Fast and Fragmented

Ever since my last entry, I've been intending to write something about internet dating.  And I will, I will... but not tonight. 

Sometimes I feel like my life is just zipping by at light speed, and I wonder what it will seem like in retrospect -- when, after several years, I look back on this crazy period in my life.  There's no way I'm going to remember everything.  I pride myself on my excellent memory, and yet it happens that entire episodes just fall out of my brain: the other day, a friend of mine was talking about how, when I was pregnant with Sienna, we used to see so much more of each other, and I honestly didn't know what she was talking about.  For example, she referenced an evening when we went out for dessert together, and it sounds plausible enough, but I have no memory of the event.

Today I did a little bit of everything, and then some.  A lot of playing secretary (no, not the fun kind of playing secretary), a lot of laundry, dishes, house cleaning, my property management gig (talking to prospective renters, etc.), some editing, reading books to Sienna, a convivial dinner with friends (interrupted by 10 minutes of making out in the parking lot with Travis, who happened to be driving through my part of town), business strategizing with Parker, tea and a chat with my son Denali, phone calls to my brother and Lilianna and the car insurance people...

What would it be like to wake up with nothing to do?  Or maybe just one or two things, with plenty of time to focus, no need to divide my attention up into little bite-sized portions?

And yet it's also true that, though I sometimes long for more leisure time, I'm feeling very happy with my life right now. I guess this is the luck of the lucky draw: go, go, go!

Polyfidelity: Happily Ever After?

This morning at Travis's, wandering naked from the bedroom to the kitchen, I discovered something interesting on the coffee table: Loving More: The Polyfidelity Primer, by Ryam Nearing.

“Hey Travis, what's with the book?” I asked, knowing that he most likely hadn't picked it up for himself. “Have you actually read it?'

“Nope, never read it. I ran across it when I was moving stuff over here, and thought you might want to take a look,” he said. “Sallie must have given it to me.”

Travis and Sallie have been close friends for more than twenty years. They started out as boyfriend-girlfriend, but after living with each other for about five years, their relationship transitioned into friendship. Travis and I initially met through Sallie, actually – it's a bizarre story, which I'll save for some other time.

I've long maintained that polyfidelity is basically a contradiction in terms. I've never understood why anyone who identifies as poly would choose to be in a closed marriage of any kind, even one in which there were more than two people.

So I went back to bed, book in hand, curious to see what this Ryam Nearing person had to say.

Nearing defines polyfidelity by describing the form it takes: “a group in which all partners are primary to all other partners and sexual fidelity is to the group; shared intent of a lifelong run together” (p.10).

Perhaps not surprisingly, polyfidelity is then held up as “the highest evolution of the sound ideals of individual choice, voluntary cooperation, a healthy family life, and positive romantic love” (p.26).

My own relationship style, which Nearing calls “open coupling,” is apparently less than ideal, although it can be tempting to try it at first, because it's “a smaller and therefore easier step for most people to take in moving beyond a one-to-one closed partnership” (p. 58).

Wow: watch those polyfidelitous black-belts go! Look at that nifty relationship pretzel they just made! No loose ends anywhere! I only wish I were that advanced!”

Oh, please.

To be fair, Nearing does give a pretty spot-on critique of what is perhaps the biggest problem with open coupling. I'll quote some of what s/he says on this topic:

“Equality in relationships is an important value for those choosing polyfidelity. From either side, as the primary in an open couple or as a secondary relating to them, the difference in status simply feels uncomfortable....Short term, while first getting involved with an outside lover, the secondary status is easy and feels right. But as the relationship develops in intensity, tough questions arise. If your primary partner is always the highest relationship priority, how does it feel to give less to your other lover?

“...As someone's secondary, what does it do to your self-esteem, long-term, to always have to make your plans after your lover and his partner have finalized theirs? How does it feel to have her go 'home' time after time to someplace other than your place? ...[T]he inequality factor becomes virtually abhorrent, if not at the start, then after some difficult and heart-wrenching dramas unfold” (p. 59).

Aye, there's the rub. All very pertinent, too, given the discussions Travis and I have been having lately about what he's going to do when Parker and I move to the Northwest in June. Travis has said he doesn't want to be “like an Army whore, picking up my skirts and following you every time you decide to pull up stakes” – but the prospect of a long-distance relationship isn't attractive to either of us. What to do? The worst thing, Travis says, is that he feels like he is “alone” in his decision-making process – that Parker and I have our plans, which weren't made with Travis in mind, and now he's got to figure out how he's going to deal with a change that feels like it's being imposed on him.

A long-term solution is probably going to involve a shift in the group dynamic, toward a structure that feels more balanced. Perhaps, over time, Travis will become more integrated into my family; or perhaps he'll find his own “primary” partner, while keeping me as his “secondary”; or perhaps he and his new partner will join me and Parker and we'll form a blissfully balanced four-sided shape of some kind. But whatever the solution, I know one thing: it won't involve polyfidelity.

I can't see myself voluntarily pledging sexual or emotional fidelity to anyone – not to a person, not to a group of people, not ever. I'm not a person to promise something I can't deliver.

A locked door doesn't make me feel secure, it makes me feel claustrophobic. I'll happily stay in the house all day, as long as I know I can explore the great outdoors whenever I choose. But if I have to promise to stay at home, to forgo the company of outside visitors, I immediately start chafing to get out, neurotically pacing the length of my cage like a panther at the zoo.

Being open to people and possibilities, getting to make new discoveries about myself and others, allowing love to grow organically, accepting that I don't have complete control over my life, and cultivating the flexibility I need in order to weather changes gracefully – these, to me, are fundamental values. In other words, I chose a polyamorous lifestyle because it meets my need for openness.

In my mind, polyfidelity represents the worst of both worlds: you've got all the restrictions of monogamy (albeit with more people in your closed “marriage”) and all the drama and inherent instability of non-monogamy.

What's more, polyfidelity is not going to solve the underlying problem of inequality that arises whenever a relationship structure moves beyond that of a closed dyad. (Note that couples in traditional marriages spend a lot of time arguing about perceived unfairness in their relationship; adding other people into the mix just means that there are more people constantly evaluating who's getting the better deal and who's getting shafted....)

It doesn't matter how vociferously Ryam Nearing defends the idea that, in polyfidelity, all partners are valued equally. The fact is that some relationships will be stronger than others; some dyads will experience a more compelling connection than other dyads in the group. The group dynamics are going to suit some people better than others. Some people are going to get along peaceably and others are going to get into power struggles. And friction between any two people in such a group will have ripple effects on all the other relationships: everyone is going to get drawn in to the drama, like it or not.

Finally, the whole polyfidelitous endeavor seems so artificial to me. I don't have anything against intentional communities. I live in one, and I love it. But my co-housing community isn't a commune (there's no partner swapping, and no shared finances except insofar as each family must contribute to the maintenance of our common property), and it certainly isn't closed: people are free to come and go. There's no vetting process of any kind. 

