The male gaze: now with health benefits.
A former girlfriend felt the need to read lesbian poetry aloud. Much discussion of "generous thighs".
Did they correct for the confounding factor of "bed death"?
"Lesbian Bed Death" is an awesome phrase, and should be the name of my band. Oddly, I think I know enough musicians whose exes are lesbians so that we could have a respectable theme supergroup.
it's due to the lack of calories expended on shaving their legs.
Hmm. Are straight guys more likely to be pudgy than gay guys?
The female gaze: fattening.
Wait, that doesn't make sense. I've never known any women who thought gay guys were less attractive than straight guys.
See, the male gaze even works its health-bringing magic on men!
Dear American Journal of Public Health:
I never thought I would be writing to you, but when I attended a public health convention to present a recent epidemiological study to an audience of my peers and colleagues....
They have the lowest HIV infection rate, though.
11: True. It's made me go to they gym, for example.
14: Those restraining orders? A pathetic attempt at denial.
Or so the mullahs would have you believe.
I secretly want thin lesbians. But they're all "Wow, it's so great to see you! I'm about to meet up with my super-hot obese girlfriend!" and I'm like, wah.
10: No, no, not female preferences. Literally the gaze. We look at the men, we look at the women, they gain ten pounds. Sorta like Superman gaining energy from Earth's yellow sun.
Women apparently looked at me about forty pounds worth, and what did I get with it? Nothing.
They have the lowest HIV infection rate, though.
HIV can be very slimming.
20 - So what you're saying is that women have recreated this guy's ray gun? Typical woman - waving a ray gun around is the best part!
Hey, did you guys see the New York Times article about Long Duck Dongs? Some of the better features of the article:
To test her hypothesis, Dr. Brennan plans to team up with a biomechanics expert to build a transparent model of a female duck. She wants to see exactly what a duck phallus does during mating.
and
Dr. McCracken, who discovered the longest known bird phallus on an Argentine duck in 2001, is struck by the fact that it was a woman who discovered the complexity of female birds. "Maybe it's the male bias we all have," he said. "It's just been out there, waiting to be discovered."
Hey, did you guys see the New York Times article about Long Duck Dongs?
A well-known Thai delicacy.
Dr. McCracken
First name, 'Phil'?
Hardly anything is known about how the phallus waxes and wanes -- not to mention why.
6: Russell Simmons' Lesbian Bed Def and hire a sitarist.
lesbians: 2.69 times more likely to give their actual weight in a survey?
Hah! I hadn't thought of that, but wouldn't be half surprised.
Russell Simmons' Lesbian Bed Def
I'm totally appropriating this the next time I need to be witty for my lesbian friends. I'm taking credit, too.
I'm confused -- on the porn sites, the lesbians look just like the straight women. They're all pretty slim. This study flatly finding contradicts all known anecdotal evidence!
37: That's the MSM for you. I'm sure there's a noted gay activist who can sort it all out for us.
Were these women you were pursuing a bit heavier than average?
Don't worry, teo. This ought to get you back on the horse.
Will no one rid us of this turbulent virginity?
Hey guys, you can have a lot of fun at a social gathering without sex necessarily breaking out.
45: I actually love all that pick-up advice, now that I think about it, because I've always loved (and doubted) the strong form of the homosociality/"men's relations to women are primarily about creating and cementing relations among men" argument. It makes me happy when a nice, old-school, early Gayle Rubin, reductionist hypothesis still holds true in These Postmodern Times. Next up, nostalgia for Reagan!
Sullivan agrees with ogged!
My hunch is that without shallow, physically-oriented men to appeal to, many lesbians feel even less need to stay in shape than many straight women do. Put that together with the obesity epidemic that affects everyone and you have a serious health issue. That no one is allowed to talk about.
Oh man, obesity among lesbians because there aren't men around to keep them fit. That's one of our most serious health issues, just behind abortion-induced breast cancer and the shafting that men get from their health plans because they don't get all those expensive tests paid for every year like women do.
Teo, did you at least flirt a bit?
51 was me. And I was sure that #49 would lead to this. Which I love. Especially the hat.
54: you don't have to take your clothes off, but you'd best have some booze
Wait a minute, wasn't this study in a recognized public health journal? What does Sullivan mean, no one is allowed to talk about it?
