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.