...Et Finis

It's 3 o'clock in the morning. I don't normally suffer from insomnia, but it makes a certain twisted sense that, having woken half an hour ago, I'd decide to write my final blog entry now.

As far as I'm concerned, this is an hour reserved for sleep, except in extreme cases: childbirth, preparing to catch an early morning transatlantic flight, lovers' farewells.

I certainly don't make a habit of sitting at my computer in a predawn lacuna, trying to translate something felt to something verbalized.

What's haunting me now are all the things I didn't say.

I could have written about winter oceans, the crooked streets of Orvieto, a cocoa-colored mountain covered with a fine dusting of snow, the smell of eucalyptus trees in the fog.

Over the past nine months, I have been traversing the geography of my past, trying to map it onto the landscape of my present. It's been quite a virtual journey, and although there's much more I could have explored, it's time now for me to focus on my future.

I'm still not sure why I've written this travelogue, but here it is.

Wedding Rings and Marriage Beds

My first wedding band was made of olive green jade, or possibly some lookalike stone – it's hard to know, since Parker found it at a second-hand store. It didn't cost much, so it might not have been jade. A few days before the wedding, I put the ring on to see if it fit. It went over the knuckle just fine going on, but I couldn't get it off again.

There are several photographs taken on the day of our wedding – July 2, 1993 – in which you can see me pulling at the ring on my finger. I was still trying, in vain, to work it over the knuckle, which by then had become raw and swollen. How was Parker going to slip it on during the ceremony if I couldn't get it off? No dice: it was stuck. I think I managed to work it over my knuckle a total of three times in eleven years – each time, the process necessitated ice cold fingers, and the aid of lots of soap.

It finally split in half in 2004, on Thanksgiving Day. We'd finished dinner, and were sitting around the carcass of our repast, telling stories. I'm pretty sure Scott, my lover, was among the company, since he always used to join us on Thanksgiving. He'd probably brought creamed pearl onions (his grandma's recipe) and that green bean dish with the crispy onions on top. Anyway, despite the massive dose of turkey tryptophan I'd just ingested, I was in an animated mood, and, to emphasize a particular point, I slammed my hands down abruptly onto the wooden armrests of my chair. The two halves of my wedding ring went flying.

I'm not a particularly superstitious person, but I wasn't sure what to make of the fact that I'd broken my wedding ring.

We put more thought into the second wedding band, and spent a good deal more money on it, too. Three tiny diamonds, even, and four inlaid Australian black opals. Parker picked it out at the Tucson Gem & Mineral Show in the winter of 2005. I practiced putting it on and slipping it off again before we plunked down the money. It fit beautifully.

Except that not a year had gone by before the opals started cracking (the technical term is “crazing”), and pretty soon, bits of stone were falling out. Some online research revealed that opal is a “living” stone (whatever that means), and is therefore not recommended for everyday wear. The next time the Gem & Mineral Show came around, we explained the situation to the opal dealers who had sold us the ring. They took it back to Australia with them, and mailed it back a few months later, good as new, free of charge.

It lasted maybe another two years before I started losing pieces of opal again.

Finally, Parker hit on a solution: glitter and epoxy.

I'm looking at the ring right now, as I type: one inlaid crazed opal, one glitter & glue inlay, three diamond chips, one empty socket with two tiny opal bits clinging to the corners, and another glitter & glue inlay. White gold band.

It's also on the fourth finger of my right hand, European-style, because a ring Travis gave me for Christmas gets stuck on the right hand, but will make it over the knuckle on the ring finger of my left hand (with some vigorous twisting).

That's the story of my wedding ring. There's also the story of Parker's and my marriage bed.

Not too long before my first wedding band broke, Parker decided to make us a bed. He had been reading Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language, and was feeling all inspired by vernacular design. The marriage bed, according to Alexander, is something couples in some cultures construct for themselves after several years together, after they truly understand the nature of their bond, and can design an appropriate symbol for it.

Parker and I discussed the details of the bed for some time before he began building it. All the visible wood was quarter-sawn oak. There were bedposts of bamboo and, in the headboard and footboard, large circles of verdigrised copper. The completed piece of furniture was gorgeous.

There was just one problem: it weighed more than St. Peter's Basilica. Okay, fine, it wasn't quite that heavy, but man that sucker was a bitch to move. Parker hadn't given any thought to how to construct the bed so that it would be not just sturdy, but also lightweight enough to, say, slide it three inches closer to the wall without the help of a football team on 'roids.

Over the years, we've attempted to lighten our marriage bed by cutting the base in half (so that each half can be moved separately, and then rejoined once both are in place), dispensing with the headboard and footboard (Parker used both in a sort of strange wall panel he designed for our office, which means they are now part of this house), taking off the bamboo posts and canopy latticework, and cutting off a good 4 inches at the head end of the base.

This morning, Parker told me he wasn't sure he wanted to move the bed again, even though at this point it's just the wooden base (with four handy built-in drawers, for underwear and socks) and a mattress. I said I wasn't keen on trying to get it down the stairs and into a moving truck either. When we were moving into this house, I pulled my arm muscles trying to maneuver the thing, even though we were just dealing with half at a time.

“I would consider parting with it, if we could find a good home,” he said.

“Travis just has his memory foam on the floor,” I mused, and then quickly changed my mind: “Never mind – it will be just as big a pain for him to move it,” I said. “What if he decides he wants to join us in the northwest? I don't want him feeling like he's got to lug that behemoth with him when he comes.”

We couldn't bear to get rid of it, though. Sienna was conceived and also born on that bed.  Parker and I have shared it with each other, and with our lovers, too. It's got some serious sentimental value.

After a bit of discussion, we decided that the best option would be to dismantle the bed, keep the drawers and all the pretty parts, and discard the rest. We'll rebuild the whole thing once we've settled in our new location, using a completely different structural design and lighter materials. 

I think these two allegories kind of stand on their own, but I'll offer a brief explication.

You can get a wedding ring at Diamonds-R-Us or at Tiffany's, but in either case, you're buying someone else's design. On the other hand, if you go with something less traditional, less tried & true, you might end up with a marriage that looks cobbled together: part sublime, part ridiculous.

Also: there are perfectly good beds at Ikea. They're lightweight, chic, and affordable. I doubt they're going to last longer than a few years, though. One day, something's going to get smashed up, and you'll discover that there's particle board underneath that veneer. On the other hand, if you go with a concept of marriage you construct yourselves, something you fashion out of idealism and the sturdiest materials you can find, you may need to jettison bits of it periodically. You may even have to take the whole thing apart and put it back together in some new configuration that will better fit your circumstances.

Stripped down to its essence, what I'm saying is that long-term relationships are about building and dismantling things together, making it work with what you have on hand. Stability lies in the continual act of co-creation, not in the structures you create.