Data point: I have actually heard, on a handful of occasions, gay women express the belief that being (extremely) fat is not unhealthy. I don't recall the exact wording, but it was definitely implied that men were to blame for straight women's lack of comfort with so-called fat acceptance.
The video in 49 is SOOOOO much better than some boring Bobby Brown knockoff. As if.
53: Yes, I did, but flirting per se hasn't really been the problem.
I've heard the pro-fat line as well, which has a grain of truth beneath its lardy exterior. Just as an initial intuition, I'd be surprised if this effect were entirely explained by self-report discrepancy.
Teo, I think it's cool that you discovered two important facts: you're not very into Girl 2, and you're interested in enough to try to continue to stay in touch with Girl 1.
It may not have gone as planned, but I think you made progress in a related way. (emoticon would have been included here if not for ban)
Teo, I'm not going to offer you any advice. I'm just glad you enjoyed the flirting.
63: I agree, which is why I'm not too upset about the way things turned out.
You people disgust me. Teo, you failed. You can't come to a silver lining, you know.
Ogged, if you find me two or three girls we can try again.
Hey, at least Girl 1 didn't say she's moving to Sweden.
I'm not a pimp, just some unsympathetic guy on the internet.
70: She is, however, spending the summer in China. She leaves on Wednesday.
Yeoch.
Is it China-with-Internet-access, or no?
I assume yes, but I'm not totally sure.
56, 61: It's true; being fat in and of itself is not unhealthy. (Which means Ogged is wrong. Bonus!) Fatness can be a risk factor for other things that *are* unhealthy, but it's not the same thing. And for that matter, dieting or thinness can be a risk factor for illness too--bone density, anyone?
I'd be surprised if lesbians were any fatter, on average, than men. Which means it isn't the male gaze or lack thereof: it's being American. Since straight chicks aren't really human, as we all know, they can't be fully American and therefore aren't allowed to eat the same way everyone else does.
I hadn't been aware that you were already comfortable flirting. Maybe next you can enjoy being forward.
You can find a link to the obese lesbians article here, and maybe get to it if you're at an academic computer.
I don't think it's much of a paper. It is based on self-reported data (from face-to-face interviews, though, which are more reliable than telephone interviews or impersonal questionnaires), and it concerns the population most affected by the male gaze (age 20-44). It actually doesn't address the issue of lesbians being less self-conscious and therefore more likely to be honest about their overweightitude.
It does make it clear that although lesbians were more likely than others to be overweight, women who reported themselves as "bisexual" or "other" rather than "heterosexual" or "lesbian" were all similar. They don't speculate as to what "other" means, but if it means women who have no interest in sex at all, then they should be similarly unaffected by the male gaze.
"Black" and "Hispanic" women were also more than twice as likely to be obese as "white" and "white non-Hispanic" women, but I guess that result was no surprise.
Chin up, teo. You're almost there; you just have to learn when to start making-out.
This is unclear: women who reported themselves as "bisexual" or "other" rather than "heterosexual" or "lesbian" were all similar.
What I mean is that the difference between "heterosexual", "bisexual" and "other" was insignificant, but the difference between "lesbian" and all the others was large.
Hold on, are you going to see this Girl 1 before she goes to China?
you just have to learn when to start making-out.
Yes, exactly. It's not at all clear to me how that's going to happen, though.
B, I was noting the fat/fit thing before you even had a damn blog.
Why is it that everyone's willing to defer to Ogged's tender sensibilities when it comes to emoticons, yet all his other bans get treated with the proper disrespect?
84: So I see. I assume, then, that your current constant harping about weight and fitness is just another way of trying to annoy me.
I don't think the emoticon rule is mine, Magpie, which might be why people stick to it.
Are you telling me, B, that all those fat lesbians are among that small slice of the population which is fat and fit? Fat is a proxy, but it's not a bad proxy.
85: Because we all fancy ourrselves intellectuals, and therefore above such plebeian affectations as emoticons.
Also I kinda agree with the analogy ban.
'Cause it's my rule, and while people don't defer to Xerxes here, they listen to me! Sometimes. At least about emoticons.
88: I am making no such ridiculous claim and you know it. However, most of the bulldykes I know could probably pound your skinny ass into the pavement.
Anyway, it *is* a bad proxy, inasmuch as it perpetuates bad things. So there.
