movements (entry and exit from the train) ceased, the woman and her daughter were still standing. I felt even more saddened, and powerless to help. Then the girl looked up, and her eyes met those of the pregnant mother. I imagine that shame and embarrassment washed over her in the same wave as compassion; overwhelming her as she sat on the bench. She turned to her companion and whispered something to him. He shook his head. The subject of their conversation was immediately obvious to me, but any doubts were sealed when she stood up, an embarrassed smile hiding on her face, like a thief hoping to evade detection by concealing himself behind a wire-mesh fence. She offered her seat to the Mother, and as she did so, her boyfriend’s expression caught my eye.

He looked from his friend to the stranger with a strange look on his face. To his friend, he shot a look that said, “I can’t believe you just gave your seat to that woman.” He had the expression of pure incredulity on his face as he glanced at the pregnant woman with undisguised distaste.

“Why should I give up my seat for you?” he seemed to be asking her. It was immediately obvious what the subject of their little conversation had been. She must have asked him to give up his seat for the pregnant mother, and he had refused, and so she had been left with no choice but to yield her own.

The pregnant woman immediately took the proffered seat, smiling with gratitude at her benefactor. She then instantly did what most mothers would do: without hesitation, she asked her heavy, pre-teen daughter to sit on her legs. She showed no regard for the discomfort that she would doubtless experience to have such a heavy being perched on her lap in her condition. But she had nurtured her child from her infancy, and she had no intention of ever stopping, even at the price of her own ease. That simple gesture made her shameful neglect by the selfish, unfeeling horde around me even more revolting in my unbelieving eyes. I glanced at the young man again, expecting him to have learned from both examples of human compassion and rewarded his partner’s generosity by giving up his own seat.

Na yam?

Idle wishes would become riches and make Knights of indigent men first. He was still sitting, and that made me resent him more, because now his female companion was standing, while he perched his inconsiderate behind so comfortably, a shameful example of the tragic death of both chivalry and good-breeding in a society that cares more about wealth than about how it was attained. A wealthy scoundrel is honoured, as though the very fact of having fat pockets wiped clean the slate blighted by the blood that he shed to enrich himself. He watched his companion give up her seat for a pregnant woman, but he remained resolutely seated, while she held on to the safety bars.

In the most bizarre twist, two stops later another seat became free across the carriage, and the pregnant woman got up and walked across, so that the girl could regain her seat beside her unworthy companion. Therein was the basic decency and courtesy of two perfect strangers. As she walked past, they exchanged a look, and I’m sure that in there, the pregnant woman would have passed some unspoken advice, which I can only imagine to have been, “what are you doing with that fool? if he’s your man, then you need to dump that loser quickly”. I only hope that she got the message in that intuitive way that women have.

But what is wrong with us? What has happened to society that a train full of people would rather allow a heavily pregnant woman to stand rather than giving up their seats for her?

na wa o.

someone needs to tell me whats going on back home. actually, someone needs to explain to me the epidemic of stupidity that already seems to be trailing government in a country that professes to have intellectual giants.

i have not heard this confirmed, and i refuse to believe that it is true, because noone can be that stupid. but tell me, could it be true that someone in power has decided to introduce a tax on electricity-generators in lagos state? i mean, let me take this slowly, levy a tax on generating plants in a nation where the government is too inept to provide an amenity as essential and as basic as electricity. and then you turn around and tax people for providing for themselves at great cost, what their "elected servants" are too selfish (too compromised too) to provide for them.

a tax on generating sets is beyond absurd. my friend says its madness, but i disagree; it cannot be madness because madness implies a degree of seperation from commonsense. these people sat down to think about a new means of generating an income, and they devised this scheme. they aren't mad. certainly not. they're stupid. end of. we're being led by a bunch of Neanderthals, and what does that say about us?