In Praise of Maintenance Sex

I've been meaning to write a paean to the somewhat subdued joys of maintenance sex for a while now, and it appears that tonight's the night: I'm in fine form for maintenance blogging.

In other words, I'm exhausted. I don't have an ounce of passion in me for sex or writing or anything else.

This morning, I woke up at 5:30, pulled weeds for an hour, made breakfast, and then sat down to do some editing. Unfortunately, all of my bread-and-butter editing clients are in dire need of my services THIS WEEK – my final week in this town, when god knows I've got other fish to fry.

Around noon, I discovered that the file I was working on was weirdly corrupted, and all of my changes disappeared. Three hours down the drain, in other words. And for some perverse reason, it took longer to edit the document the second time.

I won't bore you with the other details of my day. Consider my "woe is me" litany complete.

So. Maintenance sex. I realize that not everyone's a believer: the argument goes something like, “Why go there if I'm not really into it? Why take the trouble to wheedle/tipple/dazzle/patiently caress my partner into something s/he would just as soon skip?”

Why, indeed? Well...because it's kind of like saying, “Why write if I'm not feeling inspired? In my current frame of mind, whatever I produce is bound to be second-rate at best, and pure drivel at worst. I think I'll wait for the Muse to sprinkle her literary love-dust on my keyboard.”

That's what I said to myself for years – and guess what? I didn't do any creative writing in those years, except for one poem that Parker specifically requested as a birthday present, knowing that this was the only way he was going to get me to experience some semblance of verbal pleasure – to play with words for a change, instead of just working on them.

Recently, I was talking to a poly friend of mine who complained that he and his primary partner hardly ever had sex anymore. “Why not?” I wanted to know. “Well,” he replied, “there was a while when we weren't getting along, and we went so long without having sex that I think I just un-checked the box in my brain next to 'this is someone I have sex with' – I'm not sure I think of her as a sexual partner anymore.”

In other words, there's a habitual component to sex. Once out of the habit, it may not be so easy to get back into it.

In my view, if a couple wants to maintain a physically intimate relationship, maintaining their physical intimacy is a necessity. They ought to be sexual together – in some fashion, at least, on a reasonably regular basis. A once-a-month back massage isn't going to cut it.

Yeah, maintenance sex isn't anything to write home about. Er, I mean, it isn't anything to write erotica about. Compared to the kind of sex occasioned by knock-your-knickers-off desire, maintenance sex might not even deserve to be called “sex” at all. However, I think it keeps the door open.

People who don't ever write aren't writers. Couples who don't ever have sex aren't sexual partners.

***Addendum***
It appears that I failed to include a definition of maintenance sex in the above entry. So let me just say that I am NOT referring to a scenario in which partners lie stretched out at full length on the bed, staring at the ceiling, going, "Gee, do we HAVE to? I know we agreed to once-a-week sex, and that this week we blocked off Sunday afternoon from 3 to 3:30, but you know, the Home Shopping Network is on...."

The Polygamists in My Closet

I was in Zion National Park with my extended family on May 21, 2011 – the supposed Day of Judgment, according to a few kooks who took it upon themselves to advertise the event. Not surprisingly, Saturday came and went, with no opportunity for post-rapture looting.

Wacko religious cults are nothing new. And the older the cult, the less wacko it is going to seem to the outside world. No one bats an eye when Catholics claim they're eating the body and drinking the blood of their crucified god on a weekly basis. Oh, wait, sorry – they're consuming ordinary wafers and wine that somehow turn into divine flesh and blood in their mouths.

The wacko religious cult in which I grew up is less than two hundred years old. These days, it's pretty inoffensive, but it's got a colorful history.

For example: Mormons aren't going to be phased by any “apocalypse now” announcement that isn't accompanied by a Church Headquarters directive to migrate en mass to Jackson County, Missouri. Never mind that there isn't room in Jackson County for millions of Mormons – Joseph Smith said that the Saints would be called back there in preparation for the Second Coming, and by golly, that's the way it's going to be.

Shortly after my parents got married, they attended a church service in which the Sunday School teacher pretended to have received a letter from church authorities, to the effect that the last days were upon them. According to this communication, it was time to go back to Jackson County. Which also meant, the teacher pointed out, that it was time to re-institute the practice of plural marriage. For a minute, my mother was taken in by the ruse – and in that minute, she revolted. She was ready to renounce her religious beliefs rather than become a sister-wife.

Of course, it turned out that the “official letter” was just some eccentric soul's idea of a good object lesson: when Judgment Day arrives, will you be prepared to do what God asks of you? Even if it means moving to Missouri? Even if it means sharing your husband with another woman?

Oh, yeah. Polygamy. Go back three or four generations, and most Mormon families have to confess to at least a token polygamist or two. I guess you could say we've got non-monogamy in our genes.

Mainstream Mormons haven't practiced polygamy in over a century. But it's hardly a moot point. Official doctrine has it that plural marriage – one man, multiple wives – is going to be practiced in heaven.

Church officials tend to keep quiet on the subject, but speculation about this embarrassing relic of Mormonism's “new cult on the block” days is rampant in the rank-and-file. I have clear memories of many discussions about heavenly polygamy. It poses quite a conundrum for people who are raised to be clean-cut, conservative, “save it for marriage” types. Everyone seems to have his or her own pet explanation or justification, some way of making the weirdness okay.

My BYU roommate's mother, for example, argued that plural marriage was the only reasonable solution to a serious logistical problem. Since only married members of the church are eligible to enter the highest level of heaven, and since, as everyone knows, women have an easier time being righteous than men, she thought there was bound to be a demand-exceeds-supply issue in paradise. Given the severe shortage of marriageable males in heaven, she argued, women will have no choice but to double, triple, or quadruple up if they want to be top-tier.

My own mother once told me that she didn't believe the plural marriage doctrine to be the word of God. When she uttered this heresy, we were cross-country skiing, just the two of us. The whole world was hushed and snowy. I felt honored that she'd confided in me. I was also struck by this thought: “If you're going to question the official doctrine, why stop there?”

Selfishness vs. “Soulishness”

If I had to describe my moral philosophy as succinctly as possible, I'd say I'm a responsible hedonist.

If I were allowed some extra phrases, I'd tack on a few cliches that have always resonated with me, such as:

*reach for the stars

*All are One

*truth is beauty, and beauty, truth

*the unexamined life isn't worth living

You'll notice that self-sacrifice isn't a big component in my philosophy of life.

Maybe people will say nice things about me after I'm dead, but I'm willing to bet that selfless won't be among them.

So I've got to warn you that everything I have to say in this post should be viewed with suspicion. Dish yourself up a nice pile of salt before you read on.

My guess is that most hedonists are met with accusations of selfishness. And the more unapologetic the hedonist, the more outraged the accusations become.