It's true; being fat in and of itself is not unhealthy.
Yes, sometimes people are really fat and yet healthy. Some people also manage to smoke for 50 years without getting cancer. But for most people, carrying around 40 extra pounds of fat does in fact have health consequences.
I'd say that fatness is a reasonable proxy for health, if you're measuring percentages of body fat.
But just by looking at someone? Trouble is, our sense of what's normal is so skewed by fashion that people think that anything over a size 0 is unhealthy. And it's definitely true that being thin isn't a good proxy for health at all.
Get a room.
It's not that eas...oh wait, why am I telling you?
Nah, getting the room is the easy part.
97: Nah, getting the room is the easy part.
Geez, and people think *I'm* a bitch.
97: but it's b-- oh, wait, why am I saying this?
97: but it's b-- oh, wait, why am I saying this?
I think an important question here is whether it is okay to have sex with the healthy fat girls.
Because you're trying to challenge Ogged for the bitchiest non-me comment today?
Sullivan's swim blogging? If we don't have the market cornered on swimming and gayness, what do we have?
61: I doubt if the difference is entirely down to honest/dishonest self-reporting, but I bet it's part of it. Of course if lesbians are more honest because there's less of a stigma attached to obesity among lesbians, then probably a higher percentage will be overweight, along with the higher percentage reporting accurately.
I know I always lie about my weight when self-reporting.
I've always wondered by how much one could lie when asked for your weight at the DMV. They never seem to challenge the number you give them. At what point do they whip out a scale? Could you lie by 10 pounds? 20? 50?
106: My gawd. I saw that and missed the significance. The Atlantic is clearly attempting to move into Unfogged's space.
104. Teo could try that. "You don't sweat much for a fat girl" usually works, but only if there not, you know, a lesbian.
110. they're, not there. My 3rd grade grammar teacher spins in her grave yet again.
My driver's license says I weigh 135 pounds.
My driver's license says I'm a man.
There not, you know, a lesbian;
there lost, and lost, and lost again.
There cursing, stumbling, sweating foul --
There wiping on a dirty towel.
113: I'm pretty sure you can change those documents more easily than you can change your plumbing. I mean, after all, they don't even check your weight.
I didn't lie, of course; that's just what I weighed when I first got a license at age 15 and I've never bothered to change it.
115: But with less opportunity for learning, or wine.
So does anyone have any advice on what I should say to Girl 1?
118. You haven't said if she is fat, or a lesbian, or both. Makes a difference on your approach.
118 -- didn't you click the link to the advice about what to say to Girl 1?
118: Just tell her what you said to us: it was your weight when you were 15, and you haven't gotten your liscence updated.
As for fat and fit, I think Robertson Davies quotes Paracelsus on the comparable healthiness of the man who can lift 500 pounds and the man who can lift only 50.
As for drivers' licenses, I once received one that said I was slightly over one foot tall.
119: She is neither fat nor a lesbian.
120: If you mean the link in 45, then yes. Yes I did.
Did you not find it helpful?
That was the implication I was making, yes.
Are you just trying to keep communication open or do you have a particular content that you want to deliver?
I suppose just keeping communication open is the easiest way to go, but in some ways that's just kicking the can down the road some more. Plus if it turns out she doesn't have internet access in China then it'll be another couple months before anything can continue.
Dear Girl #1: Bitches ain't nuthin but hos and tricks.
Teo, please don't be a tool and tell her about how much you like her before she leaves for a long time.
Yeah, that's what I'm trying to avoid. But I'd still like to say something.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with weighing 135 pounds.
You could ask her if she will have internet access in China and just say you want to stay in touch.
Weight a minute. Is 135 supposed to be too fat? Ouch. Only among the 20 year olds. This is just another reason to avoid twenty-somethings.
Universal Rule #957: Any situation that involves one person writing a multi-page letter proclaiming his/her undying love for another will not end well.
Why not just wish her a great trip and tell her that you'd like to stay in touch (in a not too pathetic manner)?
134:
What are you doing?
He should write a multi-page letter and post it here for us to read.
You know, if Mary Cheney were fatter we could combine this thread with the one above it.
134. "Do right and fear no man. Don't write and fear no woman." Advice from my grandfather.
"I'd like to stay in touch. And I have a hard time getting laid. Enjoy China!"
