Sunday, August 14, 2011

In Which a Lazy Summer Sunday is Enjoyed by All

I have been joking all day about how difficult my life is. Ha! I've had breakfast brought to me, I've had manmosas made for me, and all I've had to do is sit around and read with Simon and Harvey and Valerie.

Have I mentioned Valerie? I'm not sure I have because she hasn't figured too heavily into polyland except as a wonderful newish friend. Simon met her on OKCupid and we met up with her as soon as she moved to town. Things took an immediate friendly tone, and she started spending several nights of most weeks on our couch. She also camped with Harriet and Tim and I at Transformus. And incidentally, she makes a bitchin' manmosa. So now I have mentioned her.

Oh, what's happened? Hm. I continue to think about Lachlan every day. My desire for him doesn't seem to be going anywhere. The lovelorn feeling of it all is both sweet and frustrating. We swap texts every few days, almost always at my initiation, but he always responds. The door is not locked, but everything is on hold. Caleb seems to have shown that he may not be in any condition to be the kind of trustworthy person I want in my life. He just can't seem to get it together to make time for me or do anything he says he is going to do. He is distant and unavailable, and my patience for his waffling and duplicitous neglect has worn down my feelings for him to tenuous shreds of 'maybe, but probably not.'

Last night I kissed a man at a party after talking with him for hours. Let's call him Dante. The conversation had the distinction of being the first one in a long, long while in which I have been so utterly fascinated by someone that I was content to sit and listen wide-eyed to a monologue. He doesn't seem to be any sort of natural monologue-er, but I was so transfixed and kept asking him so many questions that he continued and continued about his work fighting ICE off of potential deportees. Before he left, I asked him if there was any reason I couldn't kiss him. He replied, "No ma'am." Mmmmm, he had wonderfully full and sensuous lips. I guess I haven't kissed many people who aren't caucasian lately.

We exchanged numbers and have been playing phone tag all day, trying to arrange some time to hang out before he goes back home to a city two hours' drive from here. I frown at that, but hey, what can a girl do?

The situation with Crystal and John turned very weird very quickly a couple of days ago when John sent Simon a creepy shirtless picture of himself with no explanation. That was all Simon needed to decide to withdraw from the situation a bit. They seem more than a little upset that they creeped us out, but they have got to understand, right? I mean what the fuck. A shirtless photo? They claim it was a joke, but it wasn't funny at all.

I think that Zeke is too preoccupied to keep up any sort of other-than-platonic interaction with me right now. He has been distant and unavailable, too.

I've developed a different dimension of fascination with and fondness for Dan. I was telling Harvey, my lovely roommate and increasingly trusted friend, about what I like about Dan. This was right after I had spent a good deal of time moaning and lamenting my inability to get any of my potential lovers to stick around and be at least the tiniest bit predictably interested in me. And so I start talking about this friend who I've mentioned is attractive and interesting and all-around lovable, right? And Harvey just gives me this look of bafflement or something similar that I can't quite interpret. So I'm all like, "What?" And Harvey's all like, "Carn, why aren't you dating that guy?" I didn't know how to answer that question.

Basically, everything is on hold in the sex department and I am super lusty without a direction to focus it except through my vibrator. There are worse fates, I suppose. Otherwise, life is basically fantastic with the obligatory touches of frustration and longing and awkwardness. I am surrounded by love and friendship and creativity, and I'm about to have a motherfucking pizza delivered. What more could a girl ask for?

Speaking of creativity, I have also started practicing to become a fire dancer. Early experiments are going very well. No one ever accused me of being slow on the uptake, after all.

This has been a lazy laundry list. Happy Sunday!