In contrast, people who choose polyfidelity have a whole long list of requirements, things they're looking for in a potential partner. They're out there in cyberspace beating the bushes, often in vain, for the person(s) who will complete whatever vision of the “perfect family” they've concocted – I've seen their advertisements on sites like PolyMatchmaker, and I always have to roll my eyes. It's a more ridiculous version of what happens when a single person decides it's time to get married, without having anyone in particular in mind.

It goes like this: you've scripted out your play (let's call it “Happily Ever After”), decided on the role(s) available, and now you just have to put together your cast. So, you put out a casting call, and, assuming that anyone comes to audition, you evaluate the hopeful(s) against your checklist of criteria. This method is notoriously ineffective for single people looking for true love, and I'll bet that it's even less likely to succeed when multiple people must be equally thrilled by, and equally willing to commit to, the brave (or foolhardy) soul who shows up to audition for the part.

Ultimately, polyfidelity is very similar to monogamy. It seems to be largely about achieving and maintaining security. There's nothing wrong or ignoble in that aim. I too have a desire to build relationships that are going to last, to find a sustainable group dynamic. But "sustainable" is not the same thing as "static."  

The idea that you can create the perfect structure, and then just make sure that it stays that way, seems awfully naive to me.  Human relationships take place over time, against the backdrop of all kinds of changes in circumstance; they are works in progress, and there's no "happily ever after" guarantee.  A pledge of fidelity has always been a flimsy barricade against uncertainty and loss. And if you're counting on more than one person to hold that line, chances are pretty high that you or someone you love is going to fall from grace.

Poly Drama-Trauma-Rama

If you look at the dating profile of someone who identifies as non-monogamous, there's a very high chance that he or she will have something negative to say about drama. “NO DRAMA, PLEASE,” for example. It's kind of a joke. You really don't want relationship drama? I've got the perfect living arrangement for you: a hermitage.

The fact is, human relationships are complicated. And maintaining more than one sexual/romantic relationship at a time can be very complicated.

I'd venture to say that most poly people have a high tolerance for complexity. Some even enjoy a certain amount of drama in their lives. (Hey, at least it beats feeling your thighs spread a little more every day, as you sit there on your sofa watching manufactured dramas on the boob tube and stuffing your face with hot-n-spicy fried pork skins. I don't know about you, but I can think of waaaaay more titillating scenarios involving many of those words I used in the previous sentence. IMHO, drama's occasional appearances are a small price to pay.)

However, sometimes, the drama-trauma gets out of hand.

To illustrate, let's look at the most recent sequence of events in my friend Lilianna's life:

1. Lilianna and her out-of-state boyfriend Robin spend the weekend together, and things go pretty well, even though they have a couple of difficult conversations about the fact that she's recently gotten back in touch with Paul, and she's slated to have dinner with him on Monday night.
2. She meets Paul for dinner, and they have a fantastic time together: they talk astronomy and ideas, and the evening ends with a spontaneous kiss. Lilianna is really happy about it. (She and Paul went out once or twice about a year ago, but somehow things didn't quite click then, and she felt like he'd flaked out on her. Recently, he contacted her, expressing regret that he'd let the connection slip, and she cautiously accepted his invitation to get together again.)
3. She gets back home after the dinner, and Rick has a glass of wine all ready for her: “Come sit here on the futon with me and tell me all about it!” So, they're talking, and her cell phone keeps beeping, because Robin's texting her.
4. She texts Robin, telling him, “Hey, it's late, and I'm talking to Rick.” Robin says he doesn't care how late it is, whenever she's done talking to Rick, she needs to call him, because he's feeling anxious to know how her date with Paul went. So she texts back, saying they had a nice dinner, talked astronomy, evening ended with kiss.
5. Robin's response goes something like, “What? What? NO. No, no, no! Make it stop, make it stop!”
6. Rick, who's wondering what's going on, reads Robin's text. Suddenly, he's furious. His response to Robin's response goes something like, “That fucking hypocrite! He waltzed in here five years ago and turned our whole LIVES upside down! And here he is, losing it over a dinner date and a kiss? Give me a break! What, we're all supposed to feel sorry for him, cater to his whiny-whine demands, because he's in so much pain, oh waah, waah? When he didn't give a fuck about how I felt? Oh, no, back then it was all, 'Oh, the eternal principle of love blah blah blah!' It's always all about him and what he wants! What do you even SEE in him, anyway? Name me one good thing about your relationship with Robin – besides the sex, I mean – 'cause I sure as hell don't see it!”
7. After Lilianna and Rick are more or less finished with their now-not-so-pleasant conversation, she gets a text from Robin: “I'm still up – are you?” It's really late – past midnight here, and two hours later for Robin. So Lilianna suggests they wait until morning to talk. He says he must talk to her now, that he doesn't care how late it is, he needs five minutes on the phone.
8. At 5 a.m., Lilianna finally says, “I'm sorry, Robin, but I have to hang up and get some sleep.”
9. As soon as Lilianna wakes up on Tuesday morning, Robin – who apparently has not slept one wink – pings her online, wanting to take up the conversation where they left off. He has now decided that what he really needs (assuming he can't manage to coerce Lilianna into agreeing to be “just friends” with Paul by threatening to break up with her) is for Paul to know how upset he is. Robin needs Lilianna to tell Paul all about their harrowing post-date conversation, in which Robin wept, gnashed his teeth, etc., etc., the whole nine yards. Robin wants Paul to understand exactly how much suffering he's causing someone else by pursuing this thing. At one point, Robin admits he's not hoping for compassion, he's actually hoping to scare Paul away: “Maybe he'll decide that it's just too much drama for him.”

No wonder, when I called up Lilianna on Tuesday afternoon, she exclaimed, “I'm so glad you called – because I really need to talk to someone who is not involved in this whole thing!”

No wonder, when I went over to her place today with my daughter Sienna, Lilianna seemed delighted to spend her afternoon dealing with a not-quite-three-year-old, whose simple demands are easily addressed: “Of course you can help me stir the cornbread, honey!” or, “No, that's enough for now -- too much lemonade will give you a tummyache.”

 

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Whether we're talking about the U.S. military's stance on gays or a method of coping with jealousy, my opinion on “Don't ask, don't tell” is the same: bad policy.

Yes, there are times when it's appropriate to keep your lips zipped about what exactly has been going on in the bedroom(s), boardroom(s), or other place(s) of pleasure you tend to frequent. But I've never yet seen a case in which a blanket “don't ask, don't tell” policy has worked out well for people in an intimate relationship.

Why is that? My guess is that all that not talking about IT, whatever the big, scary “IT” might be, is just not conducive to intimacy.

In the throes of jealousy, ignorance can look like bliss. But when you tell your lover, “Do whatever you want, just so long as I don't have to hear about it,” you're signing up for all kinds of petty discomforts that, over time, will grow to far outweigh your present pain.