Any sort of communiqué will work as long as it begins with "What up, dawg" and ends with "Keep it real, yo". The trick is to be light 'n' breezy.
Maybe I'm not so up to date on communication technologies, but I don't think any form of contact with her from China will affect the virginity situation.
Unrelated: PBS has a very good program on Mormans on right now.
MorMONS. And crap, despite all the forewarning, I still failed to ask my honey to TiVo that program.
FYI: I have a friend in Shanghai right now, and his internet is quite spotty.
sorry. quick spellin. My best friend is a MorMON so I should have gotten it correct.
Just please don't decide to wait for Girl 1 to come back before pursuing other girls. Bad idea.
Becks is correct. Pursuing other girls is the best way to make more girls flock to you.
Oh, I'm an idiot. I just left all sorts of advice on your site, and missed that Girl 1 (can we call her Una?) is leaving for China. Yeah, all you can do then is keep up with the chatty emails, and if she doesn't have email then paper mail, and think about it again when she gets home.
143 - Don't worry. They're rerunning it later this week. They're doing a marathon from 12:30 AM - 4:40 AM on May 3.
132 and 135 sound good as ways to approach this, and I'll probably go with something like that.
Do NOT get involved in a long-distance relationship at this point, Teo. Seriously, please, be careful about this.
How long is she in China for? Six weeks, six months, indefinitely?
Don't worry, folks, I have no plans to turn this into a long-distance relationship, and am already weighing my options around here.
154: Summer break. Two or three months, I guess; I don't know exactly how long they have.
You know, weigh your options locally, don't get into anything long distance relationshippy, but you could do worse than tell her that you'd love to get together and hear all her China stories when she gets back. How could it hurt?
It couldn't hurt, but I have no idea where I'll be when she gets back from China so I'm a little hesitant to make plans like that.
"You know, weigh your options locally"
lizardbreath:
Teofilo shouldnt look for the skinniest girl.
I knew someone was going to say something like that.
Teo, if she is living close enough that you can see her in person, you should go try to make out with her. If not, then you should go to a bar and approach women, saying that their daddies must be drug dealers, etc.
She is not living close enough for that. I'll keep the bar idea in mind.
It's a very good idea to make out with her before she goes to China. It's a very bad idea to have a conversation with her about how much you like her before she goes to China. It's a very good idea to go to a bar after she goes to China and talk to women there. It's a very good idea to purchase aviator sunglasses from a walgreens or cvs, etc.
163 before reading 162, natch. I would not have any sort of "I like you so much" conversation. If you want to keep in touch with her, plan silently to do that.
It's a very good idea to purchase aviator sunglasses from a walgreens or cvs, etc.
With a mustache.
Can't I at least try to find out if I'll be able to keep in touch with her while she's in China?
It's a very good idea to purchase aviator sunglasses, grow a mustache, and wear 1970's basketball shorts.
What if I just say something like "it was great seeing you this weekend; have fun in China"?
167: A traveling mustache, I'd hope.
168 is fine. But you've got to end it with one of these:
;))))))))xxoxxoxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox
I thought that was Standpipe's rule.
hmmm.
I personally like x's and o's.
I thought it was mine first. I'm pretty sure the pastries were.
170: I just meant that it was really NOT a good idea. See text's original exposition of the negating power of the moustache here.
Hi, BG. Any news on your romantic dilemma?
them was the good old days. no, but it really is a good idea.
Cala, it was probably your rule first, but it's such a fine rule, it seems as though each one of us propogated it in our dreams.
175: Shall we play tic-tac-toe?
| | ======== | | ======== | |
I pick the middle square of the middle row.
We are the Unfoggedtariat. Our rule is legion. As are our pastries. And cockjokes.
[o][ ] [ ]
[ ] [ ] [ ]
[ ] [ ] [ ]
Okay, I sent her a message along the lines of 168.
X | | =========== | O | =========== | |
188: Did you remember the Xs and Os?
This is almost as fun as the 8-bit Nintendo version of Win, Lose or Draw.
X | | O
===========
| O |
===========
X | |
Chris Hitchens is on the Daily Show.
Er,
X | | O
===========
| O |
===========
X | |
Are you staying in Teoville for the summer, or what? You definitely don't want to put all your eggs in one basket heading to China. Perhaps visits to nearby metro area would help.