If people already perceive you as selfish, you're probably asking for trouble if you reveal that you are polyamorous.

When my mother-in-law first found out that Parker and I had an open marriage, she was pretty upset about it. Here was her take on the situation, communicated via an email she sent to me and Parker in May 2003:

I’ve been thinking about you constantly the last couple of days, not sure exactly what to say and then stymied further by my computer, which at first was speechless and then seemed to have suffered a nervous breakdown, printing out an endless string of 2’s. Maybe it was a sign.

To me, the rules of a bad marriage (rules I learned first-hand) are pretty simple. Think of yourself first. Be unwilling to be devoted to both the other person and to the idea and realities of marriage. Finally, rationalize your desires and behaviors to get what you want.

...

If I’m being honest I might as well really go for it. I rarely see you put [Denali] first. I rarely see you put anyone else first. What I see, often, are two people who don’t know how to sacrifice and do know how to get what they want, who know how to always be right.

Yes, most people get bored in relationships at some point. The mature ones, I imagine, try to find outlets that do no harm.

I love both of you. I have been so happy and grateful that you found each other. Is it worth risking love and family for whatever this other thing is?

My mother-in-law is no longer as upset as she was, so her opinions may have softened a bit. She might even say I've improved somewhat in the past eight years. But I'm sure she still thinks I'm selfish.

I probably am selfish.

And, as we all know, being selfish is a bad thing. Right?

Whenever I imagine myself successfully rooting out my selfishness, though, I feel like I'm imagining myself out of existence. I picture myself in some Mother Teresa capacity, and what I see is a shell of a person, someone without a soul.

So I'd like to posit that there are two types of selfishness, the bad kind and the good kind. Thanks to Lilianna & Robin for coming up with the term “soulishness” to describe the well-dignified version of selfishness. As for the ill-dignified version, I'm going to use a ready-made term: egotism.

You see, it all depends on what you conceive of as your self.

If you mistake your self for your ego, you're always going to be operating within the narrow confines of your psychic survival structure. You're probably not going to be capable of seeing anyone else's point of view. There are people who need to feel selfless in order to appease their own egos, and these are the type who pitch a fit when others fail to acknowledge their thoughtfulness. I've met some pretty selfish martyrs in my time.

If, on the other hand, you recognize that your real self is something that transcends your ego, you may have moments of grace in which you are capable of real compassion. There's an expansiveness to this soulish self, an inclusiveness. But – and this is important – this is a self that includes the body. I'm not talking Cartesian splits, here. The transcendent experience I'm trying to describe is when the whole self, body included, expands to include someone or something that is otherwise mistaken for “not me.”

I have found it immensely helpful to have some terms that help me distinguish between the kind of selfishness that keeps me small and the kind that allows me to grow. Unfortunately, I'll probably never manage to rid myself of the bad kind altogether. My own brand of selfishness is, and will probably remain, a confusing mix of egotism and soulishness. Still, as a responsible hedonist, I try to ask myself the question, “Is fulfilling this desire going to feed my soul – or is it merely going to whet the appetite of my insatiable ego?” And when I'm seeing the answer clearly, I tend to choose what's right.

Boundary Bouncing

Rick and I had sex for the first time in the bed he normally shared with his wife. The pale green sheets, however, had been newly purchased for the occasion. These, Rick explained, were going to be the Viny sheets. In the morning, they would go straight into the washer, and he would remake the bed with the blue or brown sheets he shared with Lilianna.

The Viny sheets had been Lilianna's idea. She and Rick were brand new to polyamory, and she was feeling a little freaked out about the idea of another woman in her bed. At first, she'd considered asking me and Rick to conduct our amorous pursuits elsewhere entirely, but she had decided that wouldn't be practical. Either we'd have to get a hotel room, which would have been expensive, or we'd end up doing god-knows-what on her living room couch. So she decided to draw the line at sheet-sharing. No, it wasn't going to be enough to simply change the sheets between different occupants. She wanted to be certain that the sheets she was sleeping on hadn't played any part in the extra-marital action that would be taking place in the marriage bed.

Lilianna's demand seemed a tad eccentric to me, but Rick and I solemnly promised not to mix up the bed linens. If it was going to make Lilianna feel better, we'd by-god keep things kosher for her.

Interestingly, when Lilianna slept with my husband in the bed he normally shared with me, there were no rules about the sheets. Apparently, Lilianna didn't mind sharing my sheets. She just didn't want me sharing her sheets. I think she felt a little silly about this inconsistency.

“I'd be happy to get you guys a set of Lilianna sheets, for when I sleep with Parker,” she told me.

“I don't need you to do that,” I said. “Unless you want your own sheets.”

“No...but isn't that weird? I mean, you have to use separate sheets at my house. Do you mind? Do you think it's unfair of me to demand something that doesn't really make sense?”

“Don't worry – it's fine,” I told her, quite truthfully. The Viny sheets were no big deal.

A few months later, Lilianna arrived home before the bed had been stripped of my special sheets. “Oh, don't worry about it, Rick – this whole sheet-changing drill is such a hassle,” she said, and got under the covers to watch a video.

The next time I slept over, I noticed that the regular blue sheets were still on the bed. There was also a fair amount of sand in them – probably tracked in by the kids, who had a sandbox in the back yard. The era of the Viny sheets was obviously over...and, for a moment, I felt a little let down.

I learned a valuable lesson about boundaries from this experience. Lilianna made up a rule as a way of exerting some control over a situation that was otherwise out of her control. Rick and I agreed to follow her rule. We didn't tell her she was being illogical. In this way, we signaled to her that her peace of mind was important to us – and eventually, she no longer needed us to make that token concession. The Viny sheets were important to her, until they weren't. Rick and I honored the boundary Lilianna had set up, until it dissolved of its own accord.

A success story.

There have also been a few failures, some of them pretty phenomenal.

In order to illustrate some of the common mistakes people make in setting (and maintaining) boundaries in poly situations, let me share three boundary-bouncing belly-flops.

