Out late, up early, coffee not working yet. I had a disturbing dream that secret police were following me everywhere and anyone associated with me was also suspect.
We had fun last night at the Writers thingie - I especially loved a story by Bob Vickery. I laughed so hard I had an asthma attack. What could be a better recommendation? He made fun of every convention of porn writing.... silliness that possibly even became profound in some way, but maybe that was the asthma talking. I thought the story nudged itself into some realm of literariness and coolness that usually porn doesn't reach, maybe by talking about author-ness. As I was sitting there I had a flashback to reading P@ul Auster and being extremely annoyed by it and I thought, "HERE in this hilarious parody of porn is the real thing, while Auster pussyfoots around in front of a mirror dressed in some kind of postmodern clown suit...." And I hadn't been drinking or anything. What "the real thing" is I am not sure if I can explain.
Chula did her funny loopy introductions for everyone (though no one got half the jokes. I liked the Tom of Finland/Tom of Maine joke but it took me way too long to realize what Tom of Maine was -- the hippie toothpaste. Anyway, there was much silliness. I love her comedy style of rambling about blueberry enemas or hats for hydroencephalic shriner or umlaut astronauts or whatever completely wacked-out thing that fluctuates between the surreal and the silly. She is the best and freest free-associater I know!
I still feel a little awkward being around her and Rook at the same time. It seems like being affectionate to either one should be okay and in fact that it is, but I still feel that weird awkwardness. It feel pretty much exactly like being in high school and wanting to arrange things in a group of people so that I am sitting next to my crush, but not wanting to be obvious about it, but worse as it's 2 crushes and everyone has other crushes and partners and so there is actually no possible seating configuration or cuddling configuration that would accommodate all that, unless, as Chula points out, we had something like movie theater seats configured in a tesseract. Sometimes it's not who's sitting with who or touching who or gazing in a befuddled way at who, but it's some kind of mental tesseract balancing act that I'm not necessarily succeeding at, that makes me feel odd and uncertain. On another level, I just think it's kind of retarded for anyone including myself to be micro-analyzing whose hand I'm holding when and I just want to chill and not think about it. I think this is a sort of shyness actually that will lessen over time.
In the meantime, my ex-girlfriend Masha showed up and began instantly grilling me on my polyamorous ethicalness. Was I sure I was doing the right thing? Did I REALLY think it was okay for Chula to reach out and hold my hand for a few seconds while I was sitting next to Rook? If I were HER girlfriend that would so not be okay. (immediately at this point I bristled remembering all our past relationship issues!) I point out the difference between making out wildly and cuddly affection. Masha drills immediately right down to the core of my being, passing through every possible sedimentary layer of issues. Am I sure that I'm doing the right thing in life? What am I doing? Am I doing what I want to be doing? Am I going where I want to be going? Am I healthy? Am I sleeping? Is Rook happy? Am I just blithely and defiantly doing what I want to do without ever considering anyone else's emotions? (I point out to her that I'm not 22 anymore.) Am I writing? Have I considered therapy? Do I realize what it is to be jealous and how to deal with those feelings? Am I ever willing to compromise? (Okay... again... at 22 I was almost never willing to compromise anything, but I am now. so there.) Am I being a little too overexcitable and do I realize that I seem a little bit hyperactive and manic? (Yes -- i get that way late at night and am often fidgety because i get achier and painfuller as the night goes on and more detatched from my body so that I don't have to feel that achiness, and also I had done a bunch of inhalers at WWD from cigarette smoke drifting in and laughing too hard at Bob Vickery.) Am I appreciative of Rook? Don't' I want stability in life? Aren't I just going to fall madly in love with someone else a year from now anyway and so what's the point? Are my feelings trustable? Is it possible I've had too many relationships already on some level and how long can i keep that up in life? What about sticking with one relationship for the whole rest of my life to acheive actual depth?
This is her superpower. I admire it! But how difficult sometimes to face her scrutiny. She used to just immediatly confront anyone on their possible bullshit, for example during dinner, meeting some male friend of mine, she'd grill him about the ways in which he was essentially sexist in every aspect of his life, and it would become clear that she had an amazingly good point, but it usually came across as hostile as the hapless person was dissected by her relentless Socratic questioning.
Gentle reader, before you bristle up in my defense, she does ask all these questions and do this analysis in an almost-detached scientific manner or socratic manner and she sees all sides of a question at once, and is in the end a lot gentler than I'm describing, or ends up in a gentler more accepting place. But it is her superpower to throw a person into a tizzy very quickly.
But even before she did this, just by looking at me she made me realize everything she was about to say. Scary! I pointed out to her multiple times "I can actually hear this better if we didn't have this enormous history. And you are the most jealous person on the planet so are being a little paranoid."
I think that as I filled in details about our lives she was vaguely reassured that I'm not being utterly heinous. (And does she remember that she grilled me way, way intensively when I got together with Rook? Was I sure our relationship could survive the terrible influences of patriarchy? etc.)
She's always, every second, equally tough on herself.... I would crack under such pressure ... she's very intense!
Her (cute, sexy, really cute) friend Nate from Austria joined in our conversation a lot and me and Nate agreed that for making poly relationships work out you need lots of communication, regularly, and it's also incredibly helpful if there is a community of people who think of poly relationships as a sort of norm. Nate talked about details of her and her gf and how they opened up their relationship, which was more useful than Masha's core sample of my soul, I think.
It was so good to see her but yow, I feel like I've been through the wringer!!! I'm still reeling!
Our conversation ended on a note of me saying, "Yes. I get to be a writer, and work to build up some money, and have a kid, and be in school, and have fabulous love from 2 people and get to love them back, and that is how it is, and I feel really lucky and happy and appreciative."
