Love addiction

• Jan 24, 2009

Love addiction

I read something recently about psychologists and neurologists who
decided to put people in the early passionate stages of new love into
an MRI machine.  They showed the volunteer subjects various pictures,
some of the object of their affections, some not, and watched how their
brains responded differently.

As it turns out, the analogies with drug addiction aren't just a matter of poetic license.

The craving, the irrational behavior, the withdrawal when forced to go
without, they seem similar because the same parts of the brain respond
to each, and in the same way.

The author of the article I read said that love was like a drug.



But of course, evolution didn't develop our brains to respond positively to
cocaine, heroin, or nicotine.  There would be no incentive.

There is, however, very strong biological incentive to have people fall passionately in love.

Which means its far more likely that drugs are like love, not the other way around.

Perhaps the whole reason drugs have appeal in the first place is that
they artificially take the place that passion and romance are supposed
to.

Makes me think about narcotics in a whole new way.  Sure seems simpler
than dating.  I guess there could be a downside I'm not considering....

How do you feel?

• Jan 19, 2009

How do you feel?

Happiness is due to outlook, not circumstance.

Psychologists have found that after major life changing events, both positive and negative (examples included winning the lottery and becoming permanently paraplegic), within a few years people tend to return to the same baseline of life-satisfaction they had before.

Stop chasing dreams.

Start appreciating the life around you right now.

A little perspective

• Jan 15, 2009

A little perspective

[This was written just after the controversy and rioting following the New Years shooting on a train station platform of an unarmed black man, Oscar Grant, by a transit police officer.  Grant was being held face down on the ground at that point, resisting arrest, but posing no threat.  The officer said later that he meant to use his taser, and supposedly the department had recently had everyone move the taser from the gun side of the belt to the opposite (ironically, to avoid the exact mistake it ended up causing).]

Total number of fatal shootings by Oakland Police in 2008: 5

Of those, number which inspired a wrongful death suit: 2
(both of whom had been resisting arrest, one of whom may have been armed)

Number of potentially unjustified fatal shootings by BART Police: 3. 
Not just this year.  Ever.  Since BART opened in 1972.

Number of homicides (not by police) in Oakland in 2008: 123

Again:  One Hundred and Twenty Three.



I'm not saying that police going around shooting people is ok. 
I'm not saying being in fist fights on the train is grounds for getting shot.
I'm not saying that cops shouldn't be held to higher standards.  They should be expected to be professional, and to have a very small margin of error.  We are trusting them with our safety, with our very lives. 

If the person Oscar had been fighting had been the one to shoot him, it would have been on the news for one day.  There would have been no protests.  We wouldn't be thinking about it. 
But his family still would be.
Young black men shooting young black men is a far larger problem than cops shooting young black men, yet we seem to take it for granted.

Again, this is not to say don't protest in this particular case, which was obviously over the line, obviously unjustified.

But when we claim it is a pattern, claim it is representative of something larger when in fact it isn't; when we use it as an excuse to condemn all police because we really just have an adolescent resentment of authority, all we are really doing is increasing the polarity,increasing the mutual distrust between the police and the community,which in turn increases the likelihood of things like this happening.

If you have someone who starts out hating and distrusting all cops,and he gets detained for whatever reason, he is a lot more likely to yell and curse, to be resistive, to fight back, and all of these things, understandably, are going to put the officer on guard.  When they have to deal with people like that on a regular basis, they are going to become more and more likely to be aggressive right from the beginning, and to take fewer chances with their own safety.

There are larger social and historical issues involved, surrounding the legacy of slavery, poverty is inherited just like wealth is, our education system is deplorable, and as a society we value maximum production of wealth over equitable distribution.

None of these things is in any way an excuse for individual behavior.

Are young black males stopped disproportionately?  Of course we are.  It might have something to do with committing a disproportionate amount of crime.  My advice, if you feel like you are being harassed: Don't get into fist fights.  Don't smoke pot or drink alcohol in public.  Don't sell drugs.  Don't drive like a fucking jack-ass.  Don't evade the fare or play amplified music on the train. Don't shoplift. Basically, in general, don't be obnoxious.

