Peter to Rit about me.. sigh

From: Peter Fruchter
Date: Mon, 25 Dec 1995 21:30
To: Ritu Sikka
Subject: Re: To Carolyn & Her Friends

whether or not i am your friend is not even for carolyn to say.

as far as i know nothing has changed in that department. i have always considered you partly destructive and, in certain areas, extremely irresponsible. (i don't much mind 'irresponsible' - it is one of my favourite states after all. 'extremely' is a hazard though.) i wouldn't want to be in close quarters with you without either an escape hatch or an eject button. whatever. this isn't news.

as for manipulation... in the sense you understood the term you are not manipulative. i will explain if you are interested.

do consider the following. first, what you consider control fetish on carolyn's part is her making well considered and deliberate decisions. you are free to elect fatalism as a way of life, but don't mistake carolyn's deliberate choice of volitional autonomy in favour of fatalism for a fetish. 'fetish' is similar to reflex. deliberated choice is not. i was observing this decision being made - it took years. second, carolyn's suggestion that you and richard be physically intimate was not, of all things, an invitation for you to fall into fairy-tale love with him; or to perceive her as the competing female fairy-tale wicked witch. just the opposite. it was invitation for you to be comfortable and for all to enjoy causal well-being. sex was offered as an alternative to drawn out gender role-playing - as relief from hormone charged lizard behaviours. the suggestion was in repudiation of all such behaviour types.

metaphor: it was similar to offering food to someone hungry, paritally in hope that that person would stop talking so much about food. this is not quite right - i'm emphasizing selectively to make things clear. instead of expected results, a full blown food fight resulted. when i say 'food fight' i include accusations that the original offeror has a food-fetish and keeps all the food under her own control via loaded broomstick.

anyhow... i'm writing this mostly as an exercise. i find all this quite amusing and don't much expect understanding to suddenly take root. both information and decent explanations for understanding carolyn are readily available. i think, though, that your notion of who carolyn is will be maintained even if better explanations are available. this is not so terrible. everyone is at least a bit dogmatic. unfortunately, carolyn strongly requires not to be systematically misunderstood... particularly by anyone that accesses her life directly... so....

heheh. i heard that. i didn't say she required to be agreed with or supplicated to. i said she required not to be systmatically misunderstood. everything pretty much follows if you get this distinction.

later, ritu


pf
fruchter@nexus.yorku.ca