Saturday, September 17, 2011

In Which Our Protagonist Contemplates the Necessity of Failure and the Joys of Platonic Love

Reader, so much has happened. For some time now, I have been in a holding pattern that has killed my creative drives for the time being, but I will try to at least relate the most important bits.

Starting with the most important: Simon and I have decided to divorce. If there are, in fact, any readers of this blog of whom I am unaware, you may be saying to yourself, "How terribly obvious." And yet it took until this very mature moment for me to realize for myself how inevitable it was.

We had a lovely conversation that gushed with mutuality and warm feelings: we should never have gotten married; that institution should never have determined our relationship to one another; Simon had no idea until recently how much he would want things like monogamy and CHILDREN for Chrissake (neither of which, clearly, are available from me); we have incommensurably different goals and drives in life; it is unfair to remain locked in a sexless domestic partnership if that's not what either of us want...et cetera. We agreed about almost everything, and in general, it was probably the smoothest breakup I have ever experienced.

We have both very recently told our parents, and neither they nor any of our mutual friends have seemed terribly surprised. And yet I am still reeling a bit at the thought of how monumental this failure feels. I can't regret getting married, but it was a huge mistake nonetheless. At least it appears to be a mistake with relatively few heavy, interpersonal consequences... *sigh* I was so stupid!

I am sure you can imagine that this whole marriage adventure has been a very valuable learning experience for me. I look forward to a long stretch of singlehood, or at least a state of being without a primary partner. Lachlan and I have been getting along beautifully, and I love the weekly hangout sort of relationship we appear to be developing, but I don't particularly care to take things much deeper than where they are with him. I have been casually dating people from OKCupid here and there, mostly just to meet new people and hang out, but I haven't felt my heartstrings being very available for...um...plucking. I like the cleanness of it, actually: I feel perfectly clear about so many things that felt muddled even two weeks ago.

For example, I finally got around to deciding that Caleb is a lost cause. He came to visit a few days ago and we had a nice enough time, but there was something pretty awkward and forced about it. Then, when we went to bed, he of course couldn't sleep and so got up in the middle of the night to leave. He never called the next day. I am over it.

The nicest I've felt in bed at sleepy time with someone was when I was spooning with Valerie last night. I am perfectly content for the time being to treat my friendship with this amazing and compatible woman as the thing most worth my attention and effort in the social sphere, rather than sinking so much (confused, murky) intention into my exploits with men. I believe she is going to come home with me for Thanksgiving or Christmas, in fact.

In general, our home has become a platonic lovefest since Simon left. Harvey, Valerie and I are such a warmly affectionate and functional little threesome. Being with the two of them turns my heart into a little bubbling fondue pot full of velvety sweetness.

I believe that summarizes it. I feel tired and sapped of creative energy, and this circumstance has made it difficult to write. I will return, though. Happy autumn weekend!

Monday, September 5, 2011

In Which Carnita Attempts to Catch Up on This Damned Blog (and Curses a Lot in the Process) After an Inspirational Evening with Lachlan

I'll backtrack in a minute. But first...

Holy shit, it finally happened: I got to spend an entire glorious evening with my sexy ginger, in private, out here in Camp Reality. I have been patiently and nearly continuously pursuing this man for months with varying degrees of success and lots of confusion, but I have persisted because dammit, I really like this one and the real thing doesn't happen every day! There are plenty of nice guys, good-looking guys, smart guys, interesting guys, etc. but somehow none of the trysts so far in my little journey have quite measured up to Lachlan in all of the ways that matter, i.e. ripples of carnal ecstasy alongside comfort, compatibility, honesty, and respect. I would feel like the luckiest girl ever if I found myself in a situation that allowed me to see him with any degree of regularity.

Even now, I am still among the luckiest. I made a sensational dinner for him, fucked his brains out--FINALLY!--and then slept beside him. I had him halfway to consent with the salmon, for sure. I think I may just have to study up on how best to feed him...

Anyhow, the most exciting/recent thing aside, here's a quick (all I can manage right now) list of other news, in roughly reverse chronological order:

Thing 1: Night before last, I met this lady friend of Lachlan's, I liked her almost instantly, and she seemed to like me. He seemed to be pretty happy with the circumstance of two of his women--he tells me there are more, which I don't find at all surprising--hanging out together. The dude was beaming with what I thought must be self-satisfaction. It was cute. I suppose that her subsequent consent for us to continue to have a thing (or whatever we were or are or will be doing) should have been part of the backstory for the headline news. Oh well.