1. When Lilianna fell in love with Robin, he was married. Lilianna, Robin, and Robin's wife had talked about polyamory, and for awhile it seemed like Robin's wife might be on board. Understandably, though, she was dealing with a lot of anxiety. At one point, she made Robin and Lilianna promise not to talk to each other unless she were part of the conversation, too. In other words, no private phone calls or emails – as for seeing each other, that was completely out of the question, as Robin and his wife lived in a different state. Lilianna and Robin capitulated to his wife's demands, but being entirely dependent on her for their communication was torture. After a few days, they broke their promise. And when Robin's wife found out that Robin had been talking to Lilianna in secret, she completely lost it. She moved out of the house, taking their 2-year-old daughter with her. What followed was 2-3 years of hell: theirs was a most acrimonious divorce.
2. In the spring of 2008, after Robin and Lilianna had been lovers for about two years, Robin came to the southwest for a visit. Rick generally preferred not to interact much with Robin, but the rest of us – Lilianna, Robin, Parker and I – often spent time together when Robin was in town. On this occasion, Robin and Lilianna were staying in one of our community guest rooms. Prior to his arrival, Lilianna had been speculating about the possibility of some kind of shared sexual energy. She was a bit vague about what she meant by this. A full-on foursome wasn't on the table, that much was clear. She didn't want that, and neither did I. Robin and I had developed something of a friendship by this point, but aside from some mild flirtation, our interactions had all been completely platonic. Anyway, to make a long story short, on night 2 of Robin's visit, Lilianna ended up in the hot tub with the two men. She was having a grand time. But she thought I ought to be there too, so she sent Parker back to the house to get me. I almost opted for a good night's sleep instead – I've often wondered how things would have turned out if I hadn't joined the three of them that night. But I did join them, with disastrous consequences. Robin and I didn't actually have sex, but we certainly overstepped Lilianna's boundaries. I'll never forget watching her march out to the parking lot the next morning – she'd packed her things in such a rush that there was a shirt sleeve sticking out of the suitcase, dragging on the sidewalk behind her. After she got back to her house, away from the scene of the crime, she and Robin spent the rest of the day on the phone. The next day, I drove him to the airport. That was the last time I ever saw him.
3. A long time ago, under a certain amount of duress, I made a promise to Scott that I did keep. This was back in the days when Scott was jealous of my relationship with Mr. E. Most of the time, Scott didn't have a lot to worry about: after all, Mr. E and I lived half a world apart. However, Mr. E had planned a visit to the States. After a lot of wrangling, I finally gave in to Scott's demands: I would see Mr. E, but there would be nothing sexual between us. I remember explaining the situation to Mr. E. We were sitting on a park bench, eating cherries. “I can spend the night,” I said, “but we can't do anything except sleep. I promised Scott.” Mr. E looked at me. “There's only one bed,” he said. “That's okay,” I assured him, “I can hold the line.” “Are you sure?” he wanted to know. “Because if you change your mind, I'm not holding the line for you.” “I'm sure,” I told him. “Don't underestimate my Mormon upbringing: I have a lot of experience with repression.” It was a long night. I hardly slept at all, tossing between frustrated desire for Mr. E and resentment at Scott. And here's the real kicker – I don't think Scott ever believed me that I'd kept my word. It made me mad: screw this kow-towing to Scott's jealousy, I decided -- and began the long, torturous process of extricating myself from the cage he'd constructed for me.

So here's my advice, distilled from years of experience:

Most relationships have some boundaries. They're necessary for healthy functioning. The froofy “no boundaries” idea that some folks romanticize is a nothing more than a fiasco waiting to happen. If you're going to have multiple sexual partners, you should probably establish some safe sex agreements, if nothing else.

However, one sometimes sees poly neophytes – or seasoned polyfolk who have been hit upside the head with an unexpected attack of insecurity – attempting to control their feelings by controlling the people in their life. This isn't a good idea, at least not as a long-term solution.

If you are struggling with jealousy, setting some temporary boundaries might be a good idea. If possible, try to ask that others DO something to help you, rather than asking them NOT to do something for your sake. But if you feel you must ask someone else to make a sacrifice on your behalf, the price they're paying had better go toward buying you the time you need to work through your issues. Draw a very clear line between what's okay and what's not. And give that line an expiration date, or at least a we-will-revisit-this-agreement date.

If you are trying to support your lover by allowing him or her to set some temporary boundaries, don't make a promise you know you can't keep. The agreed-upon rules need to be crystal clear. After you've drawn the lines, don't cross them until everyone agrees it's time to get out the eraser. That's it – it's that simple.

Speak Now, Or Forever Hold Your Peace

The time has come to wrap this thing up, or at least to put blogging on hiatus for a good while. At this point, I can reasonably hope to write between three and six blog posts before the Big Move.

I have a little red book in which I've been jotting down ideas & possible topics. There are a bunch of them that have not yet made it into my (virtual) little black book, a.k.a. this blog:

1. Lilianna (Part Two): specific memories
2. How can I share all this personal stuff on the internet?
3. Poly FAQ #7: Do You All Have Sex...Together?
4. Endings/Transitions, and how they differ in the poly world
5. Normalizing vs. brainwashing: Is polyamory a cult? Do I have to drink the Kool-Aid?
6. The big poly no-no: dating someone new as way of breaking up with an existing partner
7. Selfishness vs. “soulishness”
8. Information STD's: where's the line between public and private information in poly groups?
9. More on niches/specialization in multiple-partner situations
10. Gifts (modeled after the “22 Things I Like about Being Polyamorous” list in Anapol's book)
11. Boundary bouncing – making and breaking rules that are initially set up to make poly neophytes feel safer
12. The polygamists in my closet: how growing up Mormon has influenced me
    
    

So, dear readers, this is your opportunity to weigh in. What still needs to be addressed? Which, if any, of the above topics should I write about before I bid you adieu? Are there other (relevant) questions that have been canoodling in your noodle?

Let me know. I've enabled anonymous comments. No one has to know who you are.

Fetishwear for Northwesterners

Travis and I were making our breakfast pancakes, planning another fantasy joint venture, riffing on the possibilities.

Travis: “I think there’s a market for ecologically sound fetishwear.  You know, like something REI might be convinced to carry.”

Viny: “Waterproof. With bug netting for the exposed areas.”

Travis: “Our body suit is made from 100% organic, fair-trade rubber…”

Viny: “Or wait, wait -- how ‘bout this?  The telescoping paddle – for use with your kayak, or in the bedroom!”

Obviously, we need to stop talking and get to work on realizing our grand collaborative vision.

Or something.

 
I’m about to move away with my husband and my kids.  Travis still doesn’t know what he’s doing.  Maybe this is why so many of our recent conversations have revolved around going into business together. We make good partners. It feels comforting to imagine a future we can both inhabit, some reason to be together. But how, exactly, do we go about giving ourselves an “us” we can count on?
 
We’re looking for an excuse, any excuse. Hey, I’ve got it! Let’s build a fetishwear empire!

Travis: “Seriously, I can picture you running a boutique. Parker could sell his batik in the front – The Batik Boutique! – and there could be a back room – The Back Room, with a neon sign, the figure of a woman looking over her shoulder – dontcha think?  And I could do the marketing. Like, here’s the ad I’m picturing: there’s a couple in bed, in a tent in the woods.  Woman: ‘I’m hungry.’ Hands the man her leather thong. Man fits it into a slingshot.  He comes back with a pheasant in one hand and the thong in the other. ‘Honey, I’m home!’”