we can't even say that this a tax for the rich, because everyone who can't afford one these days has a generator or 2. they have no choice, if they want to live in any degree of comfort. it is not a luxury, its a matter of necessity. stupid. stupid stupid. i would have thought the exorbitant price of fuel would have been sufficient penalty to pay for having a generator in your house, or indeed in your office. and heaven knows its expensive to keep those things running; a couple of years ago i saw firsthand how much it cost to run a generator for a week in nigeria, and prices have doubled since that time.

the implications of this tax are beyond my own comprehension. what about all those offices who have no option but to provide their own power? if the costs of doing business in nigeria were not high enough, now they have to contend with a fiscal measure which you just know will rise faster than rate at which our leaders can enrich themselves at the expenses of the masses. we should call this the Stupidity Tax, or the Arrogant, Out of Touch with Reality Daft Nigerian Leaders Tax. my father always says that a nation ruled by slaves will never prosper; i think he got that one from the Bible, and it is so apt. perhaps that is the secret of our nation's woes, a leadership of groveling, thieving, sadistic slaves who have no conception or desire for what it means to be free. woe is us.

but why not fix the power first, before levying taxes on things that cannot be helped? i am sure that someone somewhere with dubious credentials will justify this one on grounds of global warming or some other imported concept that he should have spent 5 minutes thinking about, instead of eating the snot from his nose and declaring it "tastes like caviar". global warming is real, i agree with the science, and i believe that we should do something about it. but in our nation, the best thing to do about it is to provide certain basic services. provide a good transportation network, and people will reduce the amount of driving that they do. produce electricity and the number of generating sets would reduce and then disappear altogether.

you know, if they were guaranteed to provide electricity for 18 hours a day, every day, i might almost see the sense in taxing people to provide the rest themselves. actually, i couldn't. i was almost infected with the stupid bug too. whew! that was a close call. even if you provided electricity for 23 1/2 hours a day, you would have no grounds to tax people for the hours you fell short of doing your duty.

if i were an international company looking for a place to set up a business today, nigeria would not be one of my first choices. there would be little point investing in a country where the costs are just as numerous as the benefits. they simply cancel each other out. the leaders are hell-bent on stifling the life from their own people, while they live the lives of kings. but someone should tell them that no condition is ever permanent. i wonder how many laws saddam hussein has enacted in the last 12 months. how much money has he spent? if you're wondering why we have yet to see significant foreign investment providing jobs and other benefits to the country, look no farther than the people who lead us, and who provide an unsuitable environment for people who can actually help the system.

but a tax on generators? talk about ill-advised measures. they might as well place a levy on living. actually, maybe i shouldn't actually say that, somebody might actually consider it a good idea.

who will stop these stupid people?

i support

i'm loving this. clearly my fellow bloggers are innovating and crafting new ways to keep things bubblin'.

i love the contestants for their bravery. its takes a lot to put yourself out there like this, and i respect that.

check it out

unbelievable

takuma sato just overtook world champion fernando alonso!!

and lewis hamilton is one lap from winning his first grand prix. amazing!!!

she got my digits

so i lost my vodafone sim last night. it was hardly a loss, because the useless thing had not been working properly for the past 2 weeks or so. my reception and call quality had been so patchy, you could have sworn i was using a "developing" (read third world) country mobile phone network. question: why are developing countries always "developing". show me one developing country that has been elevated to "developed status". they should just call us under-achieving countries governed by degenerate, thieving, incompetent bastards and leave us be - all this political correctness BS is wearing me down.