Chris Rock explains this very well: 

How To Not Get Your Ass Kicked By The Police

Te Quiero

• Jan 13, 2009

Te Quiero

In Spanish the term for "I love you" is the same as "I want you"

Contrary to what English speakers might assume, this isn't meant to imply lust.
Te quiero is just as applicable to love for family or friends (with te amo reserved for romantic love - though te quiero is appropriate for a spouse or lover as well)

This is perhaps no more than an idiosyncrasy of language and translation, but it strikes me as the dominate view of love in our own culture.

We might say "I love ice cream" or "I love that movie", meaning that you really really enjoy it.  When something brings us great pleasure, we love it.
Certainly our friends and family and lovers ought to bring us great pleasure.

This type of love, possessive and self-centered, can certainly be applied to people.  I love you because you make me happy, I enjoy your company, I want you around.

It is perhaps unfortunate that we have one word that should cover such a broad range of emotional experience.


Love can also mean "I want you to be happy".  For objects it never means this, but hopefully for people it often does.  While in the 1st meaning it is dependent on my own happiness to exist, in the 2nd I am willing to deliberately sacrifice my own happiness for the benefit of the object of my love. Ideally a good relationship (any type, not just lovers) will have both types, but really they are two different things.

We feel real care and concern for others, we want to make them happy as they do us, but in a culture obsessed with the self it can be all too easy to get caught up in prioritizing selfish love.

There have been a number of studies out there which confirm in scientific terms what we have known from folk wisdom forever: it is better to give than to receive.  It turns out this isn't just a way of conning the populace into desirable social behavior, its an innate truth of human nature.  Spending money on a gift does more to raise subjective well-being than spending an equal amount on ones self (http://tierneylab.blogs...nytimes.com/2008/03/20/yes-..money-can-buy-happiness/). 

It seems that love as a feeling of care for others as opposed to a feeling of enjoyment of others, particularly within romantic relationships, is strongly de-emphasized in our culture.
We each spend our time focusing on our own needs being met, giving little time left over to question how much we are meeting theirs.

I see people being quick to point out that it would be unhealthy to prioritize another over ones self - but see, as long as its mutual, it balances out.  Its just like in society: everyone does better when everyone does better. 

Imagine a game of tug-of-rope.  Two equally matched opponents face off.  They pull and struggle and sweat and the knot in the middle stays more or less right in the middle.
If either lets go, they lose, and the consequences may be miserable.  But say they both agreed to stop pulling.  The knot still stays in the middle.  But they don't have to fight anymore.  Things are still the same as they were, but both are better off.  This is what happens when you focus on being good to your partner instead of just on them being good to you.  In the end, instead of a sacrifice, you are both better off than when you started, which is how a good relationship should be.

Perhaps a part of our high divorce rate and the increasing age in which, on average, our generation spends serial dating, is somehow tied to our culture's intense focus on self (as opposed to community or family, for example - the rise of both consumerism and the list of terms that begin with "self-" that have entered our collective consciousness) as detailed in the documentary "The Century of the Self"(the entire movie is embedded in my December 17, 2007 blog entitled "Just in time for Christmas").

We question "is this person doing enough for me?" and when the answer is no, we move on, without ever having considered the possibility that maybe they weren't doing enough as a result of us not doing enough ourselves.  If their needs are unmet, it will be hard for them to focus on ours.  I've never lived in any other time or place, so it would be presumptuous to assume that if the expectation were long-term or permanent relationships that we would be any more prone to view relationships as real partnerships, as "we are in this together, lets make it work for us both".

Part of it may also be our focus on romance, on being "in-love".  We grow up hearing fairy tales and seeing romantic comedies and it becomes our model of what "love" is "supposed" to be like.  Who wouldn't want that wonderful giddy feeling of total infatuation to exist forever, for the passion and excitement of a brand new relationship to carry you happily ever after?

Only problem is, it doesn't.  Not for anyone.  On average it seems to last about a year, maybe 2 or 3 for some. (http://articles.latimes.com/..2007/jul/30/health/he-..attraction30) After the honeymoon period is over, once real life sets in and mundane day to day life conflicts crop up, once the other person relaxes off of their best behavior that was meant to win you over, sooner or later the passion, no matter how strong it started out, wears off.  After all, a lot of the excitement stems from the novelty itself, and from the fantasy of a person's potential.  At that point, traditionally, so called "companionate love" is supposed to take over - essentially a strong friendship, and/or feelings of loyalty, commitment, and of course care for the other; these things can give a relationship value and meaning.  But they are severely undervalued in our culture, or at least ignored, in favor of romance and passion. (http://www.utne.com/Science-Technology/Romantic-Comedies-Are-Making-Kids-Miserable.aspx?blogid=36)
The end result: 50% divorce rate (and the accompanying single parent households), generations of people who have endless strings of brief semi-committed relationships, and even an entire sub-culture which insists that polyamory is not just acceptable, but an ideal that everyone should strive for, and the suggestion that a desire for a monogamous relationship is in itself a sign of conformity or repression.