Viny: “A pheasant?!?”

Travis: [voice-over] “And, for you vegetarians out there: our thong works great for gathering berries, too!”

Viny Ballerina, Queen of the Dancing Floor

I'm eight years old in this picture. A skinny little thing, wearing my mother's lipstick, hamming it up for the camera, at once awkwardly self-conscious and completely innocent.

This is an anonymous blog. It's flagged with Blogger's “adult content” warning. There are creepy people who are going to stumble across this entry because they've typed “sex + child” into a search engine. Why, then, am I putting this image out there?

I can't encapsulate it in a pithy sentence, but it has something to do with what happened yesterday.

My friend Cate has been wanting me to meet another friend of hers, a woman she works with, whom we'll call Dolly. So I went over to Cate's yesterday afternoon for some wine & cheese & pleased-to-meet-you, and then later in the evening, the three of us went to see another friend's dance performance. Travis met us at the theater. The performance was spectacular -- far better than I'd expected, given that it was a free dress rehearsal at a local community college. Then Travis drove me home, and we spent 45 minutes or so lying on the couch in the community room, talking.

It wasn't that late when Travis and I said our goodbyes, but the door to my house was locked, the lights were out, and everyone seemed to be asleep. I got ready for bed and walked into the bedroom, only to find that, as usual, Parker had stretched himself diagonally across our bed, leaving no space for me. It's kind of a private joke between us. I laughed a little, and did my best to push him aside. He reached for me wordlessly, and pulled me to him.

And so, this morning, I found myself thinking about this picture.

For some reason I don't fully understand, Dolly seemed nervous to meet me yesterday afternoon. While we stood there in Cate's kitchen, Dolly told Cate she wanted the link to my blog. Continuing to avoid my gaze, she said she wanted to send it to another friend of hers. “Do me a favor,” I broke in, “Feel free to share the link, but don't mention my real name, okay?” I explained to her, or rather to the side of her face, that it wasn't so much my own identity I was worried about protecting. It's more that I'm trying to be respectful of other people in my life. Because I sometimes disclose personal details about my family, friends, and lovers, I'm careful to drape them in the sheet of anonymity, hoping it will afford them some measure of privacy. The other concern I have centers around my kids: how do I know that some psycho Bible-thumper won't decide that I have no business raising children? I don't relish the idea of someone like that just looking up my name in the phone book.

At this point, Dolly finally began addressing me directly. She seemed surprised that I would be concerned about people possibly harming me or my children. I explained that it wasn't like I was losing sleep over it – however, as long as there are wackos, perverts, and religious vigilantes out there trolling the internet, I don't want to take stupid chances. “Look,” I said, “If I were feeling really worried about disclosure, I wouldn't be spilling my private thoughts in a public forum.”

Cate: “Viny's writing because it's important. Because people have the wrong idea about polyamory.”

Dolly: “Polyamory seems like a good idea to me. It seems like going back to the '60's. Freedom, and just being yourself. No boundaries.”

While I chewed on that, wondering whether to point out that Dolly had some things right, and some things all wrong, the conversation shifted.

“You have really great boobs,” Dolly said. “Sorry, but I couldn't help noticing.” And then we were off to the races, that circus of self-criticism, body-envy, and “I don't look like I used to” lamentations that comes to town whenever women over 30 get together for some girl-time. Dolly confided that she didn't like her nipples. “Why not?” I asked. “They're too big,” she said. “Men don't seem to have a problem with them, but I don't like them.” She showed us a picture of the offending body part on her cell phone. Then she went on to worry about the cellulite on her legs. I said I didn't see what the hell she was talking about. “It's sweet of you to say that,” she said, “But it's there, I promise.” She pinched her tanned upper thigh to demonstrate. I told her there wasn't a woman over 15 without any cellulite.

I thought about all the conversations I've had with Lilianna about our bodies, our speculations about how, exactly, we women end up so critical of ourselves. We're forever evaluating and comparing, and sometimes it seems that the most beautiful among us are the most insecure.

Lilianna thinks maybe men are responsible for this state of affairs. More than once, she's referenced the time she went to one of those mythical “my parents are on vacation” parties. A bunch of teenage boys were watching porn in the living room, keeping up a running commentary on everything that was wrong with the women on the TV screen. These were porn stars, women who were no doubt devoting a substantial portion of their lives to maintaining their sexy image, but they still weren't sexy enough to escape ridicule. Lilianna sat there as each woman was ripped apart, feeling self-conscious about her own body, wondering what flaws the boys might see there. She was an uncommonly pretty girl, and at fourteen, as flawless as she'd ever be.

I've always felt that I kind of lucked out in the body department, but it wasn't until after my first pregnancy that I learned to feel comfortable in my own skin. Ironically, all those stretch marks freed me from the burden of trying, and failing, to be physically perfect. Sure, I felt self-conscious about those marks on my stomach, and Parker didn't help matters any. Several months after I had Denali, I commented proudly that I thought my stomach was looking a little better, and he agreed: “Yeah, you've got the stomach of an 80-year-old now, instead of an 800-year-old.” When I recounted this story to Lilianna, she was horrified.

But I'm not comfortable putting all the blame on men. We could just as easily blame women: what does it do to a little girl to watch her mother obsess about her appearance? My own mother managed to avoid the never-ending succession of fad diets and nip&tuck perfectionism that preoccupied so many of my friends' mothers; as a daughter, I've always been grateful to her for the example she set me. 

As a mother, I'm sometimes struck by sadness when I think about all the things my daughter might end up hating about her body.  Sienna's a darling girl, a miracle of perfection. But I'm sure she'll find things about herself to pick on by the time she reaches adolescence. We all do. At age 3, she's already absorbed the lesson that what she looks like matters. Whenever I put on lipstick, she'll say, “Give me a kiss, so I can get some lipstick on my lips!” Then she admires herself in the mirror. She's also convinced she ought to look "just like a true princess." Apparently, true princesses wear a fancy dress, striped tights, a conical hat, and rain boots. I will occasionally question some of her more outrageous fashion choices, but she always insists: "Mama, everyone at Trader Joe's is going to love me in this outfit!" At this age, it's sweet. She's only three.  She's enjoying herself.

If I could give Sienna anything, I'd give her what she has now, but will most likely lose as she grows older: a childish delight in what her body can do, and all the ways it can be adorned.

I saw something like that delight last night at Georgia's dance performance. The dancers were all beautiful. Probably some of them worry overmuch about their appearance. There may even be some with eating disorders. But, on the whole, they looked like a healthy group of people to me. They were celebrating their bodies. And, sitting there watching them move, I too felt celebratory. It didn't even bother me that I couldn't dance like that if I tried.

