Month: August 2003

Partly to appease irish-girl’s voyeur-like interest in the subject of non-monogamy and jealousy therein, I’m going to take a little stab at reiterating the importance of openness in open relationships.

I think that secrets are the downfall of every relationship. Both secrets of the traditional, unspoken variety, but also imposed secrets. For example, if you at any point find yourself uttering the phrase “I just don’t want to hear about that.” to your partner, in my opinion you have at least one unhealthy aspect of your relationship. Because that issue will resurface, no matter how small, and when it does, it’s going to haunt you.

For many people/couples, the whole concept of your partner dating someone else is something you don’t want to talk about! Something you don’t want to think about, and certainly don’t want to address it in conversation! Then when your partner goes and “cheats on you”, the subject has never even been broached! The couple doesn’t know how to react, and consequently (sometimes) fails.

Last night I watched Bowling for Columbine. I had read so much about the parts of the movie that are factually inaccurate (or anyway questionable), that I was totally unprepared for the flurry of other powerful messages in the movie. Underlying the entire thing was one overwhelming question: What makes Americans kill each other far more than citizens of any other country? And the answer, at least as put forth by the movie… seemed to be fear. We’re spoon-fed reasons to fear and loathe our fellow Americans, so much so that we’re more likely to pull the trigger on them when things turn sour.

Interesting parallel in open relationships: What causes jealousy? Fear.

I think ultimately the bulk of jealousy in relationships is fear of abandonment, but there are also smaller and more subtle fears that cause jealousy in open relationships specifically. Fear that you are not as important as you once were. Fear that other things will change negatively in your current relationship. Fear that the “other” party is better than you are in some way.

In my personal experience, it’s been incredibly important for me to talk about all of these possible fears with my partner, get them out onto the table, and break them wide open. Once you’ve faced a fear, and talked about that possibility and what it would do to you and your relationship, it is often much easier to deal with the fear… and consequently the jealousy.

Earlier this week Laura was jealous of my new fling. But when we talked about the subject, it became immediately obvious that she wasn’t so much jealous of what we were doing, or what was happening, but rather afraid of the possibility that this new person was going to somehow make me less enamored of her. (We also hadn’t spent enough time together the week before the fling started, and communication had been too scarce for either of our tastes.)

I don’t know if any of you have already heard about this, but I ran into this site yesterday dedicated to John Titor. This guy posted on a public forum, claiming to be a time traveler from the year 2036. I mentioned this, not because it’s incredibly fascinating stuff (which it is, in my opinion), but because, when I began writing this paragraph I thought I was going to tie it in with the discussion of openness and honestly. I have since forgotten how I was going to do that. Maybe it was just that Titor had some good messages, whether he was from the future or not, but I really can’t remember.

And with that mental derailment, I’ll conclude this tirade by saying that (unless some elaborate practical joke has been played on me,) I think laura and e took a shower together earlier today. All the while, I was here. At work. Lather in my imagination.

OK, while I’m ignoring my uninvited houseguests I decided I’d clue in all my readers as to the excitement that’s been happening in my life since last weekend.

(Latest quote from AJ’s mom, talking about the pair of female panties she found in AJ’s bedroom: somene else in the room asked, “What’d she wear home?” to which AJ’s mom replied, “Fingerprints.”)

So… yeah, I met this girl… (who has been commenting on one of my latest posts). It’s been good. I think we have a lot in common. I’ve seen her nearly every day since last saturday. We’ve even hung out together with laura some, especially last night, when a car-load of us went to the “I Marveled at Mars” viewing in Loring park (at 4:00AM). After seeing the red planet (my namesake) larger than the naked eye (but not really all that much larger,) we came back and all of us fell asleep in bed together.

Right now she’s been drinking, in my living room, with the other guests… invited and uninvited. She’s also cuddling with my brother, and I don’t really know what to think about that. I’m affraid I may have sent her some eye-daggers about it.

Lets see… what else?

AJ’s mom has left. More on the girl with the beautiful eyes… later.

update: entry changed slightly to more accurately depict the underwear story.

What’s up with the people in my living room? AJ’s mother decided to show up drunk at our door with some taco bell, and I was stupid enough to ask her inside and invite her to look around the house. When she asked what our rent is, I told her we own it, and that we paid 160. She assumed that I meant we pay $160/month, and was amazed.

Later she said “If anyone says anything bad about my children, I’ll cut their heads right off!”

Work sucks my cock, my computer at home is playing dumb, and I have a load of bills to pay that is literally three inches thick.

A little patience, yeah… yeah.

I hate that song, and Axle Rose is a moron. (But somehow it’s still stuck in my head.)

I tried to think of more stuff to complain about, but then realized that life is pretty good. (Nice how that worked out.) Laura has been a saint the last couple of days, (claiming she’s making up for her grumpiness all weekend, but I wonder if she isn’t just a little jealous). I told her that I’d write her that poem about the elusive soft shelled turtle. This weekend we’re sojourning to Chicago for Verakai.

My mind is mush.

Underlying subtext of this entry’s title (which I am now making not so “sub”(tle)): I am nervous (no doubt needlessly) about an impending “date” tonight. I got an email from her and we are now hanging out with a friend of hers. Not that we ever explicitly made exclusive plans, explicitly or exclusively. There is always that (irrational) fear that the friend is really more of a chaperone.

[Poem Question: Was it at all obvious that Ms Turtle is, in fact, a clitoris? UPDATE: I’ve split this entry off into two entries, one with the poem, one without. Should have done this before I posted, but I’ll bet nobody noticed!]