Left, center row.
THIS BETTER NOT END IN STALE MATE.
X | | O =========== O | O | =========== X | | X
Our tic-tac-toe game is representational of Teo's lovelife.
"is representational of"?
196: I will be going to home to Albuquerque at the beginning of June and staying there for an as-yet-undetermined period of time.
Here come the TIE fighters!!
|-o-| |-o-|
``` ````
Oh, no, it's Darth Vader!
(-o-)
There goes the tictactoe board!
xoxo||====|x|o||x====....[crash]
Aw, Clowny, that's so nice!
Center, top row!
Heebie, your mistake was starting in the center. Everyone knows you should start in a corner. (Well, really, everyone knows that there's no point in playing t-t-t.)
X | O | O =========== O | O | ===========X | X | X
I'm only putting up with this if it ends in global thermonuclear war.
(How come "Center top row"? You could totally have forced me to forfeit by playing "center bottom row".)
207: You mean tic-tac-toe, or my lovelife?
DANG! Anyone wanna play yes or no?
201: right. Well, hrm. Shouldn't the last month of school be reasonably bacchanalian? Christ, it even was at UChicago.
I believe that in that other thread, they're playing hopscotch.
208 - well, you were handing me an easy win in 198, and that seemed so nice that I thought I'd respond in kind.
211: I'm hoping so, but I don't see a whole lot of evidence for that.
214: I dunno. Frat parties? Apartment parties? Departmental happy hours? Events with alcohol, is what I'm saying. Find them, hope for the best.
178: Hi teo! It's promising. Yesterday in church I was sitting in an empty pew, and John came up behind me and put his hand on the small of my back, almost on the side of my rib. Many asides were whispered in my ear, and he he requested that I jab him if he fell asleep.
He invited me to see whether I could help him with a shelf in his apartment and to show me the place and to watch Meet the Press. He also solicited my thought on decorating and floors. Nothing happened, partly because I was sitting on the floor in a skirt next to the fireplace, but I don't need to rush things. John's not going anywhere.
Sure, there'll be parties, but if I liked going to frat parties I probably would have gotten laid a long time ago.
I hereby declare a moratorium on teo's love life.
I mean on discussions thereof.
It's a good thing nobody listens to ben.
Maybe Ben has some news for us. Go on Ben, what would you like to tell us about your love life?
Despite what I said in 218, I'm actually pretty optimistic about my chances in the next month. We'll see how it turns out.
218: but as the year winds down, perhaps others who wouldn't otherwise go to such things will, which may somewhat change their character. Really, apartment parties thrown by people you vaguely know are your best bet. And isn't there a "senior week"? That shit is golden: what happens in senior week stays in senior week, or something.
but as the year winds down, perhaps others who wouldn't otherwise go to such things will, which may somewhat change their character
Knowing this school, I find this highly unlikely. Senior week should be good, though.
"extremely vexed" s/b "over-vexed"
I never knew anything new to come out of senior week. It was mostly doing extra-fun things with people who were already friends.
When I finished my MA, my roommates and I held our own senior week, with more us-specific activities, and that was also delightful, but it didn't serve as an opportunity to get new relationships happening. Too much pressure?
[Incidentally: any sociologist-types know if that 'strength of weak ties' finding applies to sex partners as it apparently does to job-seekers? Seems like it very much would.]
235: Hrmph. You're not helping, AWB! Even if you're "right" and I'm "wrong," this is one of those situations where Teo could create his own reality through sheer force of belief, while we in the "reality-based community" would be left studying the results. Whose side are you on?
It was mostly doing extra-fun things with people who were already friends.
This could be easily tweaked to serve my purposes, I think.
Eh. Friends of mine and I used to drink at a lesbian bar and I don't recall the patrons being any more obese than the average. But the music--oh, God--that's what finally drove us off. Lesbians are very unfunky. Enough with the acoustic singer-songwriters, ok?
This Yes/No thing reminds me of a time in high school where the drama club from my high school and the drama club from the boys' high school got together for a retreat. For one of the exercises, we had to get up in front of everyone in boy/girl pairs and one of us was assigned the word "yes" and one of us was assigned the word "no". Each person had to imagine a motivation and wasn't allowed to tell their partner and you had to try to persuade the other person and create a scene by just repeating your word over and over in different tones.