First of all, I just wasn't cut out to be a ballerina. When I was a kid, my parents shelled out for three years of ballet lessons, but I was gangly and awkward in every position. What's more, I could never manage to decipher the non-verbal mumbo-jumbo of choreography. I always had to look at the girl next to me in dance recitals, and even so, I had a hard time copying her movements.

It's also true that, at thirty-seven, I no longer have the body of a dancer. Georgia's older than I am, but she's in far better shape. She dances, she does yoga, and all that work pays off. She looked great on stage last night.

I've chosen to focus on other things. These days, I don't even pay all that much attention to how I look. But I can tell you that I'm really glad to have a body, and I'm determined to enjoy it.

When I look at my eight-year-old self in the black tights and the yellow tutu, this is what I want to say to her: Honey, we're gonna make GREAT dance partners, you and I.

Love Is a Finite (Not Fixed) Resource

Okay, I’m just going to say it: there’s a limit to love.

Call me a heretic. Burn me at the stake if you have to.  I’ll be shouting my poor truth as the flames climb my legs: That’s it! Now you’ve gone too far! I don’t love you anymore!

No matter what people say, love usually comes with conditions attached.  “I will love you as long as you never burn me at the stake” might be one such condition.  Unfortunately, some kinds of conditions aren’t easily met.  They’re a little, shall we say, unreasonable. “I’ll love you if you never change” and “I’ll love you as soon as I’ve fixed everything that’s wrong with you” – yeah, good luck meeting those criteria. 

It’s my guess that all this blather about unconditional love is the result of people getting fed up with their own and other people’s lack of basic acceptance.  The fact is, the people we love are human beings. They’re not perfect.  They have an alarming propensity to change in ways we don’t expect, and, simultaneously, a frustrating tendency to get stuck in the same old bullshit.

The point I’m trying to make is that, as lovers (in the inclusive sense, as in “people who love”), we are every bit as human.  We’re no more capable of unconditional love than we are of meeting a condition like “I’ll love you if you’re perfect.”

So I get kind of irritated with the claim that love is not a finite resource – that the problem with those benighted monogamous types is that they’re operating under the erroneous assumption that there’s only so much love to go ‘round, when in reality, and by nature, love is without limits. (Deborah Anapol’s book on polyamory is called Love Without Limits – and I think her title gestures toward a poly article of faith, a belief that’s held sacred by a lot of polyamorous people.)

Perhaps love without limits is something we can aspire to, but I don’t think it’s something we’re capable of. 

Love may be essentially limitless, universal, all-embracing-- if what we’re talking about is the mystical one-with-the-universe feeling that we may be lucky enough to feel in our fleeting moments of divinity.

However, the love we’re giving and receiving on a daily basis is something else. It often feels downright quantifiable. And we’ve developed all kinds of ways of measuring this love: number of hours spent, number of gifts given, number of emails written or phone calls made, number of orgasms exchanged, number of positive statements uttered, number of meals shared, number of favors performed, etc., etc.

It’s this love-by-numbers mindset that causes jealousy.  The fear goes like this: if this person-who-loves-me (whether it’s a parent, friend, or sexual partner) gives love to anyone else, there will be less love for me.  It’s a “fixed income” mentality, which encourages stinginess and to-the-penny accounting.

Love is finite, but it isn’t fixed.  There are limits to love, but we don’t know where they are, exactly.  My experience of love is that it’s pretty expansive stuff. The miracle of the loaves & fishes comes to mind: when we give love generously, there always seems to be enough to go around.

Meta-Blog Musings: An Alternative to the Poly Support Group?

I've got a lot on my mind these days: in three weeks, Parker, the kids & I will be packing all our worldly possessions into a moving truck and heading northwest.

There are a lot of things up in the air, and I'm totally stressed out. So, what am I doing? Listening to Dexter Freebish's “Leaving Town,” drinking a beer (a Deschutes NWPA, in honor of the upcoming move), and writing a blog entry.

Let's skip the emotional drama for now, and focus on something a little easier, shall we?

Because I'm wondering about the future of this blog – Do I end it before I leave, or just put it on pause? How much do I even have to say about polyamory? Have I said everything I need to say? – my brain has been going back to the bloginning, the Blog Bang, when all my ideas exploded and something emerged from the chaos: a decision to write.

One of the reasons I decided I should write a blog about polyamory was because I imagined that what I have to say might be helpful to someone. There are resources out there for polyfolk, but I have found them to be less than helpful. I've already complained about what's available on the web; today, I'd like to complain about poly support groups.

(Disclaimer: everything I know about poly support groups, I've gleaned from online discussions, experiences recounted to me by friends, and attending in person maybe three or four discussions and three social events held by my local poly support group.)

In my experience, a poly support group is made up of two kinds of people: the neophytes and the old-timers.

In a discussion group, it's usually the neophytes who have the floor. These are people in the “my head is exploding” phase, which means they're either rhapsodizing about limitless love with the drunken enthusiasm of a holy roller on moonshine, or they're bleeding all over the floor. Sometimes, they've got a reluctant partner/spouse in tow, whom they're hoping to convert.

At a social event, the old-timers hold court. They've got their private jokes, their complicated & incestuous relationship histories, and a clique-ish “insiders-only” attitude. Any interest in newbies they might display seems to have less to do with a desire to be helpful and more to do with their lust for fresh meat.

My biggest problem with the discussions I've participated in, online or in person, is that they barely scratch the surface. There's a lot of talk about jealousy. People recount their experiences, good and bad. They chart the beginnings and ends of their relationships. But the neophytes aren't ready to discuss the more vexed philosophical and ethical conundrums that come up after the sturm und drang of the experimental phase, and the old-timers don't seem to be interested in rocking the boat: they've sailed into calmer waters, and they're not going to make things more complicated for themselves – unless, that is, the complication in question has a particularly nice ass.

Sex Niche Special, with a Cherry on Top

Travis and I had a 10-minute debate about ice cream today.

We were doing a quick phone check-in, and I wanted some help with today's blog entry. “I need a flavor,” I said. “If it were a kind of ice cream, what flavor is that not-exactly-vanilla thing we like to do sometimes?”

Okay, I didn't call it “that not-exactly-vanilla thing.” There's a much more simple term for the sexual activity I'm referring to. But I'm being coy. That's the whole point of the ice cream euphemism: I'm trying to figure out a way to reference some sex specifics without getting too...specific.

“I was thinking Strawberry,” I went on, “but it seems a little too dainty.”

“How 'bout Rocky Road?” Travis suggested.

“No way,” I said. “Chocolate's all wrong. And nuts aren't really involved, at least not directly.”

“Not Butter Pecan, then.”

“No. Peppermint, maybe? We need something that's a little unusual, but not that unusual. It's not like it's in the Black Licorice category or anything.”

