Just off the top of my head... sixteen

I am outside Sacramento, California, with Melody. We're staying with two friends of hers -- well, a longtime friend and the longtime friend's husband and four unusual cats.

I am feeling like I'm being shown off, and I don't like it, because I feel like I'm not being shown off particularly... well.

I hate traveling with someone when they are primarily interested in being with people rather than seeing and doing things. Melody and I were in New York, where I am from, this summer, and I didn't spend her time having her wait patiently while I socialized... we went places and saw and did things that were of the place, not of the people. Of the six or seven days we're going to be gone, it's going to be "just me and her" for not quite... two.

I don't like this at all. I didn't understand fully how she had set things up, and I really don't like it. I don't know these people, and I don't necessarily feel like I want to, not because they're not nice people, but because it's not my goal to know more people. And certainly not to spend the few days of leave I have with new people.

In thinking back, I have always disliked situations like this. Melody may term herself an introvert, but I think I come a lot closer to the purer meaning of it. I don't derive that much pleasure from people. Even people I know, sometimes.

I forgot to bring my iPod, so this morning, I did the classic me-thing, and went out and got a new one. In under 20 minutes, the iBook had reloaded it with all of my music (well over four thousand tracks spanning one hundred years) and I was ready to listen again.

Melody and her friend and I spent the afternoon touring wineries in the gold country of Amador County. I have never seen so damn many wineries jammed into one place in my life, not even in the wine region of New York. And some very good wines, too. Totally unlike the boring or pompous California wines I've grown to avoid.

But even that wasn't terribly comfortable for me. I just wanted to come back and plug in again. The next two days, when we are "just us," will be an interesting test of our ability to reconnect. I am feeling increasingly disconnected. I have just about zero interest in fooling around, though I suppose we'll have to do it sometime in the next few days just so that I can say I had sex in California.

Someday soon I will have to total up the states in which I've had sex. Off the top of my head, I think it's sixteen.