To illustrate, here's a typical “don't ask, don't tell” phone conversation:

Person A: “So what have you been up to?”

Person B: “Oh...Nothing much.”

Person A: “Oh. So...is this not a good time to talk?”

Person B: “Not really, unfortunately – I'm supposed to be somewhere in 5 minutes.”

Person A: “Where?”

Person B: “Oh, I'm just meeting...someone...for lunch.”

Person A: “A friend of yours?”

Person B: “...Yeah.”

Person A: “Who?”

Person B: “I thought you didn't want to talk about this kind of stuff.”

Person A: “Oh. That kind of lunch. Well, I guess I'll talk to you some other time, when it's more convenient for you.”

I know how these types of conversations go because Scott, my I-don't-know-what-to-call-him/ex-boyfriend/occasional lover/hopefully lifelong friend, maintains that he doesn't want to know anything about my “dating life.” He says it's just too painful: even after all this time, he gets bent out of shape whenever he thinks about me with anyone else.

The problem is, his method of coping with jealousy doesn't work. It doesn't work for me, and it hasn't worked for him. If it works for you, please tell me how, exactly, you manage to live with all those awkward information gaps without feeling empty inside.

How do you maintain intimacy with a partner who doesn't want to hear about things that feel important to you? How do you satisfy the desire to have your loved ones know you fully and love you for who you are, if there's a part of you they just can't accept? And how do you keep your own counsel with an entirely clear conscience, especially when this means keeping someone in the dark?

It may be that someone can provide satisfactory answers to these questions. Until then, I'll be on my soapbox.

A 'Sweetie' by Any Other Name...

So here's a perennial poly problem: what to call one's special people?

All right, it's not a huge problem, and maybe I'm the only one fretting about it. But it does keep coming up for me. 

A lot of poly folks have hit on the solution of referring to their significant others as “my sweetie,” as in, “So I went out to dinner with my sweetie So-and-So, and she spent the whole time talking about how her other sweetie was having a hard time with one of his sweeties....”

But I'm not really a fan of “sweetie” – too saccharin for my taste.

Other options aren't a whole lot better.

At a party in the Bay Area I once attended with Parker and Scott, we were introduced as “Viny, her husband Parker, and her O.S.O. Scott.” It took me a second to decode “Other Significant Other,” and I wasn't sure I liked it. Economical, certainly, and maybe kind of amusing, but also potentially marginalizing, kind of like an Honorable Mention or an “Also Ran....”

I have tended to favor more traditional terms like “boyfriend” or “lover,” but these don't seem like accurate descriptors for some of the people in my life.

Parker is my husband. Travis is my boyfriend. Okay, so far, so good.

Ex is a useful term, if you've got a relationship that has clearly transitioned into a platonic friendship. But poly people don't always simply end a relationship that isn't working.

Monogamous people, faced with a problematic relationship, are very tempted to just break it off, because they take it for granted that they can't pursue anyone else as long as they're still attached. Poly people, who don't have to be single in order to move on, tend to keep former lovers in their lives in whatever way seems to work best. In label-land, as elsewhere, being poly is a complicated business.

Is Lilianna Parker's ex-girlfriend? I'm not sure, but it doesn't sound quite right. What about that episode under the apricot tree a few months ago? Or the trip they're talking about taking together?

Another example: Scott and I broke up years ago, but nearly every time we've seen each other since then, we've ended up in bed together. So, what does that make him? Not my boyfriend, since we see each other only once or twice a year, but “ex-boyfriend” implies that we're totally over each other, and we're not.

My mother recently came up with a good catch-all term when she informed me that she had no interest in interacting with any of my (here she paused, searching for the right words...) extraneous people.

Extraneous Person. I think I like it. From now on, everyone I love who isn't part of my parent-approved nuclear family will be designated as an E.P. I'll append the identifying letters to each name, in a little superfluous bubble, like a TM.

Or maybe I should just suck it up and go with sweetie, like everyone else.

More on Friends and Lovers

I've had sex with seven men. Three of those relationships began as simple friendships. I've been sexual with two women, both good friends of mine. That makes a total of nine sexual partners over the course of the eighteen years that have passed since I first became sexually active.

And I'm still friends with eight of these people. Nine, if a Facebook-only friend counts.

Last night, I had dinner with three of them (my husband Parker, and our friends Lilianna and Rick). On the way home, we stopped off to see another (my boyfriend Travis, who is moving into his own place, and who needed Parker's help to move a couch and dresser). Later that night, another one called me (Scott, who wanted to commiserate about how lame Mormon parents can be). Then, early this morning, I got a call from another (Drew, whom I fondly call “my darling Ex”).

This is why my friend Erika's statement about not fucking one's friends made no sense to me. I guess the underlying fear is that sex ruins friendships, but that hasn't been borne out by my experience.

It's true that the transition from being romantically involved with someone to being just friends can be painful, but those kinds of hurts generally fade, and what remains is something worth preserving – provided there was anything of substance there in the first place.

Which brings me to the topic of casual sex.

For years, I claimed that I just wasn't “into” casual sex, even though I didn't have a clear idea what casual sex might be. Now, I think I have a better idea.

There are two kinds of casual sex:

1. Casual sex with a friend. In this case, although there may be no “romance” involved, both people genuinely like each other and are committed to maintaining their friendship.
2. Casual sex with someone who's not a friend. In this case, the connection is almost entirely physical: there's little interest in developing a relationship of any kind, except insofar as basic social niceties are sometimes necessary in the pursuit of sexual gratification.

The jury's still out on #1, but I can now say with complete conviction that I am not interested in #2.

My opinion is that being friends is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for being lovers.

It probably won't surprise you to learn that, in my own life, my one experiment with casual sex is also the only exception to my rule: he's the only lover I've had who is not currently my friend (except on Facebook). This is because he wasn't my friend to begin with, and, during the five months or so that we were lovers, our social intercourse was just about nil. We were attracted to each other, sure, but we basically didn't have anything to talk about.

In a previous post ("Photographers I Have Known"), I made it sound like the reason I broke off that relationship, if something so casual can even be called a relationship, was because I felt competitive with the guy's wife after he emailed me some photographs he'd taken of her. Actually, though, I had already resolved to end things with him: it was feeling increasingly weird to me to be spending so much time with someone I hardly knew, someone who really wasn't interested in letting me get to know him.

In that entry, I made my break-up letter to him sound much more glib than it really was. Here, in part, is what I actually wrote him in June of 2009:

“Much as I like you, and much as I've enjoyed the evenings we've spent together, I don't think I am really cut out for a relationship this casual, even though its very casualness had originally been appealing to me after so much relationship drama with [Lilianna] & co. I'd been mulling this over, some, before our last date, and had intended to talk about it then -- not as a decision, but more as a conversation I wanted to have with you -- and then found myself completely unable to bring it up. And since then I've come to the conclusion that, if I can't feel comfortable talking to you about how I really feel about something, I ought not to be having sex with you. (I say this not in terms of some kind of global judgment about the way things ought to be in relationships, but simply as a statement about what suits my own personality.)”

