Hi there. This weekend, my friend and I told another friend of ours to not touch us. She always says that she needs touch and that she needs our love, but it wasn't love then, if it was ever. I don't know exactly how I feel about being touched and all. Sometimes I give people hugs if I feel inclined, or else not. But my friend and I talked about it. He likes being touched a lot, and also touching other people. But he only wants to touch certain people that he likes. And I asked him if touching someone who didn't want it would feel just as good, and he made a face and said no. It seems gross to me, too. So I said we should tell her not to touch us anymore. Understand that she is a large person and irresponsible, too. She's had accidents with us. She launched herself at me in a video store, and sent me to the floor. And she got strange then, too, lying on me like that. My other friend with the red hair wanted to help me up, and my large friend would not let her. She just kept shoving me back on the floor when I tried to get up, and put her knee down on my crotch. That hurt. When she let me up, she said she was just kidding. My friend with the red hair was opening the door once to her house, and my large friend was playing with the door and pretending not to let her in. But then she started slamming it with all her might. She didn't know my red haired friend's foot was in the door. But it was so bad again, because we were all yelling from the outside, and she couldn't hear us for a long long time. And my friend's foot got hurt, and my large friend said she couldn't hear us shouting from the other side. There are just too many of those kinds of things happening around her. Between the three of us, my small friend and my red haired friend and me, we decided to tell her to stop. We told her before. She used to try to put her tongue in my mouth or lick my face, and I didn't like it. It was like when she had me on the floor at the shop. Not loving, but hostile. Like she wanted to do something to me, and she was going to do it whether I wanted it or not, and she seemed to like being able to force it on me. So when we were talking one night, I asked her to stop the wet kissing. She said I was being mean and unloving towards her. But the way I've come to fear her, she's not so much a friend as a bully. A creepy kind of bully, like a mother who should take care of you but then throws a bottle at your head. The kissing did stop, and I was glad. But last week my small friend came to pick me up from work, and he was hurting very badly because she tripped him on the stairs for a joke and he has a bad knee. He was hit by a drunk driver when he was a kid, and sometimes his knee hurts even without outside interference. I was so angry. She knew he had a bad knee. And he'd lost his old cane, so we had to go get him a new one, and a wrist brace because his wrist is imperfectly healed, too, and landing on it had hurt. Thankfully, we'd just gotten his painkiller prescription filled, so he had those. But he couldn't seem to take enough of them to feel alright. He had to be careful not to overdose. He'd asked her not to touch him, and sometimes he says "No" and "Stop" when she reaches for him. It makes me feel awkward, because if he was a girl and she was a boy, I'd have hit my large friend already for bothering my small friend. How can she call it affection when it hurts people, and they back away and tell her to stop? But she didn't again on Friday and lunged at him for a hug. And his knee slipped further. We all sat down and tried to work out how to talk to her. It's more complicated now because she's living in a house with most of my friends. I was invited to move in, but I sensed that she wouldn't be good for me to live with and said no, thanks. But my red haired friend and my small friend both live with her. They can't just avoid her. They have to worry about getting hurt. She says she's just a bouncy silly little puppy who needs a lot of petting. But I think she needs to be housetrained before she destroys everything. I was so angry when my small friend's knee got knocked off again. So angry that he was getting hurt and not protecting himself better. At the same time, I know it's hard even for me to protect myself. Maybe because I just feel that it's better for me to get hurt than to have to deal with someone who is so unpredictably harmful. Anyway. We managed it. And for some reason, when we told her not to touch anyone who said "No," she ran out of the room crying. I don't think she's going to change. What was she crying for? She's not the one who got hurt. I think it's the ones who got hurt who are trying to change. Fucks with a limp, paisley _________________________________________________________________ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. 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