shoot, i reckon NITEL in its glory days would have been better than not being able to make calls, or having to bury my head deep in the toilet bowl because that was the only place where i got enough quality signal to call my peeps. ir hanging out of my window and screaming my head off like one of those africans that you see having a telephone conversation that the entire neighbourhood can hear because its conducted at full volume (why are nigerians so loud, and why are we especially so when we speak our own language? Isis, that one was for you, you're on my mind Star)

anyway, that ish got to me yesterday. i just couldn't understad why the much-maligned T-Mobile (aka Naija peeps network aka Econet/Vodafone/V-mobile/Cellcom/Alariwo Shomolu (whatever are they called this week?) London aka MTN Jand aka Globacom for UK peeps). i needed to know if it was my V! handset that was bad, so i swapped sims. the T-mobile sim worked in the Voda phone (gettit?) - cool! i lost the Voda chip before i could test it, so i never found out if that litmus test had any merit.

so i carried my bad self off to the shop this afternoon, looking like the hottest thing that ever hit the streets. went in the store and confirmed that they had indeed had network problems. i got me a new sim (free, thank you!) and they told me to switch networks so i would only use the old GSM infrastructure, rather than the new-fangled 3G wahala which apparently lets you make video calls and make faster internet connections, but still doesn't give head (hey, i'm just saying that the technology is still limited in its application you know. i'm not saying that i'd ever want brain from a cellphone. why are you so perverted?!)

after we were done switching networks the saleswoman said that we should see if my phone was working. i figured i'd call a friend, but she just said, "why don't you call my phone, and we'll see if your phone is working? let me just give you my number"

i had to look up at that one. i thought, "that's interesting, you're just going to give me your digits without trying. is this part of the friendly vodafone service, or are you coming on to me?"


she smiled. i dialled her number, and smiled when she smiled at my digits displayed on her phone. thsi was the bit where it got a tad awkward. i was going to ask for a name to go with the number, it just seemed so natural. at the very worst i figured she'd rebuff me, nothing lost, other than the chance to get to know my customer services friend better. its all in the effort to buid better customer relations. she smiled, i smiled back.

i'm not telling you the rest.

get back to work!

in my head Fabulous (for Imoh)

i woke up with Jah' on the brain. i've been trying to find a video for "diamond in da ruff" for the past 10 minutes or so, without success. okay, i found a couple of karaoke versions on YouTube, but that's not the same as having mr silk voice singing it himself. both songs have been running around my head, and so i thought i'd share the one that i can at least find. those kids are soooo cute.

my nephew Imoh is one today, and that's a reminder just how good God has been in my life. i still can't believe that my younger sister is a mom, and that lil' man is now old enough to run around the house. i still look at him and feel the strongest tugging inside my heart, knowing that nothing could be more beautiful or more precious than the gift that he is.

the song is "fabulous", because that's what we are. Happy Birthday Lil' Man.

how much to tell?

My friend wrote a note last week on (Crack)Facebook that resonated deeply within me. She wanted to know how much you should tell a new partner about your past life. Now I’m certain that this is a question that everyone has asked themselves at one point or the other; how much do I tell, and how much is too much?

It’s a fine line, and a highly contentious issue that has to be handled right. Think of it as a tightrope hovering between two skyscrapers. If you slip and fall, the odds are that you will never be able to get back up; so it’s a hard balance to reach, yet it must be navigated somehow. How?

The most obvious question is always to do with past sexual partners. Don’t pretend, that’s the first place your mind went when you read this. If it didn’t go there first, I reckon you’re slow and need to crank your processor speeds up (okay, I’m playing, but why are you so slow to catch on?)

So, we agree that this is perhaps the most obvious issue that anyone has to deal with when contemplating a relationship with someone new. How much to divulge? Names, numbers, circumstances? Hmmm. And we must always bear in mind our society’s double standards for men and women, which allow a man to have spread his oats like a farmer spraying pesticides from an aeroplane, whilst the women are expected to be chaste. It’s a sad rule, but nothing you or I do will change it, when even the women play up to it themselves. Don’t believe me, ask yourself why you refer to some girls as “loose”, “fast” or “promiscuous” when you know that you’re a woman yourself and you should perhaps not be so quick to judge.

