This Is How It Starts.....

I hate getting married. I mean, I do it a lot, but it's not something I enjoy.
Okay, when I say "A lot," it's more than most people, but not as many times as, say...Elizabeth Taylor (whom I will be resurrecting for Halloween).

But honestly, this is my fourth marriage and my fifth wedding (I'll explain later), and I'm just frantic. We're getting married Xmas day, and I think we've both just been in denial about how soon that is. We've been scrambling around trying to take care of things and last night we both ended up having the same dream where we're running around a large place (a school in both cases) trying to find something and we're late. The minutae were different, but close enough to tell me that we're both freaked.

Frankly, my family doesn't help. I'm not allowed to do just one thing at a time with them. If I'm taking care of the invitations, they're on my ass saying "Have you got the dress done?" "What about decorations?" "Do you have the menu down?" This is part of why I tend to clam up.
The part that kills me is that this should be simple. It's on Xmas night (the family will all be in one place then), it's long after Xmas dinner has concluded, and the whole thing should be over and done with in under half an hour including the cake. Do I really have to make placecards and plan to decorate the whole venue for that?

Arrrgh.

Okay, just so I'm clear. Between now and the New Year, I will:

write two manuals
write one novel
run a 10K
get married
have Thanksgiving with my family
shop for everyone's Xmas gifts
have Xmas with my family

One thing at a time. Just one thing.

Why I Do It

I like taking really, really hot showers. I like showers so hot that they make my skin bright red after only a few seconds. I like it when the steam covers every available inch of the bathroom mirrors within five minutes.
Then just as the water is starting to go cold, I like to turn all the hot water off and stand under the completely freezing water. It feels amazing in the way that it used to feel when I was a kid, and I would walk the five blocks in the June (read 115+-degree) heat wearing my bathing suit under a giant t-shirt. I was clutching my towel and the dollar that I had to pay my admission and for a snack during the day.

My skin would be on fire by the time I had put my stuff in a locker and run outside. I would jump right in, rather than using the steps to walk in by degrees. And it felt like a miracle. My hot skin, so hot that if I could have jumped right out again I would have steamed, would turn pink from the change in temperature. And I would stay in the water until it didn't feel cold anymore, except that when you get out and the little breeze hits you, it's cool again.

So, I like that cold blast of water, because it's a swimming pool in Phoenix in the middle of June.

I Don't Get Out Enough

Went out to dinner with the Pirate, Peaches and a couple of friends, the Harper and Ironhorse Mike. Went to the Maharajah in Mountain View. When we walked into the place, there was exactly one other couple already there eating the amazing buffet. And the male half of this couple turned out to be one of the Harper's oldest and dearest friends from way back, who had stopped in for dinner in the middle of a class he was taking. Well...wonders never cease.

Dinner was delicious and fun (if you're ever in Mountain View and desirous of some Indian food, I highly recommend it) and we then proceeded to Rick's Ice Cream in Palo Alto. A small, unassuming little place, I had a triple scooper of rose, lemon/lavender and kulfi (a combination of rose, saffron and pistachio). I decided to forego the green tea and the white chocolate ginger as I am incapable of eating that much ice cream.

While we were standing in the ice cream shop getting our various scoops, a man wearing tuxedo pants, a tuxedo shirt and suspenders with musical notes on them came in for a pre-concert scoop. The Harper asked him if he was playing in a concert or just so in love with music that he wore it all the time, and he good-naturedly told us that he was playing in a concert at the school auditorium to the other end of the school that was just next to the strip mall where the ice cream shop is situated.

We took our scoops outside and talked and laughed and it came out that Ironhorse Mike's mother's name is Rosemary.

I have just had dinner with Rosemary's baby.

I was not even over that shock yet when I looked inside the ice cream shop and noticed that the long-haired, long-faced youth with the soft voice and the trace of accent who had served us our ice cream was now strumming a guitar while sitting on a stool behind the register.

