H^m just said what I think it quite possibly the sweetest thing I've heard in a while. As I was bopping around his room, randomly singing along to "Commies for Christ" (DAAS - Doug Anthony Allstars - for the uninitiated and Americans amongst you), he turns to look at me. I believe I had just chanted: "My God arm-wrestled Kruschev" when he stated: "Dee, you have more self-confidence than anyone I have ever met."

I paused. Grinned disarmingly. Wiggled a little. Honestly, how do you respond to that? In today's society, it is somewhere in the order of the highest magnitude of compliments. We value confidence above all other virtues. And I'd just been told I was the best example he had ever met.

I don't think of myself as that confident. I have doubts. I have a deep need to be accepted. I worry about what people think. But all the outward signs are there, I suppose. I wear skin-tight hotpants and knee-high boots in public. I sing along to the music. I dance flamboyantly. I don't mind if people look at me. In fact, I actively court it by all the above steps and more.

And even with my doubts and need for acceptance and worrying, I have a tendency to do precisely as I please. Still with the intention to be cool, but to fit my own concept of cool. But isn't that what everybody does?