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

In Which a Trip to the Bay Area is Documented

8:00pm Thursday: I'm flying over the expanse of space that separates North Carolina from Minnesota. Then we will sit in an airport in Minnesota for some hours, probably drink more, and get on our flight to the Bay, where at what we know as 3:00 am we will find ourselves in a place where it is midnight and nobody knows why we're so tired. We got on this plane from a place that is approximately ten miles from Caleb's house. I am now about 250 miles from my dog, from Harvey, from Harriet and Zeke, from Lachlan, and all of 'em. My headphones suck and make everything sound really tinny. I took half of a Clonapin a while ago. Fuzzhead. Woody Guthrie is keeping me company. The clouds at dusk are absolutely stunning. We are still many, many miles from Joey, Simon's brother.

Close to 9:00pm Thursday: I can't wait to feel, really feel like it's time to occupy myself with a wider range of things than I have been. Studying Spanish and Tarot seem like the really important standouts right now. My brain is too vacant for my comfort. Can people get dumber? We are still many miles from Oakland. Earlier today, from Caleb: "Thinking of you. Safe travels." Simple but perhaps indicative that he got the message about the significance of small gestures?

Around 8:00 pm Friday: At a bar in Oakland called The Uptown where the music is fucking fantastic and the people are friendly and Simon is currently telling Joey, finally, about all the dirty details of what's been going on with us as a couple and him as an artist. The connection that those two share is so fucking sweet I could just explode. I imagine them spooning in bed as little boys and things being much the same. At least significantly so. And damn, Catpower just came on.

Today we took the BART from Joey's incredibly ratty, enormous communal punk house in Oakland and walked through the Mission, Castro, and Haight-Ashbury to Golden Gate Park, pausing once to talk to a really nice fella named Sean who offered us a cup of coffee and got offered a place to stay in WNC in return, and then again to actually have coffee on Haight and talk to a friendly Columbian heir named Luis. We went to the De Young and took lots of photos for artistic inspiration, especially in the African, Polynesian, and Mayan exhibits. I expect to be painting lots of mask faces when we get home, and I may collaborate with Simon on some designs for prints or stencils.

Now we are headed to a gallery crawl in West Oakland. I am relieved to have some time to think only distantly about all these men and all this simmering drama back home.

Around 1:30 pm Sunday: At a great little cafe in Oakland called Farley's. Apparently, I spoke too soon about the drama being at home. I was made aware yesterday that it had actually come to the other side of the country with me. Ugh. Simon was having a day of intense crazy, and he visited it upon me and his entire family, whom we had met in downtown SF for some tourist action. As I was trying to warn his mother about what sort of a state he was in, all I could think of to describe his behavior were combinations of adjectives connoting extreme psychological disturbance and nouns like "child" and "retard." She understood--after all, she raised him--and recommended that I put more pressure on him to take drugs for his problems. I am ambivalent, of course, but I am coming around to the realization that 1.) He had better do something fast if he doesn't want everything he's fought to create in his life to come crumbling around him, and 2.) He's in such a vaccuum of self-involved projection of his issues on everyone else that he can't even be trusted to make the right decisions on his own. I mean, he almost got in a fight with a fucking picketer yesterday after he knocked the sign out of the dude's hand.

I am trying to get over the trauma of yesterday's scene, but it's going to take a while to allow my judgments of his little display of emotional retardation to pass. I can't stand for him to even touch me right now. This incident has tainted everything with doubt.

On a related note, yesterday I was able to demystify something about why Lachlan seems so appealing to me right now: while he is in touch with himself far beyond what most men can manage, he is also fucking tough in a way that most men around me aren't. He is basically psychologically healthy, he is not on the verge of falling apart anytime soon, and he has a sort of classically masculine sense of separation and energetic distinctness from his surroundings. It would be very, very difficult to get a rise out of him, upset him, or make him angry.

I'm having a moment of compassion for myself for being infatuated with the guy in light of what's stressing me the fuck out about Simon. Lachlan's steadiness is like a foil to all of Simon's recent neediness and emotional instability.

Right now I'm headed to a house party where Simon and Joey will be playing an improvised set together. This house is full of nice hipster kids I am excited to meet...sortof. I'm mostly just excited to go home. My feet and legs ache so badly that I'm having trouble walking, and at least at home I can find somewhere else to sleep if being around Simon is making me feel like I'm going to have an aneurysm.