His response to this was basically mild regret: “Ah well, I suppose we aren't looking for exactly the same things. I do feel a little bad that you didn't feel able to talk to me about it though. I guess I'm not the easiest person to get to know. If you change your mind about dinner this week, or anytime, the offer is always open. No strings attached.”

Then – and this surprised me – he concluded with this quote from Thich Nat Hanh:

When I have a toothache, I discover that not having a toothache is a wonderful thing. 

I had to have a toothache in order to be enlightened, to know that not having one is wonderful. 

My nontoothache is peace, is joy. 

But when I do not have a toothache, I do not seem to be happy. 

Therefore, I look deeply in the present moment and see that I have a nontoothache; 

that can make me very happy already.

 
So, who knows? Maybe we could have been friends.

Fucking Friends

“I don't believe in fucking my friends,” a friend of mine once proclaimed, in a tone that brooked no argument.

I don't remember what occasioned Erika's statement, or the mini-manifesto on sexual etiquette that followed, but I don't think it was because I'd been coming on to her. I'm basically straight, so I have a lot of friends I don't fuck – but not as a matter of principle, so I was surprised by how emphatically Erika (who identifies as bisexual) defended her position that friends & sex just don't mix.

I do remember wondering what had happened to all that high-flown rhetoric of hers the night I walked into my bedroom and, lo and behold, who should suddenly sit up in my bed but (you guessed it) Erika, wearing precious little. And there was someone else in the bed with her: her friend Parker, a.k.a. my husband.

Here's how it happened.

Parker and I were hosting a party in her honor at our house one night (she'd just passed the qualifying exams for her Ph.D.), and when it got late and the party was winding down, Parker announced that he was heading to bed. He's always been an early bird. So Parker went upstairs, and Erika started drumming her fingers on the table. Less than five minutes later, she went upstairs herself, and she didn't come back down. After half an hour or so, I walked my three remaining guests home. “You can always come crash at our house if your bed is full,” one of them offered. “I think I can handle it,” I said, laughing.

Standing in front of the door to my bedroom, not sure how to proceed, I couldn't help reflecting on the ludicrousness of my predicament: would I be interrupting something? If so, would I be a welcome or an unwelcome intrusion? Unwelcome because they were in the middle of some kind of “just the two of us” sex scene? Welcome because they'd both enjoy it if I were to join in?

Or would my intrusion perhaps be initially resented but appreciated later? Would I be thanked for breaking things up before they went too far, causing Erika to regret the fact that she'd violated her own principles?

I knocked on the door, waited about 30 seconds, then opened it. Erika bolted upright with an alacrity that was comic, clad only in bra and panties, her hair all in disarray. Parker was lying on his stomach next to her, naked, from what I could see. He seemed kind of sleepy.

“Hey,” I said. “So...I'd like to go to bed now.”

“Okay,” said Erika, not budging.

“You're welcome to stay,” I said, “but if you do, we're actually sleeping. Okay?”

“Maybe I should go,” she said, still not budging.

By this time I had gotten into a nightgown, although I normally sleep naked. “Oh, go ahead and stay,” I said, climbing into bed with them. Erika was in the middle.

It turned out that Erika and Parker had not had sex, although they had fooled around enough to get Erika worked up, and she wasn't in the mood to just go to sleep. She and I ended up making out, which piqued Parker's interest, perking him up considerably, and soon all three of us were entangled. Then Erika said she wanted to watch Parker and I have sex, so that's the way our little menage a trois concluded. Then we fell asleep, three friends in bed together.

The fact that Erika has never actually fucked either me or Parker is a mere technicality, as far as I'm concerned. And I'm not 100% convinced that she'll stick to her resolution, anyway: she and Parker have been very close friends for a long time, during which time their relationship has gone through periodic sexual phases, so I wouldn't be surprised if they were to end up having sex with each other at some point.

I haven't asked Erika whether she's changed her mind about whether it's okay for people to fuck their friends, but I suspect that, at the very least, she'd be less vehement about disagreeing with my position on the matter, which is this: why fuck anyone else?

Photographers I Have Known

My boyfriend Travis is something of a photographer, but his camera went on the fritz right around the time we started dating, and he hasn't replaced it. So we've used my camera on our various excursions together, and I've taken almost all the pictures. I'm manifestly not a photographer, and many of them have turned out badly: fuzzy, foreshortened, or weirdly framed. However, every now and then I manage a good shot. I'm actually pretty pleased with some of the photos I took on our recent weekend trip to the White Mountains.

One I particularly like shows Travis standing on the bank of a shallow creek, framed by yellow cottonwood leaves in the foreground. He looks happy. He's in his element.

It's a photograph that almost didn't happen. We were a couple of hours into the drive home, and we just happened to spot a perfect photo opportunity.

“There's our fall foliage,” Travis said, indicating the gorge on our right, where cottonwoods were making a sinuous line of gold through the darker evergreens. “Funny, I don't remember seeing this on our way up there.”

“Yeah, I didn't see it either. Beautiful!”

“Wow. I can't believe I didn't notice this. We ARE on the same road...right?”

“Yes,” I said. “We were just preoccupied on the drive up. Remember? My five-hour rant?”

“Oh. Yeah. That. I guess I was too busy defending myself to look at the scenery.” 

He gives me a grin, because that was then, and this is now, and neither of us really gives a shit about anything we might have argued about on the drive up. We've just spent a lovely long weekend together, and we're feeling pretty exuberant.

However, the drive to the White Mountains was a whole different ball of wax. 

Then, my knickers were really in a twist.

Right before Travis came to get me for our weekend away, I checked my Facebook home page, and saw that my ex-boyfriend Rick had just uploaded a bunch of new photographs. Most of them were of the same woman, although it seemed like she was wearing a different outfit (did I say outfit? I meant bikini...) in every shot. Lithe, sexy, fresh-faced – and probably not much over twenty.

Supposedly, Rick had been in Florida on a business trip, but apparently he'd found enough time to pursue his favorite hobby. I couldn't resist commenting (and I'm paraphrasing, as he's since removed both my comment and the photographs that occasioned it): “Gee, looks like work's been really tough lately. Wandering around on the beach, taking photographs... I bet you even got sand in your shoes. Poor you.” Just some light-hearted ribbing, right?

Wrong. I kept chewing on what I'd said, and it wasn't long before I began to wonder if maybe it sounded snarky. Bitter, even.

I told Travis about Rick's photo shoot, and my reaction to it, right about the time we were reaching the city limits. At the very beginning of our five-hour journey, in other words. And that's when Travis made his big tactical error: “Hmm. Sounds like this is bringing some things up for you,” he said. “Tell me about it.” 