For the benefit of those of you who don’t know him, I have decided to dedicate this post to a friend of mine named Leif. Leif is currently touring Europe. He is keeping a webpage with writing and photos from his journey. It’s not quite a blog, as each entry is much longer than I’d want to read on anything like a regular basis, (and he hand-codes everything) but it’s interesting in the same way blogs are interesting, I think, and every time I visit the site there’s something new. (Or at least new to me, as I’ve found I never have time to get through more than one of his posts at a time.)

The stories are fascinating and incredible. Basically Leif just up and sold his house, furniture and car–quit his job–bought plane tickets and some “travel stuff”–and left the country. I think he plans to spend a year traveling, before he then finds some place on that distant continent to settle down in and call home. Of course, I’m jealous.

I just had one of those all-consuming ideas. Strangely, this is the second one this morning. What is it that causes these? I figured I’d better write them down somewhere before they disappear forever into the unused pathways in my brain.

The first one was this morning while I took a shower. I was thinking about memory… and how I want to write a near-future science fiction novel. Near-future, as a genre, is probably a hard genre to write in because your predictions are so near at hand… in ten years, my book will either be irrelevant pulp, or suffer from the “well duh” factor if I’m right.

Anyway, the plot was about a character whose “augmenters” are acting up, and he has to have them removed (a rare event, and one that immediately qualifies him for disability leave) or just live with the strange behavior. Of course, he can elect to have new augmenters put in to replace the old ones, but he’ll lose all his old memories. And his brain, untrained to create permanent memories (because the augmenters cause everyone to have photographic recall) will probably not have the capacity to create long term memories on its own. The character will be a bit over-emotional about the whole thing, and of course he’ll decide to keep his old augmenters, and perhaps even shun the doctors (or augmenter manufacturers) who are trying to help him resolve the problem without replacement. I think it’ll make for an interesting plot, even if I don’t know where it’s going to go.

OK, second idea, and one that I want to get started on RIGHT NOW (even though I’m at work, and that is obviously not possible) is a website that does for poetry what http://anexquisitecorpse.net/ does for design. Basically, you’ll sign up at the site, and immediately jump into writing collaborative poems with any number of other people. Because poetry is just text, I think we can easily automate the process of completing your poems on the site, rather than rely on email exchanges, as An Exquisite Corpse (and photoshop tennis) does. You’ll also be able to post your (other non-collaborative) poems on the site, (and/or link to a site that already does), and request that other members/users collaborate with you. Oh, and the best part I’ve thought of so far is that each poem will have a “type” associated with it, for instance, you’ll chose to start a “Haiku with three people”, and the system will prompt you for any additional information, like a proposed title, or topic, and who (if anyone) you would prefer to collaborate with.

Also fun would be something like a 10 line free-verse poem where everyone writes two lines, and you only get to read one line of what’s already been written before submitting yours. That catches some of the spirit of Exquisite Corpse.

OK, now I have to brainstorm URLs. Any ideas?

from my profile:

I try to defy easy description. I am opinionated and brash. I forget names
as I hear them. I think too much, and think I think too little. I am a loser.
I have no time for losers. I have no time for anything.

UPDATE: I guess it doesn’t work to link directly to your friendster profile unless the linkee(???) is already logged in.

Last night, family night. John brought a friend, as he sometimes does. Two friends this time, actually. His friend Cammile, (I think her name was Cammile, when I knew her we called her Cammy) and her son Phoenix. We had a good time… ate family dinner at the park. Phoenix kept everyone entertained. It was obvious that my dad is good with kids… when he wants to be. Phoenix and the spider man action figure he found in the sand rode the slides while sitting on my lap.

Anyway, at some point later in the evening it was just my brother John, Cammile, (Phoenix had fallen asleep), and I, all talking about this and that. For some reason, John brought up this girl I used to know named Gail. I met her at camp, where I also happened to meet a good–lifelong–friend of mine named Derik. John somehow knew that I also knew this Gail girl, and we talked about her for a few minutes before it struck me like a sledgehammer that Cammile was the Cammy who had been at camp with us when we met Gail!!

Not only had she been on the same week-long canoe trip with us, but this was the same girl… things are a bit fuzzy, but I’m almost sure… this was the same girl I had a HUGE crush on, and even tried to kiss on the last night of the trip. If I remember right, she didn’t want to kiss me and I was terribly embarrassed about it all.

So, I was pretty flabbergasted. I said something that probably made me sound like a moron… that she was “the other hottie” on the trip canoe trip. She at least pretended to blush, so that was ok.

The weird part is that I’m not sure if my brother was on a date with this girl, or if he was just hanging out with her. At that point, things were awkward enough, and I decided to take off.

I only remembered the part about the kiss later, and wanted to go back and read my journal from that time. Then I realized I’m not even sure if I kept a journal at that time. (If I get a chance, I’ll be looking through some of my old writing and stuff sometime soon for references to it.)

Today Ryan was talking about his excitement at reading his old email address archive… saying “wow, this is pretty bizarre… going through my old emails, backwards, starting at 7/29 around 2:00.. it’s like i died right at that time and i am going back through my last emails later. all of a sudden — nothingness!”

That phrase struck me. My lack of a journal from that time is somehow similarly cut off. I want to call this girl and ask her what she remembers from the trip. Does she even remember me? What about my trying to kiss her? I had never kissed anyone at that point, and I don’t even know if I made it clear that’s what I was trying to do. She probably didn’t even know I liked her. I remember trying to get in the same canoe with her whenever the opportunity arose.

Life is weird. Bizarre. And things happen all too suddenly. All too sudden. And then — all of a sudden — nothingness!