Wow. How I let myself go four years without going to a National Rainbow Gathering, I don't know. This was just what I needed. I feel centered again, like my old self. I lost at least five pounds of fat and put on quite a bit of muscle. My endurance and stamina are much better. I worked my ass off, literally. Working that hard is never that much fun outside of Rainbow.

I left early last Friday. One of my riders had canceled. Well, simply not called me is more like it. The other two called and canceled at the very last minute. So I made the twelve hour drive alone, getting into the Ozarks after dark. Luckily, there was a full moon, so the four mile hike into the gathering was not too bad. My first pack load consisted of clothes, tent, sleeping bag, and pad. Just enough stuff to throw down beside the trail and fall asleep.

The next day, I scouted out the site. It was about three miles from one end to the other. It was pretty linear, like most eastern gatherings that follow a watercourse. Western gatherings tend to be more circular, spreading out from a central meadow. I stopped in at CALM (the Center for Alternative Living Medicine, our med tent.) where I have volunteered many times and was disappointed to find out that one of my exes and two of my best friends wouldn't be there this year.

The site was full of mud and poison ivy. It wasn't as bad as the Pennsylvania gathering, which was also muddy, but had sharper rocks, but CALM still had plenty of foot wounds to deal with. I hiked back out to my car and brought in what I thought was my bag of med supplies, but turned out to be the bag of trade goods. I may have been a little unfocused due to the, um, herbal tincture I took that morning.

I decided that, as my two best friends at CALM were not showing up that year, I would volunteer somewhere else. I had always wanted to volunteer at the Granola Funk theater, because they always seem to have a lot of fun, there are always tons of cute hippie chicks there, and they have their shit together. There are definitely different levels of competency going on at the various kitchens and other groups, with CALM and Shanti Sena (the peace keeping group) at the top and various first time kitchens at the bottom.

CALM and Shanti Sena volunteers often put in 12 to 16 hour days. Me, I try to put in 6 to 8 hour days most of the time, with a few days off. G-Funk doesn't work super hard, aside from putting the stage together the work is mostly at night, performing or facilitating same. I may have been a first-timer at G-Funk, but I still got to produce a skit the first night I was there.

We did our version of The Dating Game on the 1st, with skits in between the rounds. My skit was "Rainbow Rangers," about a new force for peace and wellness, only they are really, really bad at it, offering such advice as a salt and dog poop poultice for deep wounds and vigorous scratching for poison ivy. Then I come out with a snake bite, and the Rangers offer the good advice of sucking the poison out. Only, I got the snake bite in a delicate place, while peeing, so the Rangers say, "You're on your own!" and flee. A cute 30 second skit, and it took me all of a minute to think it up. I rounded up three cute Rainbow sisters (we call everyone 'brother' and 'sister' at the gathering)and we not only pulled it off, it went over very well. Not that it takes any kind of genius to entertain stoned hippies in the woods.

The next day I hiked out for that pack of med supplies I had mistakenly left up the day before. I managed to catch a shuttle, thankfully. Giving lots of donations of, ah, herbal tinctures to the various groups actually doing work has its advantages. I get up to the top of the hill, and run into my two best friends in the whole world. Okay, I have an actual crush on both of them and have for years. Jessica and Jason, you know I love you.

So, my gathering just got ten times better. We hiked back in and I dropped off the med supplies. Seven Song, who runs an herbalism school and brings his students to Rainbow every year as a final exam, roped me into helping him set up a satellite CALM on the far side of the gathering, near the mud-pit we called the loop trail. I helped bring all the supplies over, and then went to G-Funk, which was a few hundred yards from the site of the satellite CALM.

That was when I learned the really scary scary bad thing. We had a case of meningitis at the gathering, and we didn't yet know if it was viral or bacterial. And it came in with a G-Funk sister. All of G-Funk had been traveling, eating and sleeping with this girl. They were pretty scared. Then we found out it was bacterial, the most transmissible. Fortunately, no one else at the gathering ended up catching it, though the CDC showed up to track and oversee.