Thing 2: Simon moved out a few days ago. We've had a fair amount of conflict--not always of the direct sort--and my general comment on the question of what is up with him is that I really, really don't know. I feel absolutely relieved and excited to have space to myself, but I think about him all the time in that seamless way that partners consider each other. It might even be easier to experience that sort of sympathy now, without him around me all the time. I needed this space badly, and I am giving myself lots of time to process. At this point, my way of processing involves not forcing myself to think about it like it is a question that must be answered right away, and so I will move on to the next thing.

Thing 3: Within the last couple of weeks, things with Crystal and John went way downhill very quickly. I am a little angry that Simon didn't heed my warnings that the guy (and she too, by proxy) is unstable and not to be trusted. To shorten a story that is still ugly and painful to me, John ended up flying into such a jealous rage over a single, chaste little kiss that she exchanged with Simon that he ended up openly threatening us in various ways, demanding "retribution," and other such psycho shit.

I can't blame Simon totally; he has never been under the spell of a sociopath as I was with Damon. I could smell that shit all over the guy, but Simon could not. Anyway, we're ostensibly safe now and the dude has backed off of his creeptastic rage, but there were a few days of scary and then frustrating drama that I felt I was being dragged into without my voluntary involvement. Although John tried pretty hard to reconcile things after he had been such a bitch, I just kept hearing Damon's voice in my head and couldn't get into the mood for forgiveness. Simon broke it (whatever "it" was) off with Crystal and I told John in concrete terms to fuck off and leave me alone because if he's looking for friendship and understanding, he'll have to find it elsewhere. Ugh. There is no excuse for his behavior.

Hopefully we won't have to deal with this too much again in the future, but who knows. They're still heavily involved in the same martial arts community that is our spiritual home, and so in my mind, the threat is still simmering. Blech. Right now it makes me throw up in my mouth a little that I ended up getting so tangled in these crazy people's personal issues. I'm sure I'll return to compassion eventually, as always. Hell, I watched a documentary just now about "zoophiles," as they're called, and had a touching moment of sympathy for one of the characters. I'm a total pushover when it comes to staying angry or otherwise maintaining absolute inimical boundaries (i.e. refusal to try to understand) with people.

Thing 4: Figure A: I quietly and less-than-directly broke it off with Zeke. I had lost interest. Figure B: I swear that one of these days I'm going to lose patience with Caleb. Really. I will. (Ha!) Anyway, he's still up to the same things: sucking at communicating with the little gadgets that we all rely on to share information when we live over a hundred miles away from one another; being amazing and funny and sweet and ohmygod sexy just often enough to hook my interest; being a little crazy. He's still Caleb, and I'm still a little annoyed, but it's mostly funny to me at this point. I know he's trying to do right, but he just can't. Ha. Can you tell that I just might be capable of forgiving him as many times as necessary? He's just so impossible to yell at, like an extremely cute and intelligent but traumatized dog that won't come out from under the table. The lovable bastard.

Thing 5: Valerie is living with us for a little bit while she gets established here. Yes, in a way it compromises some of the whole point of having space from Simon, but I actually love having her around. "Wing-bitches" is what we've taken to calling ourselves--something like "BFF" but without the middle-school flashbacks and with all the coarseness that makes our friendship so...urm...hilarious? But it also means that we have each other's backs, and that part really feels like a true story. I pick her up when her car gets towed; she saves me from an awful date in a way that looks, to oblivious icky-date boy, like a natural situation; I give her a place to stay; she cleans my bathroom in a fit of holy conviction; we giggle on the porch and half-ironically man-bash, or we lay around naked...it's just great. I don't get lonely at home, even if Harvey is at work. We're developing into a funny little flophouse beehive over here.

I've had to rush through this, but now I have to get to sleep. I tossed and turned all night in Lachlan's bed last night, and 6:30 am comes early. I still may not get quite enough sleep to hide my depravity from my students in the morning. Ha! Also: My apologies, gentle reader, for the gratuitous cursing in this post. I know that my back hurts from some long overdue sexing, so I can't really complain about the pain too much, but it must be making me feel a bit swarthy. Goodnight, shitheads!