I was partnered with this guy I'd never met before and we had a totally intense scene. People were transfixed. We completely Shared A Moment. It was probably the hottest thing of my young life to that point. When the drama instructor finally broke the scene, she asked us what our motivations had been. I forget what mine was but he said that he was picturing us a married couple and he was trying to talk me out of having an abortion and murdering our innocent unborn baby.
Mood: gone.
What's "senior week"? I didn't have a "senior week".
246 -- there was a similar game to that on "Whose Line is it Anyway".
(Except without the unborn-baby stuff)
It's the week between the end of exams and Commencement.
[Incidentally: any sociologist-types know if that 'strength of weak ties' finding applies to sex partners as it apparently does to job-seekers? Seems like it very much would.]
It's a bit more complicated, but very interesting.
ok, it was yes.
feel free to murder our unborn baby.
250: That's the week I started my new job. No one told me!
Jerks.
Nope, we have commencement the day after the last finals occur. Yep, that means the people there aren't positive they're going to graduate or not.
I have never been a senior -- I graduated college a year early, and I dropped out of college after my second year there. So I have never had a senior week, or even a senior moment.
Round here the University sponsors all sorts of stupid (and expensive) activities to keep people from drinking during Senior Week. It doesn't work.
It's a lot like Orientation, actually, but at the other end.
"It's a lot like Orientation, actually, but at the other end."
Save these lines for the bar scene.
Though I should say, as the lead author of the paper points out in the comments on that thread, the scope conditions of its finding are pretty strong, because it's a highschool. For broader populations, there's this.
251: thanks--I remember reading (and loving!) that paper when you first posted about it ... but I don't recall their being much claim that this structure held true of adult sexual networks in the "real world." Has there been much other stuff on adults to test this? I suppose high school kids are nicely captive.
Our made-up senior week was fun. We had a spa day where we bought a bunch of spa supplies, used them on each other, drank wine, and watched semi-erotic films in our bathrobes all day. Another day, we went to Cedar Point. One night, we drank whiskey and looked at the stars under this huge geodesic dome outside Cleveland.
We had a spa day where we bought a bunch of spa supplies, used them on each other, drank wine, and watched semi-erotic films in our bathrobes all day.
Yep, just a little bit of tweaking...
Wow, a senior week would have been nice. It was kind of anticlimactic having the entire undergraduate apparatus shut down and the dorms evacuated two days after finals week ended.
Only about a quarter of the people I know went to commencement anyway. The diploma came in the mail.
I couldn't figure out what the practical difference was between the core infection model and the inverse core model.
Ned: How can they tell if people have the grades to graduate, then?
At my college, instead of a senior week, they just had a parade, every day. Instead of grades, they had a parade. Instead of teachers, they had the men with batons.
we bought a bunch of spa supplies, used them on each other, drank wine, and watched semi-erotic films in our bathrobes all day.
Um. Yeah. This sounds like every January where I went to college. (Our Januarys were supposed to be devoted to "discovering ourselves.")
But the music--oh, God--that's what finally drove us off.
There's one stereotype that has been painfully confirmed for me time and again. Nobody touches their music when it comes to o-earnestness. It makes Christian rock look like Eugene Chadbourne.
re: 268
Bad emo is of the same ilk.
self-reporting differences seem plausible to me, esp. as the authors in the link do not indicate how large is the gap between the self-reported numbers for the various groups. Women who identify as heterosexual would only need to be slightly more embarrassed about their weight than women who identify as lesbians to produce drastic gaps in the numbers of 'overweight' lesbians vs. heterosexual women. If, e.g. the 'overweight' category for a certain height begins at 140, we need only imagine that heterosexual women who weigh 140 are more apt to lie by a pound or two & that would produce misleadingly high gaps between the number of het vs lesbian 'overweight' people. I can easily imagine many people know thinking '140 sounds a lot higher than 138' and fudging the difference. So, from all the link says, it may be 1) the average difference SELF-REPORTED differences between heterosexual and lesbian identified participants is something like two pounds, and/or 2) differences in self-reported numbers can be explained by differences in willingness to be honest about one's weight to complete strangers.
She wrote back to ask for my mailing address so she can send me postcards.
Yes; except for, the public nature of the postcard means she won't have the privacy necessary for investigating her deepest, most secret feelings for our Teo.