So I did. 

I won't bore you with my long disquisition on beauty, American culture, and how “age” is the most problematic part of “image”. I will refrain from trash-talking Rick, or either of the other two photographers I've dated in recent years.

(Funny – I broke up with one of them right after he emailed me a bunch of photographs he'd taken of his wife, whom I'd never seen before. They were gorgeous, and so was she. My reply basically went like this: Wow. You are really good. And your wife is a complete knock-out. As for having dinner next week, though, the answer is no. Much as I've enjoyed your company over the last several months, I don't think I am cut out for a relationship this casual. Sorry this email is such a completely lame-o way to tell you so.)

Suffice it to say that, in the end, my five-hour rant can be summed up by the following interchange:

Me: Okay, fine – so tell me something. What do you have your age range set to on OKCupid?

Travis (trapped): Um. Okay. 35 to 42.

Me: That's it? That's the range? 42. 42. Jesus fucking Christ. FORTY-TWO?!? That's TEN YEARS YOUNGER than you! ELEVEN, actually! As your absolute this-is-the-oldest-woman-I-would-consider-dating! Oh, yeah, and you KNOW that men message women who are YOUNGER than their supposed “this is too young for me” cut-off point, but do they message women who are older? Not bloody likely. THIS is the problem. THIS is what I'm talking about. You're only into me because I'm so much younger than you are. And apparently I have only six more years before I'm TOAST, before I'm completely OBSOLETE (etc., etc.)...

...At which point, Travis, bless his heart, breaks in with a joke: “Rick, you bastard – WHY couldn't you have waited to post those pics until AFTER we'd already left?”

So, yes, the vacation began somewhat inauspiciously, with Travis – who is, nota bene, sixteen years and eight months my senior – bravely taking the hit for every man who's ever lusted after a woman younger than himself.

However, let's give credit where credit is due: he talked his way through that landmine-strewn conversation with just the right combination of patience and chutzpah. By the time we checked into our little cabin in the woods, I had gotten over myself, and we went on to have a fantastic weekend together. And no, not just because Travis doesn't have a camera.

A Perfect Storm

7:30 a.m. Sienna and I are eating raisin bran at the dining room table, while Parker batiks like mad in the kitchen. He has a craft fair show coming up on Saturday, so there are piles of shirts in various stages of the waxing/dyeing process all over the place, and the whole house smells like beeswax. Denali, earbuds in ears and backpack on back, is heading out the front door. “Bye guys,” he says, and I have this nagging feeling I was supposed to nag him about something before he left this morning. But it's too late – he's gone to catch his bus, and I still can't remember what it was.

Between 8 and 10 a.m., I make or receive at least ten telephone calls.

1. To Barry, Parker's first cousin once removed, who doesn't pick up. (I'd just gotten an email from him, saying he was in town with his mother – the notorious Great Aunt Mattie – and that he hoped they could drop in for a visit in the afternoon, which was the only time that would work for them.)
2. From Helen, my mother-in-law. (She wants to know why it was that Denali had never gotten in touch with the bass player guy who was supposed to be giving Denali his first bass lesson today. Oh, that's what I was going to nag Denali about....)
3. To my friend Georgia. (I've promised to help her cook dinner – lasagna, salad, and apple/pear crisp for 18 people – and I want to make sure we are on the same page about how many people we are feeding.)
4. To Travis, who is at work, and who asks if I can call him back on his land line, which I do.
5. From my mother.
6. From Georgia, who is at Trader Joe's, and who wants to talk ingredients and portions.
7. From Barry, who hasn't listened to the message I left him. (I basically explain that he's picked a day from hell, but that we'd love to see them before 1:30 or after 4:30; we finally settle on 5-6 p.m.)
8. To a lady whose car we are interested in buying. (I leave her a message saying to call me before 11:30 if we can come look at the car at noon, which is the only time that will work for us.)
9. From Helen, who says that she and Liz (Parker's sister) are writing a play together. (“It's partly about polyamory,” she says. “Is that okay? And do you want to help us write it?”)
10. To Georgia, who tried to call while I was on the phone with Helen. (She's ready to get started on the dinner prep, and wants to know if I can bring over some herbs from the garden.)

10-11:30 a.m. Sienna and I go over to Georgia's to help her with the cooking. Georgia and I manage to layer two pans of lasagna and make the topping for the apple/pear crisp – meanwhile, Sienna is going to Georgia's fridge every two minutes, helping herself to yogurt, apples, etc. Either that, or she's asking for things she can't reach, like frozen mangoes, which she nibbles on and then daintily discards. At 11:30, the lady calls about the car, and I grab Sienna and rush back home.

The noon-1:30 p.m. time slot is taken up by car stuff – a test drive, some rapid-fire discussion between me and Parker (who hates having to make these kinds of decisions), and the final wheel & deal session, in which I offer $500 less than the asking price. The lady says she'll get back to me on that.

At 1:45, I am headed to an elementary school, where I am supposed to be tutoring two fourth graders in reading. When I arrive, I am informed that I will be tutoring one second grader in reading, and one fourth grader in math. Although I have no math teaching expertise whatsoever, I do my best. So I'm alternating between “Little Critter has a puppy” and “Expressing rational numbers in standard and expanded form” until 4:15, when – oh joy! – the school day is finally over.

4:30-5:00 p.m. I arrive home to find that Parker has set up his batik booth on the lawn. He wants my input on the placement of items, the wording of signs, pricing, and a bunch of other things. Meanwhile, Sienna, who looks like an absolute ragamuffin, keeps taking off her shoes and her jacket and attempting to follow our neighbors into their houses.

5:00 p.m. Barry and Great Aunt Mattie arrive. They dutifully consult with Parker about his booth mock-up, and then I lure everyone inside the house for a cup of tea (the only hospitality I'm set up to offer). Mattie, normally vivacious and extremely friendly, seems subdued. Troubled, even. It's hard not to chalk her behavior up to the fact that she's recently become privy to the fact that Parker and I have an open marriage. (Parker's mother took it upon herself to spill the beans. Now, why in the world would Helen out our story to Great Aunt Mattie? Read my “It's a Small World (Redux)” post for the gory details – this afternoon's visit was the Scene Three I was dreading.) Barry is keeping up his end of the conversation with great aplomb, though, and so are Denali (who has a clever comeback for every statement uttered by anyone, leading Barry to conclude that Denali will probably become a lawyer for a Fortune 500 company, just to spite his hippie parents) and Sienna (“Mommy, can you tell me the story about Rosemary and the lion? Mommy, I SAID, can you tell me the story about Rosemary and the lion and the yeti and Malificent? Can you, can you, CAN YOU?!?).

6:15 p.m. Sienna and I bid a rushed adieu to the relatives and rush over to Georgia's dinner. The food's not quite ready, so I rush around the kitchen madly for a few minutes, chopping radishes, checking lasagnas, mixing together the salad dressing, etc. Parker and Denali join us all a few minutes later.

