I wanted to die. Then the doctor gave me some little, lifesaving pills.

When I was 18, I wanted to lose my virginity more than anything else in the world. The results were mixed. Sex was as good as the hype. But the blowback was a disaster, due to the girl being someone else's girlfriend.

oy, skirk, do i have an askanonymouse story to tell there
after i spell one of my own

i wanted a kind of peace.
i got it.
it cost.
it was worth it.

when I was 12 I had a huge crush on a boy that lived down the street. He was 4 years older than me. When I was 15, after years of obsession, I started dating him. After a couple of months I realised he was a dick. Now, apparently, he is on his 3rd marriage with 4 kids, all with different women.

oh, jon, you're a whore--
should i tell a story about giving someone what they want?
it's very tv mission impossible

A philosophical weekend eh dame?

I find it difficult to tease apart all those wants and quantify them for comparison. When I was at Uni I wanted soooo bad (mostly because I was scared of failing but also because I loved some of the stuff I was studying) to do well and when I set my mind to it when I first started work I wanted a motorcycle soooo bad. I don't know that I specifically had losing my virginity (also at age 18) in mind so much as I was scoping women and wanted a girlfriend soooo bad.

That's just a few and there have been many other both consumerist and spiritual wants. I have a hard time being content with whatever it is I have at a point in time. Consequently it's both a driving force to do more or get more and at the same time it results in a kind of perpetual unsettling feeling.

Do I get a prize?

to move to Europe (Madrid or Amsterdam)--have wanted it since i first went there in the 80s--still haven't done it.

pk, isn't that want and need and knowing the difference?

let's go visit in the winter, amber. i always wanted to hit morroco, too, and for longer iceland and nz eventually.
the dollar sucks and i don't have any anyway.
i want to go to denmark.

I wanted to have sex with a certain coworker. I even broke up with my girlfriend in preparation for having sex with that coworker. On the night when the sex in question was likely to happen, my ex called just before I left for the coworker's house and asked, "Are you going to have sex with [your coworker]?" I said, "No," because I felt ashamed. And I didn't. A few weeks later I got back together with my girlfriend. Who cheated on me.

This counts as my answer to any potential "What big regrets do you have" type of question.

Um..not sure what you mean ethylene.

The ones I've listed are essentially all wants not needs I think. Although... a partner is probably a 1/2 & 1/2.

Probably when I was 9 I really wanted a Barbie doll. As a teen/young adult I really wanted to do well at Uni.

I got the barbie doll and did reasonably well at uni, I didn't really think about wanting a boyfriend until I was in my early twenties.

still haven't done it.

we're waiting with open arms, a.

Not more philosphical than I normally am, peacay. Just spending all afternoon daydreaming about something I want more than I can remember wanting anything, except maybe a real partner. I go back and forth between being convinced I'll get it and being convinced it will never happen. Thought I'd distract myself a little by thinking about other people's wants.

I wanted to be a builder. I was six or something and the houses on our street were newly being built. I'd been pulled away from family life by my battered mother and it was just the two of us on this new estate in Deepcar. I had no friends, but in the houses being built opposite, there was this riot of friendship and laughter, things were out in the open, there were no curtains to be drawn and things were improving daily.

I wanted to be a builder, and my mother who would normally have treated everyone equally, without predjudice or pretension told me that it was no career for a young boy to aspire to. I was devastated, and then later, when the houses were finished and dark and empty, I forgot for a while about being a builder and went back to dreaming of a life filled with corgi cars and the six million dollar man.

oh, jon, you're a whore--

no, just a fool. since sleeping with that girl (and mentioning that I had to a freind to freind who was also a freind of her boyfreind) made me a pariah among everyone else at school, as if I wasn't already. It bred a distrust of females that I still carry to this day. But your compassion is noted, ethylene.

Was on a little island off the northern tip of Aceh, with a die-hard group of ex-return-ticket-travellers. Marie, who had thrown away her 6 mo. return ticket 6 months ago, Steve, who had thrown away his 9 mo. return ticket 9 months ago, and Scott, who had thrown away his 1 year return ticket 5 years ago.

"Stay with us", they beckoned. "Or move on." Marie made me a hand-drawn map detailing parts of Sulawesi and Borneo unknown by most, with contacts scrawled on the back. "Throw away your ticket -- you don't need to go back." (I was coming up to my 1 year return, and had thought the same myself, realizing that it cost me the same to eat, sleep, and travel in Indo as it did to pay rent in Vancouver -- and do nothing else including eat)

But I wanted to see my uncle and dog, who were both sick and probably wouldn't last long. With deep regret, I left them there and went home. Both my uncle and dog were gone by the time I got there.