Travis said he thought maybe I ought to look at the Ben & Jerry's website for inspiration.

“Ah, like Cherry Garcia?” I asked.

“No, that's going to seem like some kind of virginity fetish,” Travis decided.

We never agreed on a flavor. So let's just call it Slightly Scandalous, and leave the toppings to your imagination.

Why this elaborate ice cream parlor set-up?

Be patient. I'll get you there. Meantime, feel free to dish yourself up a bowl of cold, creamy... sublimation. Mmmm.

Fact: Slightly Scandalous™ is a flavor I've enjoyed only with Travis. It hasn't really been on the menu with anyone else. Scott tried to serve it once, and it was a disaster: I got really upset, and told him in no uncertain terms that he'd better cart it back to the freezer, on the double. My negative reaction might have been partly because I knew his other girlfriend, Chani, was a big fan of that particular flavor – but I think that most of it had to do with the fact that it tasted like humiliation to me.

I understand that some people find humiliation erotic. Not me.

That's why, early in our relationship, when Travis told me that he'd savored Slightly Scandalous with one of his previous partners, I said adamantly, “Too bad: it's one of the few things I can tell you I am absolutely not into. Don't even think about going there with me.”

“That's fine,” Travis said. “NO Slightly Scandalous. Got it.”

And he was as good as his word.

After a few months, I said, “You know, about that Slightly Scandalous flavor you like – you're really taking me seriously about not going there. Actually, it seems like you're taking the avoidance a bit too far. You're going out of your way not to give me anything even remotely similar. So, just so you know, it's not that big an issue: a little tiny spoonful might be okay, on occasion...”

“Okay,” said Travis, laughing a little – and went on NOT dishing out the flavor in question.

In the end, I asked for it.

And, to my surprise, it was a treat.

However, I can't say I'm a complete convert. Even though I now know that I am capable of enjoying Slightly Scandalous in some circumstances, I'm not keen on the idea of sharing that cone with anyone other than Travis. It's a relief that my husband prefers other flavors. As for Scott, if he were ever to try it with me again, I think I'd clock him.

And this makes me feel guilty.

I would be willing to bet that other people in my situation are sometimes made uneasy by the fact that so much depends on who, exactly, is holding the ice cream scoop.

In the polyamorous ice cream parlor, comparisons between lovers are discouraged, if not actually verboten: after all, it's not supposed to be about picking a winner, the Mr. or Ms. Right who is going to provide you with the panoply of flavors perfect for your particular palate. You're just supposed to enjoy what you share with each person, whatever frozen confection it might be. Cool idea. But everyone has preferences, and even poly people are sometimes going to have preferences about which flavors they'd rather share with which lovers.

You can't help but notice who's best at serving Fudge Ripple, who's most likely to give you some Raspberry Sherbet, and who's got all the fancy extras – and by that I mean whipped cream and maraschinos, of course.

How I Came to Start this Blog: The Idea Takes Root

Sept. 23, '10: Views on Art

1. The first, French: art as excess, luxury, something out of bounds, sinful, ugly. The truth is ugly, the way a dry wash is ugly, or the mass of tiny wrinkles on an old face, the folds of flesh so deep and cavernous they mimic the landscape: organic forms. Beautiful and rotten.
2. The American view of art, esp. the essay: discipline that unruly flesh, sculpt it, manage the impression, craft it to fit your audience, put in the WORK to make it your best self – which is always, in the end, inauthentic. And yet there's something to discipline, to the work required to make a marriage, bring the art into the home.

In contrast, what about writing as exile? Becoming an expatriate, a foreigner, someone who does not belong in her own country anymore, someone with a made-up country that can never be returned to?

The paradox of leaving oneself to find oneself, the separation implicit in becoming an observer of one's own life.

Virginia Woolf said we needed a room of our own. I've never had one. How, then, do I find the space to separate from myself long enough to long for myself?

Men have always had the luxury of having their home and leaving it, too. More solitude. More focus, should art become a discipline, a career. We women are dilettantes. The man also has his leisure, time for the dalliance with his mistress Muse. I get one day to myself and I have to cram everything in. The true form for a woman with husband and children is anything that can be done piecemeal: a crazy quilt of desires, here & there. A mosaic, in other words. It can't be all of a piece.

Domestication is the death of passion. This is true for art, for writing, too.

Art as masturbation: solipsism, self-referentiality, the audience as mere voyeur.

I think I like the “Art as Adultery” model best, but then, I am an adulteress.

How I Came to Start this Blog: The Conception

August 31, 2010

On a pilgrimage to my past, I encounter the ghost of my own ambition. She's eating crackers.... Now here we are, shelves and shelves of books: what were we thinking: print is the only lasting fame? The printed word, obsolete. OBSOLETE, carved into the headstone of the present.

There is something noble in recording, though no one reads it. It not being about “hits” or readership or whatever that implies. Just myself and my pen: we might as well be on a voyage around the world in a submarine, the world's waters passing blackly past the round portal where I sit in my pressure-optimized bubble, surveying the scattered contents of my own brain: a shiny penny from 1957, the last hurrah, Abe Lincoln's assassination, jelly on toast, a neighbor's laugh, the particular way in which passion allows for focus on the visual, a yeti I once imagined who now, in his dotage, feels lonely in his ice cave, and wonders whether he should take up knitting – socks, maybe, or striped scarves; what I intended and left undone, the curves of my signature on a document I couldn't read. Every once in a while, a ghostly squid tentacle flashes by, and I remind myself I'm not alone among creatures: there are others like me, with as many arms, with as poor a vision.

Why do I want the chronicler's pallor, his twisted bedsheets, his bachelor's dinner of PB & J? Surely there is some other Fate, hell on wheels, a motel with the light on, a moth-motel where all those light-besotted moths congregate and beat their dusty wings, pollinate our dreams.

And so I come again, and come again: this is my life, this thing without form, no plot, all sub-plots, plotted out for blotting out: we none of us live very long beyond the grave. It has to be that there is something larger than “I,” a sensory organ, the mind of God who blinks into and out of existence like a Christmas light in a string slung over the antler of a plastic reindeer on a suburban lawn.

Two's Company, Three's a Crowd, Four's a Dramafest...

We all know that love is limitless, but that time is limited. Or so goes the Poly Party Line. So how many simultaneous partners are too many?

It's time to talk numbers.

In pursuit of some seasoned perspective, I sought out my friend Seamus. He's been poly as long as, or longer than, anyone else I know. Since we first met, almost six years ago, he's been a treasure-trove of information about all things poly-related, or at least sex-related – from must-reads (The Erotic Mind, for example, which is fantastic) to must-sees (I'll pass on his recommendation for Dot the I) to quotable quotes (“I'm all about instant initiation of the gratificatory process!”).