It's 8:30 p.m. by the time the dishes are all washed and the kitchen is cleaned up. I head home, where Parker has put Sienna to bed and is already elbow-deep in the batik again. We have a scattered 10-minute de-briefing session, after which I get in the car and drive the 15 minutes to Travis's place. He gives me a glass of ice water, listens sympathetically to my litany of “busy day from hell” woes, then leads me to the bed, which he's made up with fresh sheets. He's even got the covers turned invitingly down. Ah! That Travis is a very clever man: after the day I've had, his bed looks very inviting.

11:30 p.m. I don't really want to get out of Travis's bed and drive back home, but I finally make myself do it, because Parker wants to leave early in the morning, so he can go on a long hike. I get home just before midnight.

So, that's the story of yesterday, and days like that have been descending frequently, it seems. From my point of view, the trouble with such days is that 1) they give me no time to write, and 2) they don't make for very interesting blog entries later.

Why am I so obsessed with this whole blog project? I don't know, but I'm impatient for things to settle down a little, so that I can address that very question (not to mention the ten or eleven other topics I have in queue!).

Armchair Philosophizing: On the Exchange Value of Sex

Some time ago, my friend Cate commented to me that she thought polyamory was a “more mature” form of relating than monogamy.

Cate doesn't identify as poly herself, so I was surprised. “Really?” I asked. “What makes you say that?”

“I think it's about the evolution of human relationships,” she said. “With poly, people are no longer treating each other like emotional property.”

Although, as I admitted in my last entry, I'm not always as mature as I'd like to be, I do agree with Cate in principle: I think there's something very fine – noble, even – in recognizing that we do not own the people we love.

Similarly, I also maintain that it's a bad idea to measure our value – our personal worth – in terms of the sacrifices others make for us.

I'm continually amazed by how often people approach relationships like economists running a cost-benefit analysis: Is this a good deal for me? Is someone else getting a better deal? Could someone else offer me a better deal? How much am I worth to him/her? Am I being cheated? Am I valuing myself enough?

Underneath it all, there's our genetic legacy. We've been bequeathed a fundamental disparity between the sexes, and a resulting preoccupation with the idea of fair exchange. Biologically speaking, sex is more risky for women than it is for men. Yes, reliable birth control helps, but if it fails, it's the woman who has to pay the final bill, one way or another. And this is why a lot of women have an aversion to “giving away” their sexual favors.

Only a loser gives it away for free: this is what we've all been taught to believe. And no one wants to be a loser.

And so it is that sex frequently comes with a price tag: it's affixed by the person with more to lose, and paid by the person who has less to lose. In heterosexual relationships, it's usually the woman who sets the price, and the man who pays it.

Which brings us to an oft-noted, oft-lamented disparity in the fortunes of heterosexual poly men and heterosexual poly women. Poly women don't have a whole lot of trouble finding male sexual partners. Poly men do have quite a bit of trouble finding female sexual partners – in fact, they have much more trouble than their supposedly monogamous brothers do.

The twisted logic goes something like this:

A married man makes sexual advances toward a woman other than his wife, and, assuming the sleaze factor doesn't completely turn her off, she's likely to feel flattered: He must really want me, she thinks. Look how much he's risking to be with me! Maybe I'm worth more than his marriage!

But let's say the man is poly, and he tells the object of his affections, Hey, it's on the up-and-up: my wife is cool with me having sex with other women. So how about it? The woman thus approached is likely to feel insulted: I'd be a chump to go for this deal, she probably thinks. He has nothing to lose. And I'm worth more than that!

Afternoon Tea with a Desperate Housewife

This morning, my son Denali was telling me about a couple at his high school that had just broken up. Apparently, the guy got sick of the girl after two weeks of going out with her, so he asked a friend of his to break the news to her.

“Wait,” I said, “isn't this the couple who was, according to you, in a stable relationship?”

“Well it WAS stable,” Denali patiently explained, “But he's a man-whore.”

“Ah. That makes perfect sense,” I said, wondering to myself what a Good Mother (the mythical creature we imperfect mothers are always comparing ourselves to) would have said to her son in response. Would she have pointed out that it's not nice to call people names? Asked him why he and his friends are so fond of designating people as whores or sluts, regardless of the offense they've committed? Given him an erudite lecture about how his having prefaced “whore” with a masculine marker suggests that gender inequality is alive and well, even in youth culture? Reminded him, ever so gently, that each of us has a spark of the divine inside us, and that thus we are all equally deserving of compassion and respect – then handed him the lunch I'd packed for him (home-made eggplant parmigiana, wheat-grass shake, and carob-chip cookie)?

Last time Denali called someone a whore (in that case, he had been referring to a girl who had said something rude to him in class), I told him a joke:

Q: What's the difference between a bitch and a ho?

A: A ho fucks everybody. A bitch fucks everybody but you.

I'm pretty sure that one isn't in the Good Mother's repertoire. Oh well.

It's kind of interesting to be watching the high school relationship circus again, this time from an adult perspective. More than anything else, these kids are experimenting, playing at commitment: at that age, you can try on a stable relationship, and if you decide you don't like the way it looks on you, you can wriggle out of it after a couple of weeks.

I think one of the things I tend to look for in my extra-marital relationships is the opportunity to be a kid again. Maybe that means I'm immature. Or maybe it just means that I, like most people, am searching for what's missing from my life.

And what's missing is certainly not a stable relationship: Parker and I have been in one ever since we were kids. We started dating at seventeen, got married at nineteen, bought our first house at twenty, and were parents by twenty-two. My life is chock-full of adult responsibilities, and I'm not looking for any more commitments. In terms of my day-to-day experience, I suffer from a surfeit of domesticity.

Which is why, when Travis, whom I have been dating for about a year and a half, recently started fantasizing about all of us living together under one roof, I freaked: if he's in the house, who's going to take me out?

I'm beginning to realize that my committed self has her hands full, and that, for her part, Viny the commitment-phobe wants to keep her hands free.

This is something of a problem. After all, Travis is not suffering from a surfeit of domesticity. He's quite a bit older than I am, but he's never been married, and he's never had children. At this point in his life, a stable relationship is looking pretty good to him – he feels he may finally be ready to settle down. In fact, it's entirely possible that Travis was attracted to me in large part because of how stable I am. Maybe he looked at my demonstrated ability to maintain a long-term relationship, my minor feats of domestic prowess, the joy I take in my children, and thought, “This is what's missing from my life.”

Ah, the perennial problem of the human dyad: how can ONE relationship meet the needs of TWO different people?

The only solution: keep creating the relationship together.

Because it is a continual act of co-creation, a stable relationship between two people is necessarily (if somewhat paradoxically) a fluid one.