This cultural shift was perhaps inevitable with the nexus of several unrelated social and technological advances.  The invention of a safe, effective, reliable, accessible form of birth control decoupled sex from reproduction (http://www.medicinenet.com/..script/main/art.asp?..articlekey=51170). Without that causal dating and not getting married until well into ones 30s is pretty impractical and something few would be interested in. Like all of our sexual morays, waiting until marriage developed before there was an effective method of birth control, and our collective conscious is relatively slow to adapt to technology. 
At the same time the inventions of the washing machine, microwave, fast food, and other household labor saving devices meant it actually became possible to take care of one's own house while having a full time job. Without those things washing clothes is a major undertaking, cooking a meal needs to be begun hours in advance, and taking care of a household is a full time job in itself.  These changes made it unnecessary to have a spouse for practical reasons, and made the concept of being "independent" available to nearly everyone.
Feminism made what birth-control and labor-saving devices allowed on the practical level also socially acceptable, and then end result is that, while people still enjoy having partners, we don't really need them any more.
Each of these things taken by themselves are obviously positive steps which improve the lives of everybody.  That they happened to all develop in the same time span of time perhaps encouraged the shift in how we view relationships, to the devaluing of commitment and the focus on passion and chemistry as the most vital parts of partnerships.

If for what ever reason (needing two people to run a household, having children in common, or it being socially unacceptable to divorce) a couple doesn't see splitting up as an option, it is more clearly in both individuals' self interest to deal with problems.  Then, assuming an egalitarian outlook (and I acknowledge that in the time I am describing that was definitely not the norm) it makes sense to view a conflict as "we have a problem, and we need to figure out a way to solve it".  If there is no incentive, the outlook by default is often "this person is making me unhappy, and I don't like it". 
Similarly, we don't see any inherent value in commitment, largely preferring to see partners as "the best I've found so far", always leaving the option open to upgrade.

There seems to be a lot of people who believe that things like monogamy, marriage, perhaps even heterosexuality are purely social constructs, are outdated and repressive, and that not being comfortable with sex without love implies someone is less free, open, and comfortable with themselves.
But religion didn't invent the connection between sex and emotion.  Religion tries to make it a moral issue, which of course it isn't, but nature linked the two.
Ultimately, sex is about reproduction.  Obviously it plays a social role as well, and like chocolate cake and rollercoasters we have been clever enough to harness technology to manipulate the pleasure centers of our own brains outside of the ways nature intended. 
Even so, when framing what is "natural" or even "healthy", it is probably helpful to look at it in its most basic, at its evolutionary function.
In a specie where both genders put substantial resources and time into caring for each generation of offspring, its no wonder that we would also tend to develop emotions that favored a single long term-partner, that we would become jealous of infidelities, and even that a double standard might exist between men and women (if he cheats, his partner isn't stuck raising a child that isn't hers).  This doesn't make these things good or ideal, any more than anything which is "natural" is ideal (Being eaten by a mountain lion is natural.  Doesn't make it a good thing.)  But it does make it understandable.

I think our generation may have gone just a little bit too far in rebelling against the old standard in this case.  It is a good thing that everyone has freedom and options and that no one is ostracized or punished for their choices which don't hurt anyone else.  But when in our zeal to allow freedom we try to force ourselves to fit an unnatural standard, or we ignore the valuable parts of things like commitment, in the end everybody loses.

One more year

• Jan 10, 2009

One more year

I looked it up, and supposedly "middle age" is supposed to consist of the 3rd quarter of life.
Now that doesn't make a lick of sense!
The term "middle" doesn't mean "third out of four".
The term middle means second out of three (or, I suppose, 3rd out of 5)
As in, one on each side.