I still have the map...

For me it's present tense. I want to go back to school part-time, to learn some new stuff that will help me do (and like) my job better. I’m a teacher, and in theory I love my job, but in practice it has burned me out badly over the course of the last ten years. I am in the middle of the application process. Your question made me think back on things that I wanted so badly in the past (fabulous, delightful things, some of which I still want). It surprises me to realize that this present desire (which after all is pretty low-key) is as intense as any of those ever were.

how about a sabbatical, sophie? (you can borrow dream's map) : >

I never know what I want. I want everything, for about five minutes, and then I forget that I wanted it.

I wanted a horse, when I was a kid, for years and years, and I finally got one and then we moved again and I couldn't keep him. Sigh. Then I discovered sexanddrugsandrockandroll anyway and forgot about horses.

I wanted to be a great artist, a famous actress, a brilliant novelist. I wanted to be beautiful and glamourous and have a carved ivory cigarette holder, a top hat and a feather boa. I wanted to sit at the Algonquin round table and drink martinis and say fabulously witty things and have charming men adore me. I wanted to paint incredible paintings in an attic in the city and have people take grainy black and white pictures of me drinking black coffee with Jean Paul Sartre. I wanted to have a farm in the country and raise organic vegetables and babies and dogs and be an earth mother font of natural wisdom in a calico dress.

I got the feather boa, the babies and the dogs and they've all worked out pretty well.

I wanted to be a great artist, a famous actress, a brilliant novelist. I wanted to be beautiful and glamourous and have a carved ivory cigarette holder, a top hat and a feather boa. I wanted to sit at the Algonquin round table and drink martinis and say fabulously witty things and have charming men adore me. I wanted to paint incredible paintings in an attic in the city and have people take grainy black and white pictures of me drinking black coffee with Jean Paul Sartre.

Hey, i do all that stuff! ; >

Well, shit. I want to be a gay man in NYC, then.

amberglow, if you have - and hey, who doesn't? - a secret yearning to be a poor single mother in the North Carolina mountains, than we are definitely living each other's lives. Trade back?

You know, the photo ops with Jean Paul are getting more and more difficult. I find him a little. . . stiff.

thanks folks. I'll be here all night. don't try the veal, it's baby cows!

i was brought up by a poor single mother (but here)

just keep it up, hon--all that fame and glamour and stuff gets old fast. : >


what what what!!??!! veal is baby cows?!?!?!?!?! nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Ah, MGL, that was my dream as well. I wanted to be Brett Ashley and have a string of lovers across Europe.

But I had to settle for sluttin' it up stateside.

having a string of lovers across Europe is easy--just go there a lot.

That's the easy part, amberglow. Convincing your accountant husband to let you fulfill this lifelong dream, well, not so easy.

Two things come to mind.

When I was 11, I wanted a motorcycle more than anything else in the world. I didn't think my parents would let me have one. But, upon returning home from visiting my grandparents, there was a shiny, new 100cc motorcycle waiting for me. After? Two years later, while being very stupid, I wrecked it, hurt myself moderately, and my mother never allowed me to ride it again.

The second thing that comes to mind is also probably one of the single happiest moments of my life. My senior year in high school, I met this really wonderful and beautiful girl in all-district and all-state band. I didn't think she liked me more than as a friend, mostly because I was certain she was out of my class. She was runner-up for Miss Teen New Mexico that year, was going to be her class valadictorian, worked as a model, was an accomplished pianist. Turned out she did like me romantically and me and my best friend drove down to Artesia to visit her where we spent the evening and then, at parting, she kissed me goodnight. That may have been one of the two or three happiest moments of my life. No shit. Later? Didn't work out. She was Mormon, I was an atheist, and that was a problem for her. Ah, well. I still think about her.

How come all you guys lost your viriginty at 18? You should have grown up in a small town. Getting drunk and having sex were the only things to do and most of us lost our viriginities much earlier than that.

(more like 14 for some of us, kmel--it depends on whether they were pre- or post-AIDS i think.)

I grew up in a small town, and I was a virgin until 20. Of course, I was and am a huge dork.

When I was six I wanted a leather pouch that I could pull anything I wanted from -- Star Wars figures, my homework, a Saturn V rocket, general well-being.

When I finally got it, it wasn't as exciting as it was in my mind's eye, but I do okay.

I very much wanted to be a ballet dancer. Didn't happen -- ballet is a very mean world, so I bailed out.