From the Vault: Jealous Not-Quite-Rantings (Part Two)

January 18, 2006

2006 is not 2005.  [Parker] is in love with [Lilianna].  Who is she and where did she come from?  [After Parker and Lilianna went out to dinner two nights ago] I told him he could tell me [about it] if he wanted.  Very slowly, he told me the following (I'll just do the details that stabbed me hardest): that early on they were taking her books and sketchbook out of her car and their fingertips touched.  That he knew she felt what he felt when that happened.  That at dinner mostly they were just looking at each other, and he was thinking how beautiful she was, and seeing himself in her eyes -- she was looking at him in a way no one had ever looked at him before, he said, and I just had to say, "I'm sorry" -- he could feel that she must have been feeling something similar about him.  Which made him wonder if it really is possible to love oneself.  Then, when she was dropping him off, they were just sitting in the car for a few minutes with the heater on, kind of talking, and then she said something like, "I want to touch you...but maybe I should go."  Then they touched each other's hands. [Parker] said, "...and...it was almost unbearable." Then they kind of hugged each other, in the car, and this was clearly the most intense and powerful thing he'd ever experienced.

And I had to listen to this.

We were both exhausted after this recitation.  I started to get up and just started sobbing.  [Parker] wanted to know why.  I said I was sad.  I was sad that it couldn't be me.  I was happy for [Parker] but I was sad for myself -- sad I wasn't him, sad I wasn't [Lilianna], sad that I knew what he meant and how he felt, sad that in some way I was completely cut out of that feeling and that knowing.  I was sad that I had experienced the feelings [Parker] was talking about and that I've lost them.  It was a pure kind of sadness.  Then we got ready for bed in a moment of quiet; we got into bed and [Parker] came in for a full-body hug and I said, "[Parker], I'm sorry, but you had better not touch me."  He wanted to know why not.  I said because now I was experiencing actual jealousy, where I hadn't before (anxiety, yes, jealousy, no).  I felt lonely and unloved, and did not want to accept this fake thing he was offering, when I knew what it would be like if I were [Lilianna].  Oh, that hurt! To know that it had to be her, that he couldn't feel that way with me! It made me hate her.  Because, as I said to him, I did not fucking want to be her.  I didn't want to be her, and I couldn't bring myself to accept what was leftover from him.  I said that in comparison, what he had to give me, what we had together, didn't seem to even count.  And that is really how I felt.  And it broke my heart to feel that way.  And then to feel like I just didn't matter, why did he need me around, why would he even want to have sex with me, how could he even think this? Wasn't it just patronizing, some kind of pity and/or excess energy caused by her but here I was, just more convenient? And [Parker] said, gee, I've never had to feel what you're feeling (sarcastically, although not meanly) and I knew he was right. There was a certain justice there that I couldn't deny.  But knowing that didn't help. [Parker] said I just needed to get laid. I said maybe I just wanted to beat him up instead.  He said he thought I should have sex with him and then I could beat him [up] if I still didn't feel better.  So we started having sex and I was still crying and he was saying, just let it go, [Viny], let go of what's hurting you, and then I finally did, but it was just a frenzy of emptiness, a lack of pleasure and a lack of pain, just the immensity of emptiness and sorrow and a kind of fierce joy in the physical movement.  I did feel better afterwards, because I had stopped feeling compelled to hate either [Lilianna] or myself.  I still don't know how to truly like both of us -- it's such a paradox! -- but I have more faith in my ability to live in & inhabit that paradox. I have more faith in mine & [Parker's] love for each other being worthwhile even though it isn't what he feels for [Lilianna].  I have more appreciation for what I might learn about myself from going through this pain.  I chose this. I did. And I still choose it, even though it's breaking my heart. Can I have a new heart, a bigger heart, with more capacity for joy and more capacity for suffering, at the end of this phase? That's what I have to trust in.

From the Vault: Jealous Rantings (Part One)