So, even if the official designation disagrees with me, I still maintain that if there is a middle age, it should be in the middle; equal parts between youth and elder.
Assuming that people tend to live to around 90, then it divides neatly up into 3 parts. Most people can agree that 0-30 qualifies as young, and that 60-90 constitutes old, yet no one I've talked to about it (and most especially those approaching or just over the threshold) want to admit that 30-60 is in the middle of those, and is therefor "middle aged".

While our society today is an exception, in most places in the world and in most places in history a person would be married, have a kid or two, and most likely a stable job or even a career and a house by 30, so that measure lines up neatly with the math.

Unlike a lot of people, I don't expect to adjust my definitions as I get older. I consider it a matter of integrity.
Besides, I am already heading that way by a number of personal measures as well: I own the place I live in (granted, its only a trailer, but I did have to pay off a bank loan before I got the title), I run my own business, I've not only been married but I am already divorced, and while I used to imagine myself as a human bullet as I raced down I-880 at 105 miles per hour in the middle of the night, these days I drive the same motorcycle at 50 in order to get better gas mileage.

If the middle third is what constitutes middle aged, then I've got one year left of being "young".



I don't generally do anything for my birthday, and I'm not much of a party person, but in this case I think the milestone calls for something special.
I don't really plan things in advance with any consistency; this may change by the time 364 days go by, but here is my plan for a year from yesterday (my last day of youth):

On Saturday, January 9th, 2010, there will be several separate consecutive events.
There will be go-karts and mini golf, either at Scandia or Malibu Grand Prix - (its so hard to decide! Malibu has better, more powerful cars, and a challenging curvy track you can drift on, but Scandia lets you race each other instead of just the clock).
There will be tag (and possibly freeze tag, or even monster tag) at a large playground.
There will be Full Contact Spoons and Amtgard (foam sword fighting) in the park.
And there will be dancing inside of my RV trailer.
I suppose there will also have to be meals in there somewhere.

I also expect a decent amount of drinking and yelling and general gallivanting about and carrying on.

Obviously, anyone who knows me know this will hardly spell the end of my endless string of life adventures, youthful indiscretions, and general craziness. Never-the-less, supposedly commemorating the end of it seems as good an excuse as any to coax my friends, many of whom behave as though they think they are supposed to be "mature" already, into playing and having fun and looking stupid in front of other adults.

I don't need much materially, and I am not quite intoxicated by our consumer culture. Plus, I live in a very small space, and am all out of room for more stuff. The best gift you, dear reader, can get me would be to come to at least one of my day-before-my-birthday parties (I expect my best friends to come to all of them!) Mark your calendars.

The last time I played at the giant playground in Scandia with a bunch of friends was my 18th birthday.
Perhaps I shall do this again at 59 and 364 days.
Yes.
Yes, I do believe I shall.

My mileage results are in

• Jan 8, 2009

My mileage results are in

I've been driving more conscientiously ever since I read the article on hypermiling, which I posted about in November of last year ("Some more stuff other people wrote")

I didn't quite take it to the extent of the guy profiled in the original article (he drives on the edge of the road to avoid the extra friction from the tire grooves, and knows exactly how far from home to coast to a stop exactly in his driveway without touching the brakes) but I did slow down, accelerate gently, shut the engine at long stop lights and coast down hills.  There is even a 2.3 mile stretch of highway 13 (which I take on the way back from Bike Patrols) where I can put it in neutral, shut the engine, coast down one hill, up the next, back down, off the off ramp, around a tight curve, through a yield sign, back on to the freeway entrance for 580, off at the next exit, and down to MacArthur before starting it back up again.

In the past, on the motorcycle I have generally accelerated fast, just because its so easy, and so much fun, and because as hard as I drive on it, I've never gotten less than 50mpg.  I stopped zipping about at 100mph+ after a couple accidents and a whole bunch of tickets, but I still would top 75 at times.
Since reading the article I kept the speed down between 50 and 55 on the highway, and stayed ducked down behind my big aftermarket windshield, out of the wind.  It took a long time to find out the results, because it went so much farther on a full tank.
Where I used to average around 55mpg, on the most recent tank I got 70.2mpg, an increase of 28%.