There’s no gainsaying the fact that both parties must handle this with extreme caution. But it also takes wisdom as well, to avoid using someone’s past against them. Everyone acknowledges that most men don’t want to know the details about their girlfriend’s past, and so girls are not really keen to disclose their “number” (word of advise, DON’T!). But I have since discovered that the women are just as likely to go ballistic over their man’s ex (don’t deny it, I’ve been there). I’ve met the women who were very hostile to the girl that their man used to date before she even met said man, even though both of them are no longer even inclined to get together. Now isn’t that a waste of good energy?

How much to tell? Do you disclose that you and J used to have a thing which was never defined and only lasted for a couple of weeks? What if you don’t tell and your new man/lady happens to find out? Does it then not become more significant, as though you were trying to hide something? Well, I guess you weren’t quite hiding it, but you didn’t do a full disclosure either, and now there are trust issues raised which might have arisen anyway if they had known how many people you had hooked up with before.

But what does it matter really, if each new relationship is a new beginning? Many of us are way past fast approaching the age of finding our life’s partners, that person whom you expect to grow old and ultimately have Yugly wrinkly mommy and daddy sex with (yuck!). After the excesses of our youth, its time to settle down, but how, when the ghosts of those wild early years are still howling about in the background somewhere, not even bothering to hide their presence? We’re all making new starts, but how clean can our beginnings be?

Most of us say that we should approach the new relationship with complete honesty, and I agree wholeheartedly. But how much of a clean slate are we really willing to deal with here? And how exactly do we wish to wipe the record clean? Do we admit all and grit our teeth, or do we say, “look, I’ve done things I’m not proud of, some of which I will tell you now, some later as relevance dictates, and the rest of it never because it is not important to the life we intend to have together?” One of my favourite songs deals with this issue in a profound and compelling fashion.

Tracy Chapman’s “At this point in My Life” (what, you don’t know by now that I can quote Tracy for almost any issue?) is a poignant reminder that we all make mistakes, and we all have to start again with someone else, who must accept us as we are. The always strikes me as someone laying bare their soul, and playing out a romantic caveat emptor (yes, I know that’s not very romantic, but how else would you know that I have a shedload of law degrees if I don’t throw in the gratuitous phrase from my lawbooks?). look, she says, I have done bad things, you need to know, but that’s not all I am.

My favourite part is what I imagine to be the bridge (I say imagine because that song has no hooks, and every verse takes its own direction). She says:

Before we take a step
Before we walk down that path
Before I make any promises
Before you have regrets
Before we talk commitment
Let me tell you of my past
All I've seen and all I've done
The things I'd like to forget
At this point in my life

If that does not grab you, I don’t know what will. A lover confesses…. “As a man i have done things that I am not proud of, and sweetheart, you might find that in your circle of friends are one or two people who might be able to describe the scars on my back better than they should, but that was a long time ago.” Its funny, but even virgins have skeletons in their closets - never forget - so don’t say that you’re pure. And even if you are, what about the one you’re in the process of falling in love with, can they also make the same claim? Hey, if you’re free from blemish, I’m proud of you, but don’t sit in judgement on the rest of us.

personally, I'm not one of the "let's tell all our secrets around a fire and sing sad songs" school. I think that some things are best left in the dark hallways of yesterday, never to be revisited unless it becomes important to do so. The question though is how to determine what we should tell and what we shouldn't. I don't want to know your "number", so please don't feel the need to divide it, or average it or any of that fun stuff. Its not important. I have always said that the most important thing is that you come with a determination to start afresh, but that will not erase all the sticky moments that are sure to come when we run into ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends and people who know far too much, and can't keep their mouths shut.

So how much do we disclose? This is by no means all about sex, there is so much more that we could be ashamed of from before. People used to do drugs, or steal or just be randomly scandalous before they changed, and these are some of the issues that need to be confronted. I hope to revisit these issues as I collect my thoughts in the blogs to come. In the mean time, tell me your thoughts. Lets hear you….

Thanks for reading.