I had been served ice cream by Arlo Guthrie.

We laughed about that for a couple of minutes when a very nicely-dressed woman came rushing up to us asking us where a certain address was located. She held out little pieces of paper to the Harper who said "Are you going to the concert? It's in the auditorium at the other end of the school next door." We were in agreement that the universe is very economical in its functioning. The man hadn't told us his name or what instrument he played or what vocal part he had, or even what the concert was. He had told us nothing more than we would need to tell this woman who had passed three other people sitting on a bench near us to ask us, the people who had the information.

And then we got home. Time to take off the makeup and put on the pjs. I had put on some false eyelashes because I had bought them the week before on a whim and this was the first time I would get to wear them. I had also bought a tiny bottle of special rubber-cement solvent to dissolve the glue you stick them to your head with. I had put the eyelashes on the bathroom counter and was opening the bottle of solvent when the cat jumped up onto the counter to check out the action. I shooed him away, but looked down to see only one little bodyless spider laying on the bathroom counter. I cried out in dismay, causing both Peaches and the Pirate to crowd into the bathroom (between me and the cat) to see if they could be of assistance. "Get out of my way!" I yelled, elbowing them in my haste to chase the cat who was running as best he could, but felt compelled to stop every couple of steps and shake his right front paw. I finally cornered him and grabbed his foot, peeling the poor eyelashes from the pad of his paw. A little solvent and a quick rinse and they were none the worse for their adventure.

Quite a night, all told.

My Monogamy

Let me just say this first: for much of my life I have been, not to put too fine a point on it, a slut. I would sleep with anyone who would sleep with me, and for those of you who understand the mind of the 18 - 25 year-old male, you understand that my dance card was full for many years.

Those days are behind me, though, and now I'm struggling with a concept that has only recently bubbled to the surface of my consciousness. Polyamory.

In my family, we never talked about sex. It felt like something I discovered for myself, and a discovery that I had to keep secret from my parents, because if they knew about it, I was sure they wouldn't approve. And even though my parents were divorced when I was very young, I was raised with the same "spouse and 2.5 kids" ethic that most people my age were raised with. I was raised in Phoenix, and it is a deeply conservative place.

When I was a kid, my attitudes were very much shaped by my peers. The girls in my school all wanted to get married and have kids as soon as possible. Sure, we were all going to go to college, but that was really secondary. I kid you not, three girls from my high school graduating class were already married with children by graduation. One was in that state by junior year.

And like all teenage girls of my acquaintance, I thought of "marriage" as one man who was so in love with me that he was blind to the very existence of every other woman on the planet. Someone who would be so entranced with me that he would be unable to even formulate the concept of sex, let alone a relationship, with anyone else.

Let me just say that I got married and divorced three times before I found the one (and no, I don't expect him to be blind or inhuman - I've grown up since high school). And in between those marriages, I dated a lot of guys, and those relationships always involved sex. But the thing is that I never had more than one relationship going at a time. I just can't do that. It always seemed wrong to me. Like it was disrespectful to the other people I was dating. They had an expectation (or maybe they didn't and I was just assuming) that I wasn't seeing anyone else, and I had a lot going on in my life.

Now I'm being exposed to people who do not consider sex with more than one person to be a breech of loyalty. And I must say, my first reaction is one of sanctimonious superiority.

Is that right? It doesn't feel right. Suddenly it feels like that time that I found out that the woman whom I consider my spiritual mentor, a woman who has done more to awaken me to my own Buddha nature than anyone on earth, used to be a prostitute. I could never feel morally superior to her. She was in every way my spiritual superior, and I learned a valuable lesson from her.

But to me, that lesson was really clear-cut. I had made a blanket judgment about prostitutes and what sort of people they were, and she blew that out of the water. I guess my question is this: what assumptions am I making about people who brand themselves "poly," and on what are they based and what do they say about me? And what is the truth?