In the truck I wasn't expecting to find a big difference.  I can't as easily coast around since it uses loses both power brakes and power steering without the engine running.  I was already driving at 55mph as it was, so reducing my speed to 50 didn't seem likely to have much effect.  I already kept the windows up on the highway to reduce drag, and it doesn't have any AC to shut off. 
Even so, from my usual 15-16mpg, it went up to 19.7 on the most recent tank, an increase of 25-30%.
Its hard to say how much its related to driving habits, because some days I am moving 3 tons of dirt, other days there may be a queen size boxspring sticking straight up into the wind, and others I am just moving a single 2-person love seat; but after almost a month and over 300 miles its likely to have balanced out.

So there you have it.  In both the smallest most efficient vehicle you can find or a big old work truck that can haul several tons, you can save 25-30% on fuel by just making small changes to driving habits.  If this gets out, it could just spell the death of the hybrid.

New Year's

• Jan 2, 2009

I still do not put any real stake in sexual compatibility.
What I want is a partnership. 
What matters most to me is being able to fully respect my partner, admire her.
I want us to enjoy each other, have fun together, teach each other, challenge each other, support each other.
I want intellectual and emotional compatibility.
I want shared values and priorities.
What matters to me is who she is as a person, not just what I get from contact with her.

It is very early, we have a lot to learn about each other; I can't say anything with any confidence.  We haven't had a chance to talk about these things.  I don't even know what she is looking for in terms of a relationship.  I have always had a tendency to idealize people, to emphasize the good and overlook the bad, and especially now I am not in a proper emotional state to judge - that being said, I have not felt so positively about a new person so quickly since... well, actually, I don't think I ever have.  


I am learning more and more exactly what it is that I want, raising my standards by having contact with various people who were each wonderful in their own way, and seeing those things which I might have thought I wanted, but turned out not to work for me.
As I become more selective, it has become harder and harder to find someone who held my interest.  I tried not to even think about concepts like "settle"; a slippery slope atop depression.
When I was young the focus of my infatuations were completely random and baseless.  It had more to do with accessibility, proximity, than it did on personality.  I remember in junior high intelligence became a prerequisite.  Then independent thinking.
Kathy, in the first year of high school was the first where looking back, I know exactly what I saw in her.  Aside from my crush, she was also my best friend. 
But then, she was my friend first.  It was based on who she was, not just what she looked like or that she happened to be in my class.  But my interest developed slowly, bit by bit.
And so it was with my ex-wife, Aileen.  We became friends first, and for years after our first conversation I had not the slightest romantic interest in her.  We had sex before we kissed.  We still both considered our relationship to be friendship after we were sleeping together regularly.  I felt that I loved her before I felt in-love.  That was definitely a first.  The feeling of love, not romantic, not passion, but caring deeply for a person, caring as much about another human being as you do about yourself, that does not come easily for me.  I have felt it only very rarely, and usually transiently.  She earned my love by being the wonderful person she is.  We became partners, and romantic feeling developed with time.  That made it no less real, no less strong.  I felt as deeply in love with my wife as I did in any obsession before her.  Combining the feeling of "love" with "in-love" produced an attachment so strong it is a wonder to me that I was actually able to function in the real world day-to-day.  (It is actually a good thing that she didn't feel as strongly as I did, because we may very well have never left each others sides, and would in fact have not been able to function in the real world).

All this to say I don't especially value what most people today consider a prerequisite for a new relationship, a chemistry or passion or attraction.  I know these things can build with time, and just as well that feeling them can be totally meaningless when they happen right away.

My interest this time was very quick, and gathered in strength even quicker.  I started to feel hints of "in-love" from the first day.  I can't remember that ever having happened before.  Ever.  Each contact since then has made it stronger.  There are always a few little things here and there which are less than ideal, but which I may decide are worth it, are minor.  This time there haven't been any.  I am slightly apprehensive about our age difference (though its only 1 year more than it was with my ex, and Valerie is more experienced.  I don't think this is a valid concern; it hasn't shown up in her personality as a problem).  Her being my height makes me slightly insecure, but it doesn't seem to bother her in the least, so I think I need to stop being stupid.  Again, in no way a reflection on her.  More a reflection of myself, my assumptions and prejudices in both cases.
Granted, being in-love makes it difficult to see the bad in someone.  And granted we've only spent a total of about 29 hours together (over 3 days.  And about 2 of those hours were spent sleeping, so they don't really count).

I have never had the chance to develop a relationship with someone I had a crush on.  The combination is intense.  Like it hasn't been since high school - when I first realized what I had been feeling was obsession, not love, and that it was neither normal nor healthy; and taught myself to at least direct it and control it if I couldn't stop it from happening at all.

