Monday, Sept. 15, 2003 | 2:41 PM

Sex with the stranger was really fun. It was super fucking fun and I had a great time.

But you know what? There really is only one person I want to have sex with right now.

(OK besides Jack Black. I totally want to have sex with Jack Black. I think he is so fucking funny and Hott and I have the drools for him hardcore. Anyway�)

And of course, it�s not going to happen again anytime soon. Which is a good thing. It�s the right thing. Definitely. And the fact that we aren�t sleeping together now is really smart. It�s very mature. And. It sucks.

The other day he said to me,

Thank you for being there for me and being so smart and funny and talented and sexy and�

And I jumped on that.

do you really think I�m sexy?

And he looked me right in the eyes and said,

I think you�re one of the sexiest women I have ever met.

And I believed him when he said it. It wasn�t a line. I really believe that he thinks I�m beautiful and desirable, and I have never felt that way before. OK�that�s not true. In the past several months that�s changed.

But what�s interesting now that I�m thinking about it, is that all the other stuff he said wasn�t as important to me as sexy, which is kind of lame, isn�t it? Here is someone who truly loves me for all of these things, and the one thing that meant the most when he said it had to do with being attractive. How shallow is that?

This is something I need to iron out�What sex means to me, and it goes back to my childhood.

When I was a kid, my mother was a nutcase about my weight (which is ironic �cause I was thin at the time. It was only later that I got heavy.) She watched every morsel of food that went into my mouth and would berate me for eating anything �bad for me� or gaining any weight at all. I was on a diet from the time I was six years old, even though I was in the right height/weight class for my height and age. She said it was for my health but it wasn�t. (I�ve forgiven her for all this and we talked about it�this isn�t a bitch session�it�s a trying to figure something out about myself session.)

She told me tales about how no boy would ever want to date me if I wasn�t thin, that �fat girls can�t have long hair or wear pretty clothes.� (that always stayed with me.) That I would be unlovable if I weren�t skinny. That I would watch all of my friends pair off and be the lone one left out. She weighed me at least once a week, and if I gained weight she would sort of withdraw her love from me. She would yell and then she would get real fucking cold. And if we were in the grocery store or at the mall and saw a really fat person she would point at them and say,

That�s going to be you someday.

Ironically enough, she was right. All the years of starving and alternately bingeing and bulimia and never getting to know what felt right to me food wise created that.

Funny, right?

This wasn�t something that happened occasionally. This was a HUGE part of my life. I�m talking constant anxiety. Everything was about weight and appearance. Absolutely everything. Most of my day I spent thinking about it. I still do. And when my mother married my evil (ex) stepfather, she brought him into the fun and games too. I often wonder how my mother, who was so kind and wonderful in so many other ways could have been such a fucking sadist about this and how could she have not known how much it hurt me? And I have no clue how she could have acted like that to her own kid.

It�s kind of hilarious because the most I ever weighed in high school was like 175 lbs and I was five six�that�s not thin but it�s not obese either. And my lowest weight was 140, a size eight, at which I still wasn�t thin enough to make my mom happy.

So I came to equate being thought desirable and thin to being loved and approved of. And sex of course got all mixed up in that. And also self denial. I just realized this, or maybe I knew it before but never quite so concretely. I came away with the idea that in order for people to love me (approve of me), I had to deny myself. I had to starve for it�both literally and figuratively. And the fact that in the past I allowed people to step way over my boundaries was just part of this self denial. It all started with food but it transcended food and became every other area of my life. I never ever learned to say �this is what I need because I�m hungry/tired/sad/etc.� I let other people tell me what I needed and what was OK. So it all became about a constant cycle of seeking approval (starving�both literally and metaphorically) and then finally breaking down with resentment and going to the exact opposite extreme�(bingeing, or in relationship terms just totally blowing my top or being a huge bitch.)

So being told that I am desirable or beautiful means about 1000% more to me than being told that I�m smart or funny or talented or kind or anything else�because what I learned from my mother, and you have to remember that this was ingrained on a daily basis from the time I was a little kid until I left home, is that those traits weren�t relevant. I could be the funniest, smartest, nicest, most talented person in the world, and nobody would ever love me if I wasn�t thin. And as stupid as that sounds, I still believe that to an extent. And the fact is that I unconsciously sought out relationships that exactly mirrored this dynamic and confirmed my belief. I spent years with ambivalence. What I had learned as a kid was being beautiful meant being loved. And of course this must have been so fucking easy for certain men to spot. I mean I may as well have been wearing a bullseye. All someone had to do to gain some measure of control over me was to dole out the compliments or withhold them�dole out a fuck or withold it. Sneak around with other �pretty� girls. Talk about other pretty girls. Mention my weight. And I was like completely paralyzed seeking this approval which is exactly what I was doing with my mother when I was a kid. And in so doing I never really grew up or out of it, and I want to. I don�t want to be stuck feeling this way forever, and I don�t want to ever be in another relationship like that again where I am constantly feeling so awful about myself.

So on the one hand, it�s wonderful to feel so sure that someone whom I love and want so much really loves and wants me, and whatever problems we�ve ever had, he never pushed those buttons of making me feel like I wasn�t pretty enough for him. But I also don�t want to be seeking approval from him. And I am. I feel myself doing it. I�m doing it right now in my head. Even though it�s much better for us right now to not be involved physically, I want him to fuck me because that means he thinks I�m pretty enough and that means he loves me and therefore that makes me OK and approved of. This is such bullshit because I know it�s not true, but it�s hard to unravel all this crap. And as much as I hate people who blame their parents and I really do forgive my mom, sometimes I am so frustrated that this happened and it�s something I have to deal with.

I�m much better about it than I was�this last year definitely made a huge difference. But I still have a way�s to go.