January 12, 2002

I figure I'd better write: I'm drunk – I'd say drunk off my ass but it isn't as true now as it was a couple of hours ago, and I'm managing to stay in the lines. Yesterday I took my prelims, wrote for 4 straight hours, get home, call [Scott], get the story that he and [Chani] … went out the night before and made out for 2 hours straight. Oh, I said, thanks for waiting until after my prelims to tell me. Yes, he says, and we're going out tonight. Oh, I said, what are you doing? I don't know, he said – which told me that they mainly were looking for an excuse to get on each other again. So then [Parker] and I had a date last night, a celebratory dinner at Plumshire Inn, and B____ watched [Denali], and we had a great time. Came home & had some great sex, too. But last night I couldn't sleep, thinking of [Scott] with this other woman, thinking of them having sex, thinking of what it was like the first time [Scott] and I made love, and having to watch that whole scene again, only with her in my place. I couldn't sleep. Today he was supposed to come over around 11, but I figured he'd be out late and yes, he was still at home when I called @ 10:30 before going to the farmer's market. He sounded nervous. Then when I saw him he still seemed nervous. He said he was tired and when I asked how late he'd been up he glanced at [Parker] nervously before he answered, I fell asleep, oh, around 2. We went for a walk and he told me she SLEPT OVER. This was actually worse than I'd imagined – this is their fucking SECOND DATE, remember – and so then, of course, when I asked, so you had sex (more a statement than a question) he said yes. It was like all that adrenaline and stomach churning had a REASON. I didn't know what to say. Mainly I didn't want to say anything because I was afraid I would freak out. I am, and have been, disappointed in myself a bit. The jealousy is such a visceral thing that I can't seem to reason my way through it. I wanted, for instance, desperately, to have sex with him, but I couldn't bring myself to – and then when I had just about gotten myself there, after we'd had our celebratory high tea @ Ciocolat, I learned that he'd had sex with her THREE times last night – which shouldn't surprise me, knowing him, but still, it was like it kept getting worse & worse. He seemed happy about it, and to feel good about it, the more so because she's not being freaky and demanding fidelity from him (God knows, she'd be out of line to insist on that on the second date though), and honestly I know this is a good thing for him, and I should be happy for him, and … [I'd hoped] he'd be able to be interested in someone other than me & feel less isolated, and then this happens all at once like a bomb and I'm cursing myself for a fucking martyr – like what the fuck was I THINKING? He kept telling me how amazing I was, how I was his first priority (and reminding me that I couldn't say the same about his status in my life), and I was so happy to hear it and at the same time I was wanting to roll my eyes at all the rhetoric. Of course he's going to say all those things. And you know I wanted to make him suffer a bit, and hated myself for wanting that, and when at one point I got a little miffed, since he has always maintained he couldn't have casual sex, that he would have to care deeply about someone before he could go there with them, and he said, “I do care about this girl, I care about her deeply,” and I said, “Sex on the second date is something I define as casual sex” and he was horribly offended & complained later I had really hurt his feelings. Whatever. But then I can sit here and be bitter, and think with sarcasm and cynacism [sic] of his cute little protestations derived from Mike Myers movies, the little pout, the “You complete me,” with hand gestures – and yet at times I believed him. And I still believe him. This person he slept with last night...cannot just breeze in and overthrow all we've felt and experienced together: nothing could take that or rob us of that or alter it, turn it, in hindsight, to something baser and fleeting and mistaken. I was such a jerk, such a disappointment to myself, but I was physically ill over this. It is so not easy. And then I couldn't eat dinner here (after eating nothing all day but picking at the high tea delicacies & having about 7 cups of Earl Grey, black) – [Scott] and I went out this evening & we went to Sophia's bar and I had 2 drinks, a Thaibreaker and a Thaiphoon, the first of which had about 3 shots in it, and on an empty stomach, boy, I got knocked for a loop. It was so sweet, and so terribly maudlin, too, with [Scott] professing undying love, and saying that what scared him is that if I told him he couldn't do this, had to stop, he would – that he swore after L___ he'd never let himself go so far, be so at the mercy of someone and his love for them; and me saying I was happy for him but kicking myself for working us both into a position from which I hoped he'd take such a chance with someone else – partly because I believed I'd have more warning! – and getting smashed, and [Scott] crying, and me apologizing for taking it so hard, and really meaning it and also really believing him and also, in some hard place inside of me, thinking BULLSHIT, this man is feeding me lines, he's just come from fucking another woman, some practically a stranger, all night last night, and here he is and says he still wants me, and I roll over and say yes, yes, please fuck me, do – where the hell is my self respect? And then I think, well that's pretty damn hypocritical. What I can't stand is the thought that he's telling me one thing and telling her another and God only knows what he really thinks and feels. But I have only myself to blame, seeing as how I have soft-sold him in the past on how into Mr. E I was, but then I think god DAMN it, nothing happened between me & Mr. E, nothing at all – and then I suspect that part of the reason for that is that I told him too much about [Scott] and how jealous [Scott] was, and how I didn't want to freak [Scott] out....I have this crazy impulse to prove to myself...that I can command others' interest if I so choose – thus my jumping on the notion B____ brought up last night of going dancing in the city this coming weekend, even though [Scott] and I had talked about going on a little vacation then. But I remember what happened the last time I went dancing with the intent to prove my own sexiness – I could easily have gotten raped. And then [Scott] was so crushed that I'd consider bailing on our plans; he seemed genuinely to be looking forward to going with me, I will just have to reschedule with B____ and C____. God, what a pathetic moosh I am....Of course, [Parker] thinks I'm nuts, and as he put it, teasingly, this morning, it really sucks to have a wife who's all freaky & jealous when he [Parker] isn't even getting to do anything fun. But I think [Parker] knows how devoted I am to him – I say this, and then I think he's had to go through what I'm going through – and if it is possible for me to be totally committed to him despite my love and adoration of [Scott]...then surely I could have the faith & strength of character to believe [Scott] when he tells me the same thing. Right? And then I think, maybe this is a sign from the universe that I need to stop focussing [sic] so exclusively on my love life. Maybe I could write something, something good, or at least get my Ph.D. done. And let's hope I passed the prelim. I think I did – I had too much to say, if anything – I over-studied, not understudied. I had lines & lines of poetry in my head. Stevens. “Casual flocks of pigeons make / ambiguous undulations as they sink / downward to darkness, on extended wings.” That's me, baby. Or Frost: “When to the soul of man / was it ever less than treason / To go with the drift of things / To yield with a grace to reason / To bow and accept the end / of a love or a season?” I hope this isn't the end. I hope [Scott] is true, to himself and to me, when he says it isn't just rhetoric, that he doesn't want our relationship to end or change drastically. And I hope that my jealousy or competitiveness or whatever doesn't fuck it up either.

January 14, 2002

The last entry was technically the 13^th, since it was written after midnight. Anyway that night I couldn't sleep for more and 3 or 4 hours, and had horrible dreams. The first one wasn't that bad, but it involved me being drunk, being kissed by two teeny-bopper girls, one on either side, and then I moved on to have sex with two separate boys – I say boys because they were kids from my highschool who somehow hadn't grown up. Then after that, it was one of those fever-like dreams that keeps repeating itself in slightly different permutations – first it was like one of [Denali's] mind games, Susan, in which my piece was always getting surrounded, hemmed in, defeated, by pieces labelled [sic] “HER.” The her and me continued: a cocktail recipe in which it was 3 parts “her” and one part “me.” And so on. I woke up a complete mess, not too hung over, but all freaky. I felt I had to DO something to free myself. Funny how I go in for symbolism so heavily when I am so skeptical: I put my hair into a ponytail and then chopped it off. [Parker] later did a good job evening it out for me – it is a bobbed style, about chin length all around. I've had long hair my whole adult life, plus some. I can't decide yet whether I am going to like it. But I felt much better.

At many points yesterday I felt I was being way too melodramatic. [Scott] and I have always known we couldn't expect fidelity from each other; I pushed him into this, and he was operating under my blessing, in a way. I had said, “Well, have fun and I'll try not to think about it” before he had sex with her. Given our situation, isn't it ridiculous for me to behave as if I've been betrayed? I haven't. But I think what freaks me out is a loss of control, a loss of power: who knows what he says to this girl, how he presents things to her. With [Monique], there was the “other” element, but I knew what was going on: he was misrepresenting things to her and I was getting the straight story. And now, who is to say that I'm not in [Monique's] position? That's my fear. And I know he's capable of deception on a grand scale. I don't think he's deceiving me, at least not yet; he outed the whole story, I'm pretty sure. And I told him, straight up, never to soft-sell this to me. The few things I'm still mad at him for the other day were his little evasions, the trying to make himself sound innocent. For example, I get, “I was so surprised, so shocked, and so was she – we had no idea it would happen so fast – it's not something I planned.” And then later, defending himself from my charge of casual sex, “I polled a bunch of people & none of them thought sex on the second date was casual sex” or something like that – and given the timing (he sleeps with her and then comes straight over here) the poll had to have taken place before the date. So I say, “You POLLED your friends about it & you want to say you weren't planning to have sex with her?!?”

...I think what it is, is my anger having no outlet. I can't be mad at him; I have no reason, no excuse. And yet I am angry, deeply angry, and the feeling has no outlet. And I also want this other woman to know about me, to have to be in the same position I'm in, not guessing or wondering but knowing that there's someone else, someone who counts (meaning, someone with some power, some ability to affect [Scott's] state of mind, if not his choices). Thus my [revenge] fantasies: they are a reassertion of power, on the one hand, a way of forcing myself onto this woman's horizon; on the other hand, they give me an excuse – and not just an excuse, either – for my rage. It is a righteous anger, there, not an irrational one; it's one that must be expressed, not quashed. But I don't really want that excuse, and that's why I've warned [Scott] to be upfront with me, and with her too.