Believe it or not, all of this has been just to explain that I felt positively about her already, and that it was not the least bit necessary for anything else to be added in.
I feel guilty sometimes for my good fortune; the way I feel that people born into the upper class should feel guilty.  I mean, ok, people win cars.  That merely balanced out the bad fortune that had been happening at the time.
This though...
Too much.
Unreal.

I don't feel that sexual compatibility is important.  You can teach each other what you like.  It is unreasonable to expect you shouldn't have to ask for what you want.  A relationship is about communication.  When you prioritize what is ultimately superficial stuff like that, you end up overlooking the really important compatibility issues, the ones that differentiate a potential life partner from an exciting love affair.


I didn't really expect her to ask me to stay, and I thought it would be rather obtrusive of me to suggest it myself.  But it seemed likely, and I wanted to, so I wasn't in a rush to leave.  I waited patiently on the pretense of waiting for her to settle her other guests on the couch with blankets so I could say goodbye properly.  She didn't say a word to me. As she passed by she took my hand, led me upstairs, left me in her room as she went to say goodnight to them, left me nervous with anticipation.

A part of me is worried about letting things go too quickly.  There is a lot of overlap between the physical and the emotional for me, just like there is between the intellectual and the emotional.  The night had been fun.  Not ideal, for sure, but not bad.  I got to see another side of her, her interacting with others, we more playful with each other, feeling familiar as if we had known each other much more than just the 12 hours we actually had so far.
Willpower is only barely able to hold back the part of me which wants to run and dive head-first off the cliff above "love" and fall in damn the consequences.
The consequences.  Its not getting hurt that I'm afraid of.  Its the trust I'll lose in myself.  Its the ability to fall again if this starts and fails, or worse yet, doesn't start at all.  Its realizing how deeply attached I could get this time, how much better it could get than anything I have experienced before and how, if it ends, how much that will raise my standards.  I don't need higher standards.  Its hard enough to find someone interesting to me as it is.

I made the decision a day or two before to give in.  I have her picture as my computer background. Literally every time I minimize a window it makes me smile involuntarily. I listen to her music on Pandora, mixed in with my own.  I began reciprocating affection (I told her previously that I had been holding back, and why).  I look at her eyes, and she locks my gaze, and its like some cheesy movie, its unbelievable, its something I have never in my life experienced before, but I feel like as much communication is held in that shared gaze, unspoken, as in our conversations.  The first few times I would look away.  It was too much for me.  It scared me.  What if it isn't mutual?  I stopped looking away.

She came back into the room, came up to me, kissed me.  "Do you want me to stay?"
"Will you?"
I told her I would stay if she would agree not to seduce me.  We hadn't talked about what we want yet, our expectations, our feeling toward each other.  We had been out only 3 times, we were only casually dating.  I longed to cuddle her fucking brains out, but I didn't feel lust.
Besides, it was 2am, I had had a couple drinks, she has roommates, and I haven't had much opportunity to practice lately.  Not the best conditions for optimal performance.
I know that I am very short on will power when it comes to lying in bed next to women who make clear that they want me, but I figured as long as she didn't try to entice me and we stayed dressed, it was realistic.
When I came out of the bathroom she was in bed already.  She had a sweatshirt on over her shirt, as her room gets very cold, and so it seemed things would go smoothly, and I could get some good sleep finally, with the comfort of someone special to me in my arms.
As I climbed in beside her she began to kiss me almost immediately.  A kiss I expected.  And I know some people (especially girls, it seems) are content to make out without progressing to anything sexual.  It was nice, but didn't make it any easier to resist the desire to be inside of her. She is really into it, but keeps her agreement not to escalate things.  Next I discover that, while her top half is well bundled, she is wearing these loose "boy-shorts" underwear which offer no more resistance to feeling her thoroughly than wearing nothing at all.  Still, I keep my hands off the juicy center, and I still think we can be passionate and sexy for a little without taking that final step. When she takes off her shirt, inside myself I say "nuts to taking things slow". 
She has a way off moving seamlessly between the passionate and the affectionate, playful and sexual, which makes it all one sensual continuum, which feels at once equal parts an expression of emotion and pure hedonism.  When I do something that feels good to her she has this subtle giggle which was disconcerting at first, but quickly became endearing once I understood what it meant.  All the while, as we enjoyed each others bodies, enjoyed that it was with each other that we were doing this, she honored her agreement not to seduce me, but quickly adapted to the new limits whenever I pushed things a little farther.
I would have liked it slightly better if she were more proactive, but that is of course my own fool fault for asking her to agree to something which I ended up violating myself.
I told her that I wasn't still expecting her to stick to that.
We were lying on our sides, me behind her, against each other, and she presses herself back against me and over, so that she is partially twisted, her legs tangled with mine and just above them, as if shes trying to lay atop me, but not trying very hard.  It is cute.  It has both a seductive quality, and a gentle innocence, a playfulness, which makes me forget that anyone anywhere has ever thought sex could be "dirty" or "wrong". 
I stopped to ask about STDs and birth control.  She's been tested since her last partner (as have I).  She thinks she has condoms, she isn't using hormonals. 

