conceit

In this society, where competition and selfishness are endlessly nurtured, the fight against conceit and vanity is an uphill, herculean struggle.
I've just returned from vacation, and now face a glaring opportunity to watch my own conceit in action.
Vacation photographs.
Happy friends and family send me photos, and i get to observe myself picking the ones i want to keep for my files. Do i pick the ones that flatter me, and avoid the unflattering ones?
Um, yeah.
Hm.
EVERY WOMAN WANTS ME, AND EVERY MAN WANTS TO BE ME!
No?
Though i celebrate the ugly and unloved, the lonely child in me wants to be beautiful and loved. Society teaches that love is not free, it must be won. So we all go out and fulfill that prophecy, crippling each other's self-worth in the process.
We must learn to seek sex with more love, but less self-affirmation...with greater giving, but less needing. Then we must unromanticize sex, as our primal pageant plays, and learn to love all people with the intimacy formerly assigned only to sex.
But the fight 'gainst conceit is never-ending, and we are all so very full of shit...i try so hard in these words i share, but on occasion catch myself...last month i wrote about a lover named A, and in the original draft, i wrote how my erections had been unpredictable with her, but that this was not the case with the two others i've been sexual with this year. Mentioning the one woman was essential to the story, mentioning the other was conceit..."no unreliable erections here, no no!"...it was conceit, plus wanting to communicate to A (if she chanced to read the article) that i hadn't "consummated" any affair since her, as though i were "faithful", though i wasn't, not in the way she wanted...but i was lonely and horny, and so built a feeble fantasy of a context wherein we could be together again in sexual healing.
EVERY MAN WANTS ME, AND EVERY WOMAN WANTS TO BE ME!!
No?
I suppose not, but compared to the earlier invocation, it's almost more fun (and distinctly more credible) imagining every woman wanting to be me.
Ah well.
In the words of Phil Esterhaus, let's be careful out there.