Later: That party was so much fun! California hipsters are a different breed...

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

In Which, Yet Again, the Pace Is Dizzying.

This is one of those weeks in polyland in which I can hardly keep up with all that is going on. I am hoping that a few things at least can smooth themselves out before the weather starts to turn. I would like to find myself in a roughly polyfidelitous situation by then. I've changed my mind about seventeen times the past few weeks about with whom I would like this to coalesce, but such is a woman's prerogative. Or something like that. Right?

Rewind to last Thursday. I met up for drinks with a woman we'll call Crystal, a friend from the martial arts school who also attends with her husband and nine year-old daugher. We had been talking about doing it for weeks, and we finally made it work. The short version of what ended up happening is that she started spilling some beans about her marriage problems, so I spilled the beans about polyamory. (There are now a total of seven or eight people there who know about our unconventional arrangement.) As soon as I started talking about it, her eyes got wide and she started eagerly asking questions. This was a bit like a flashback to the first time Harriet and I ever talked at length--a conversation that catalyzed hers and Zeke's decision to try polyamory. Really, I don't go around proselytizing, but I'm always open to questions, and I keep ending up in positions of extreme influence on other people's lives by my willingness to answer them. I think the appeal of polyamory, for many people, speaks for itself. But it gets weird when people with long-standing partnerships, and KIDS, for Chrissake, start to rely on a clueless twentysomething who thinks of most children as bothersome details.

Anyway, Simon and Crystal's husband John eventually met up with us at a different bar, and then we all drifted back over to our house. We stayed up much too late talking about it all, and then right before they leave at whatever o'clock in the morning, Crystal busts out with a question: Who are the most attractive people at the martial arts school?

I, of course, immediately name Anthony (mentioned here). Simon names Sandra, a hot mom with a bubbly demeanor. John names Delilah, but with the caveat that her attitude makes her unattractive. We have to bully Crystal's answer out of her even though she asked the question. She's blushing, she's giggling, and still I don't anticipate the answer: Simon! So she confessed, and there was an awkward conversation about it wherein Simon says that the attraction is mutual (here in front of his cheerleading partner and her extremely confused partner).

Next, Dan, Crystal, and John came with me to this huge post-Transformus DJ dance party Saturday night--the one where I knew I would see Lachlan. Simon wouldn't come for the same reason he did not care to go to Transformus: he hates dubstep and hippies and party drugs, all of which are ubiquities of that scene. I was trying to have fun hanging out with Dan, who is, by the way, one of my new favorite people, but Crystal and John kept dragging me off for long, difficult heart-to-hearts about poly practice and their relationship issues and yadda yadda yadda. I tried to answer their questions, but I felt like I had to keep reminding them that I am not a guru who can tell them how to live their lives. I reached my limit at some point and just sortof walked off and started dancing...which is why I was there in the first place. I understand their extreme excitement and need to discuss things--they've been doing the ol' no sleep routine just like we did when this conversation first arose. Nevertheless, party time is party time. Plus, there was this sexy redhead just across the room all by himself...

And so I arranged to run into Lachlan, and he greeted me warmly and of course remarked upon the fact that I was looking smokin' hot. (True story. I had spent much of the day putting together my costume, which featured a tasteful negligee, lots of bits of pink lace ribbon on my neck and ankles and such, and my tuxedo shoes. Hot.) We were in each other's arms before we exchanged a word, with me sortof nibbling on his neck. Given, he was pretty high on who knows what, but it just made him super open and sweet. Late in the evening, before I was about to leave, I told him that I would love to see him next week. He said that yes, we should do that, but he can't do the sex thing with me anymore. Of course, I think WHYYYYY?! Well, because he's been seeing a young lady whom he really likes and doesn't want to mess up his chances with her. She was supposed to be at the party with him, but she had had to work or something. I was a bit devastated by the news, and sortof hung onto his shirt frowning for too long, but he was nice about it. And he still sortof kissed me before I left.