She does, all on her own, exactly those things that I like best.
When she is on top she puts her hands on me, feels my chest and stomach.  She sits upright above me, looking down at me and smiling, like a sex goddess.  She presses herself up against me and rocks and slides to get clitoral stimulation without using our hands.  She lays down on me, and we hug sweetly, no less so for the fact that I am still inside her.  She puts my hand on her breast and squeezes my hand to tell me to squeeze her.  Which is of course exactly what I want to do.  She responds to the things I do just for my own pleasure.  What I want to do is also what she wants me to do.
When she got up to find a condom, as she was still looking I came to her, held her from behind, she told me not to touch her as it was too distracting, I entered her again, encouraged her to keep looking, which she couldn't.  She touched herself, and she came in that position, on the floor kneeling, me holding her back against my chest.
I lay her down on her back on the floor.  I put my hand near her mouth to remind her about her roommates, that she was getting a little loud, and she bit me, her voice still audible.
On the floor still, her on top, me behind, oral for her, missionary, sideways.  I lost it for a while a little bit after I came the first time, and I wasn't in her when she came her second time.  The difficulties were short lived.  I asked her for oral, to help me going again. She wasn't reluctant, but seemed slightly awkward, like she didn't have much experience with it; but it felt better than average just the same.  As soon as she got me ready again, I stood her up, put her on the edge of the bed where I could reach her from the floor.  Her comments about the intensity seemed almost like a complaint, but she didn't object.  I usually don't have much left when I come twice in a row; I had plenty enough to spread around onto her belly and breasts, felt like more than the first time.  This time I kept going without a break.  She wraps her legs around mine, tangling us.  She holds me, and looks into my eyes with that same deep focus that I turned away from the first times it happened.  She gives in to me when I am assertive, and she doesn't hesitate to ask for what she wants or to direct me.  This give and take occurs without any explicit communication, and at no point did I feel she was just doing something for my sake, and yet at no point did it feel she was even remotely selfish.  Instead of two people using each other to get off, for the first time ever it felt like a totally joint venture, a two person team activity. 
Her third was on top of me facing up, the position which tends to be most intense for me.
Her fourth she was lying on her front, I was on top behind her.  It was the first one where I was the one stimulating her with my hands.  That was my favorite.
She seemed to think that was the end, it was a confusing bit of limbs shuffling about before I ended up in her again, her on her side, one leg straight, between mine, the other bent, me sitting upright.  In that position was my 3rd.
Then we lay for a while, talked a bit. We held each other, calmed down. Only for a little bit.  She mentioned feeling satisfied, but still aroused.  My last time I finished off by hand.  I need that pressure at the base in order to feel satiated.  She seemed to get almost physical pleasure from my reaction. 
By now it was quite bright outside. She has a stamina to match her personality.  Somehow I felt no more tired than I had when we had started.  Somehow, even with so much enthusiasm and intensity, aerobic capacity was never a limiting factor.  (I need to do this more often.  I would get into excellent condition.)
We each showered in turn, and after just a bit of talking, (Every part of my insides screamed at me to tell her that I love her, but I used the will power I hadn't used on sex to keep from giving into that premature ejaculation of words) and a bit of snuggling, we got a little bit of actual sleep.
She helped me to tear myself away in the morning; she wanted to sleep more and I had work. 
We haven't yet had a chance to talk.

Hopefully having written this down will be enough to at least get it out of the front of my conscious, and allow me stay present until we do.
Hopefully...