Just call me the elephant's child. Full of 'satiable curiosity. Just don't spank me.

Larry

I've only met him four or five times in the almost five years I've known Nancy, mostly at get-togethers at their house.

I used to work with Nancy. She's one of those people who owns the workplace. She organizes everyone and helps them figure out their process and takes the ones who look lost under her wing. I was one of those.

I got to know Larry through Nancy's habit of living her life loudly and over the phone. Larry was needy and disorganized and prone to panic. Larry hated his job and had problems relating to his daughter and ex-wife. Larry had no sense of style or propriety.

The first time I went to their house, I was overwhelmed. It was a vast apartment over an antique store in San Mateo. The living room alone was easily 100 feet long, and had three full suites of furniture including two big-screen televisions and two stereos, one at each end of the room. One end of the room was decorated in very retro-50s furniture and accessories. The middle had a sort of Jackie-O thing going on, while the dining area at the far end was reserved for the sort of tchotchke-crowded style that one associates with one's grandmother.

My opinion of Larry had been colored by those countless one-sided phone conversations. Poor obsessive-compulsive gormless guy. He showed me his collection of vinyl records - a room twice the size of my bedroom, filled floor-to-ceiling with shelves filled wall to wall with vinyl albums. Remember the store in "High Fidelity"? That was him.

But then we started talking. We talked about current events and he made some very sly, low-key jokes that I thought were very funny. He would mutter little off-the-cuff remarks under his breath that had me in hysterics.

I watched their dog, a spoiled little Bichon Friese named "Miss Moo," while they were out of town one Thanksgiving, and when I gave her back, I had given her a pink mohawk. Nancy was scandalized, and Larry said he was upset, but his face didn't reflect that. Later, he said it again, but he was laughing.

We went out to dinner with them a couple of times, and every time he was funny and interesting and engaging. He indulged Nancy in her need to feel needed and important. He let her be powerful and right, and that was okay with him.

Nancy had been wanting to move back to her native Oklahoma since I met her, and two years ago she finally got that chance. She's been working out there, and I don't know what Larry was doing for a living. After she moved we chatted once in a while but not much and not often.
Last night, Nancy popped up on IM while I was at home looking for something on the computer. She said that things weren't going well and that she was very sad. My first instinct was that she and Larry had broken up and I was so sad. But it's worse. Larry died of a heart attack at the end of last month.

I feel so terrible for Nancy, and, as usual, at a loss as to how to adequately support her without coming off as insensitive or uncaring. We will cancel our plans for Sunday (such as they were) and go to the memorial being held in Millbrae, but beyond that, I just don't know what to say to her.

I'm Not Responsible for My Actions After 9:30pm

Was up until past two last night. First time in many, many months.

Now, there's being up past two because you're doing something really, really fun that you don't want to stop, despite the fact that you'll pay for it in exhaustion the next day. Then there's being up until past two because you got into an unexpectedly serious, heavy discussion that became fraught with meaning and importance merely because you were so tired that you had to keep reminding yourself to finish your sentences, so you didn't notice that while the things you were saying were on topic and true enough, they were also things you never would have said at, say, 9:30. At 9:30, you would say "This just isn't even a thing. Don't worry about it."

One of those things is fun, and one of those things is stupid.

At 2:00 am, I am just stupid.

Horrified, Saddened and Angry

This story was on the BBC front page today.
How could this happen?
This is not the first story of its kind that I've seen. Now, I know people who don't have children and who love them anyway. I know people who can't have children and desperately long for them. I even know people who do have children and who don't spent 100% of their time on their knees grateful for that fact (anyone who has children, pretty much). But every time I hear something like this, all I can do is cry. I cry and want to run home and scoop up my children and cover them with kisses and promise them that Momma will always be there.
Of course, this would confuse the hell out of my children, because they are already secure in that knowledge.
But I am filled with rage that all children aren't so secure. They should be.