So this is where the weather of my heart started to get out of control. Reader, I was upset. I didn't know whether to feel dumber for letting him get away or for having such a sudden and uninvited surge of feelings for him in the first place. It was rather dramatic. I wrote him a long letter that I knew I wouldn't send. In it, I offered secondary fidelity to him and promised to let all my other lovers (not Simon of course) go in order to have the chance to be with him. I obsessed over what to say to him in a few days when we had lunch together. I tried to persuade him that I can give him what he needs...and then I put all that away in brackets and stewed inside my own head.

Next day, Sunday: Crystal and John called to arrange some time to hang out and talk. We decided on Tuesday.

Monday: Lachlan arranges lunch for Wednesday.

Tuesday: We go to John and Crystal's to swim and have burgers on the grill. More talking. And more talking. In every possible arrangement of the four of us. Apparently, Crystal has been rather obsessing over Simon, to John's extreme discomfort and my extreme wariness. The noobs are clearly jumping into a lot of feelings head first, and the issue is likely compounded by the common early poly transition experience of getting very little sleep, which of course can drive a person absolutely batty. John admitted to a few bouts of homicidal rage towards Simon, for example, along with hours of sobbing punctuated by amazed enrapturement with Crystal's new demeanor. So yeah, things aren't all that stable. We reassured them that their boundaries will always be respected, I made it clear that I am not sexually interested in John, and we all parted on good terms.

Today: I met Lachlan for lunch, and boy was I nervous. This is the man who hasn't left my thoughts for weeks, and before that, months...and I probably have to tell him at least some abbreviated version of how I feel. Otherwise, what the hell will I talk about? The fucking weather? Impossible. So it went something like this:

Me: So, may I be plain?

Lachlan: I like plain things.

Me: I want you. I can't stop thinking about you. I haven't gotten like this over anyone else since Simon and I have been together--I mean, I've cared for people and loved them, but this is the more mysterious thing. I don't even know why I feel this way. I mean, there are reasons, but none of them quite get to the point. And that's how it is.

Lachlan: Well, the feeling you're describing, that is how I am feeling about this other woman. I know it might not last long because she's so young and she seems pretty unavailable most of the time, but I need to figure out what's up with her. Plus, you know I don't really want to do the poly thing. I don't deal well with jealousy.

Me: I understand, but let me clarify. I am telling you that if you asked me to, I would happily stop seeing other people--Simon of course doesn't count, but my other lovers. I would let them go. Just to be perfectly clear.

I don't remember his precise response to that, but he probably continued on about why he has doubts about polyamory and I probably continued to shoot down his assumptions about "how it is." That tends to be how things go.

Anyhow, after I left, I was again dejected, and then I was angry. I decided that it was a good time to tell Caleb off, and in a little fit of impotent fury, I texted him to ask that he disregard the letter I'd just written him. He called, worried and confused, and listened to me vomit emotional ick for a while. I told him I didn't trust him, that I thought he was lying to me again, and that I don't know where he apparently got the impression that a low-maintenance woman is a no-maintenance woman...He listened calmly, and then he sweetly, wisely comforted me and guided me to get my head screwed back on straight. He wants to see me, he desires me, he will call me more often, etc. He made me feel so much better, and he accepted the little flash of crazy as something people need to do sometimes. I felt like such an asshole for insulting him so many times recently when talking about him to other people who don't know him. I mean, I said some mean things about him just because I was having a hissy fit over not feeling loved enough. Totally immature! At least I can mostly take them back because I didn't say them to him. Simon said about the matter, "Please still wait until he proves something." I think that's good advice, Simon.

And just now, a long text exchange with Lachlan that concluded with this little gem: "There is no rejection, just a raincheck while I figure stuff out..." The boy is leaving windows open all over the house for me. I don't know what to think of it.

We are headed to Harriet and Zeke's for a few minutes now, and then we're heading off to beautiful San Francisco for a few days. I may be writing rather compulsively through all that plane travel. See you on the other side of the country!