We met for lunch recently, at our usual restaurant. I ordered my usual Salmon Nicoise Salad, and he was accommodating enough to let me pilfer a few of his sweet potato fries.

Viny: What's your record number of active, local relationships? When you think of periods in your life when there was a lot going on, a lot of different people you were balancing...?

Seamus: By “active,” you mean people I was seeing...on basically a weekly basis?

Viny: Yeah.

Seamus: Hmmm. What comes to mind is around the time when we first met.

Viny: Yeah, I was thinking you might say that. How many were there?

Seamus: I'd say five. If you mean local people, people I was seeing a lot. Plus there were some people from the past, women I still had ties to, but who weren't really around as much.

Viny: Five.

Seamus: Yeah. And it was too many. I think it was a pendulum swing: I was coming out of hibernation. A relationship had ended badly, and I had spent the previous six months licking my wounds, not dating anyone.... I'd add that, as far as sustainability goes, I wouldn't think any more than...three. Three active relationships, with local people.

Viny: What made you come to the conclusion that five was too many? Was there anything you had to give up to maintain that many relationships at once?

Seamus: Oh yeah: I had no alone time at all. It was all sacrificed. There was no time for reflection. No quiet, no calm, no peace. It was all fire, drama, and booty calls.

Viny: You feel like you have a better balance now, yes?

Seamus: Things are great right now. I have time with [my primary], time with [my new girlfriend], time with [my sons] – I make sure to spend time with them every day. 'Cause, you know, they're growing up. Theoretically, they'll be out of the house soon.

Viny: What would you say motivates you to make time for your relationships?

Seamus: I get the most juice out of relationships. So I make them a priority. You know, I feel kind of dull when nothing's happening, when one day's just like another.

Poly FAQ #6: Where Do You Find the Time???

My friend Rose and I had just gone to see the movie Monogamy. We were sitting in her car in the parking lot, processing the film and our own lives. She said it wasn't like she thought it would be. I said the take-home message was an interesting subversion of the monogamous fairytale: what does it say when a couple maintains marital passion by hiring a voyeur to watch as they commit “pretend” adultery with each other?

Rose would probably be the first to admit that she's not exactly the “Happily Ever After” posterchild. She and her husband went through an extended separation a few years back. Perhaps because her marriage has been such a challenge, she doesn't come off as judgmental about how others choose to conduct their relationships. Still, it's always seemed to me that she finds polyamory objectionable in some way.

Gene and I are in marriage counseling for...oh, like the ninth time. We've been learning how to have a fifteen-minute “How was your week?” conversation. God! Sometimes I think it would be nice to have someone on the side, someone I could just see once a week. Go out for a nice dinner, watch a movie, have sex, boom, I'm good, and the rest of the time I don't have to deal with him. But there's no way I could go your route. I mean, it takes so much work to manage ONE relationship, there's no way I'd ever sign up for two. There's my kids, the dog, work, trying to have some kind of social life, community stuff ....Where do you find the TIME?

I get asked this question a lot, and it usually seems like it's a cover-up for a different kind of objection, something the person feels less comfortable articulating.

But let's take a look at the question, anyway.

Q: Where do you find the time?

A: Time is everywhere for the taking. You just have to know where to look. The following is a list of places where I've really struck it rich – if you need to find some extra time, check these places out . They might be worth your while.

1. Sleep. Yeah, you need a certain number of hours, on average. But have you ever noticed that you're sleepier when you're bored and depressed, when you're hoping that if you just sleep long enough, you'll wake up in a different mood?
2. TV. I don't have one. The average American watches an average of, oh, I don't fuckin' know, a gazillion hours a day.
3. Video games, including stupid internet games. These suckers are addictive, and they can eat up whole afternoons. Although I don't play video games at all, I haven't always managed to steer clear of internet games. I had a Tetris problem for a while, followed by JS Lines, followed by Scramble and, finally, Pathwords. I'm happy to report that I have been clean for over a year now – and this blog is probably the result.
4. Porn. Never watch it, myself. Okay, not NEVER – there was that porn “tasting” five years ago, when my friends and I watched a few minutes (on VHS!) from every porn genre we could think of, from bizarro Annie Sprinkle to German Medical Fetish.
5. Current Events. I am abysmally ill-informed about everything from the Royal Wedding to the which public figures have recently apologized for hiring hookers. Unfortunately, it's also true that I count on my Facebook friends to inform me about more important goings-on, like the Japan Earthquake or what's wrong with the Republican budget. So, what's this about Donald Trump running in 2012? Who's Donald Trump?
6. Career. I've never had a full-time job. Parker has devoted more time to work than I have, but his last “official” job ended a year ago. We currently spend maybe 30 hours a week working – and that's between the two of us. Whether or not our desultory attitude about making money is going to pay off in the long run remains to be seen, but at least we're not in debt – yet.

Gotta run, now – it's time to get out of this bathrobe and on with my busy, busy day. Maybe I'll start it off by boning up on the latest celebrity gossip. Or maybe I'll finally figure out how to find porn on the internet. Every day is a new adventure!

On Being Undefined

To conclude the catalogue...

I would say that my relationship with Mr. E began in the fall of 2000, although by then we'd already known each other for about five years. When I scan through the email folder that bears his name, though, it's easy enough to see when things shifted, because there are a few emails here and there, over a period of years...and then, suddenly, eighteen emails exchanged in the space of a single month.

At the time, I was trying to adjust to some big changes in my situation. My husband Parker had developed a huge crush on my friend Carmen. Meanwhile, Scott and Monique's marriage had stalled in Splitsville, and I wasn't sure what that might mean for me and Scott.

As for Mr. E, he and his wife were in the process of re-negotiating their thus-far monogamous agreement, which meant he was free (or was he?) to begin pursuing another woman, someone who had long fascinated him – and who happened also to be married.

In other words, Mr. E and I discovered each other at a certain intersection of interests.

As our correspondence developed, it became clear that we were also interested in each other. But I already had two partners, and so did he.

What's more, we lived on different continents.

In the last dozen years, we've managed to see each other a grand total of seven times. Record amount of time spent alone together: 24 hours. And some of our visits have been platonic – the flavor of the interaction has depended on what's happening with other people in our lives.

Textbook tertiary.

And yet...part of me revolts. I don't want to put us in a poly pigeonhole.

This is from a letter I wrote him in July 2001:

I prize the freedom of my connection to you -- I don't really feel the need to define it, at least not in the limiting sense of "define."  That's not to say there are no limits to our connection, just that I'm content to let them be whatever they're going to be, without manufacturing any. 

I'm not sure how to be true to my relationship with Mr. E in this context. My intuitive sense is that he doesn't belong in this blog -- and yet (paradoxically), there's a way in which Viny's Little Black Book is just an extension of my correspondence with Mr. E.