More about overzealous forest service and sheriffs, the joys of trench shitters, more performances, rainbow crazies, hot naked hippie chicks, and rainbow cuisine in my next JE. I do actually have some catching up to do here at work...

I've always wanted to write a rogue-like. I've been thinking about it recently, and I want to try something new. My idea? A rouge-sim. It would have elements of city building, resource management, and large scale combat as well as traditional rogue-like elements.

I have a whole back story that puts you into the situation. Basically, you were close to the king, screwed up somehow, and got sent along with your trusty sidekick to a remote mountain valley outpost. You can choose your background, which would be one of Soldier, Courtier, Spy, Merchant, or Court Wizard. I want to design a skill based system, something like a stripped down GURPS or D20, but I want people to choose from a set of backgrounds which would have put them in the situation rather than just designing characters willy-nilly.

The outpost starts with a small wooden fort, a construction office, a trade post, a warehouse, and a few farms. The king wants you to settle and develop the valley to secure the kingdom's claims to the strategically important area. The valley is randomly generated every game, and the resources, potential allies, and enemies will always be different.

Some things would be the same. There will always be a 'caves of chaos' main dungeon. There will always be an orc cave, from which random raids are launched. Other things would be random. The presence and location of resources will be random. I'm trying to come up with a list, so far for gatherables I'm thinking wood, stone, iron, copper, tin, gold, silver, platinum, gems, mythril, adamantium, clay, sand, pitch & herbs. For farmables wheat, vegetables, sheep, cows, flax, hops, and grapes. I may pare down these lists.

The outpost would function like a typical resource management sim, except that orders are given by actually walking to a place with your character and placing a building or housing zone. When buildings are placed, construction workers need to take wood or stone from a warehouse and actually build it. I'm envisioning buildings as 2x2-5x5 blocks with doors leading to a function menu, rather than nethack style walled enclosures with stuff on the floor.

The presence of other groups in the valley will be random as well. In each large area of plains, forest, hills, mountains and swamp there may be centaurs, elves, gnomes, dwarves, or goblins, respectively. These could start hostile or friendly, and their attitudes can be swayed through various actions.

Victory conditions I'm considering: time, the weakest win, just survive for X years; Culture, win by creating a large community with lots of culture, ensuring the kingdom's claims to the valley are recognized; Military, remove all relevant threats from the valley; Favor, regain the favor of the king by sending gifts of precious artifacts and fulfilling every request; Fame, become famous enough for your exploits; and finally, the ultra ending, ascend to demi-godhood by completing difficult quests.

The city building and dungeon delving sides play into each other. You need to have trained up enough defenders to meet any threats while you are gone. You can take trained troops into the dungeons with you. More importantly, training your skills requires you to attract experts to the town. You can also attract skilled craftsmen and enchanters and set them to making you custom weapons, armor, and magical items. Some magical items and artifacts found while delving will help or harm the town, rather than you.

All, of course, done with character graphics & turn based, like a normal rogue-like.

Holy crap! Monday through Thursday will pass like a blur. I have to get the tires aligned, I have to go over to my mom's back yard and pitch my tent, to make sure I have all the parts and there are no rips. I need a couple more large tarps, but I think she has some in granddad's old camping supplies. I need a folding shovel, and a hatchet, but again, I think those are all in granddad's stuff. I haven't been in four years, and when we moved here, I got rid of a lot of gear. Jenny hates dirt, so she hates camping, so she hates Rainbow.

One thing I'll need to buy, a folding garden cart with bicycle wheel. I've seen them in catalogs, that would be perfect for carting crap 3-5 miles into the gathering. I also want a one burner propane stove. Granddad had a two burner Coleman, but that's a lot of extra weight and more importantly, space.

You see, I have three riders. A 28 year old single girl from near Taos, and a couple from Albuquerque with a medium sized dog. I didn't say anything, but Rainbow encourages people not to bring their damn dogs. Dogs spread disease. Dogs fight each other. Dogs bite people. They bark constantly. I love dogs, and taking your own dog camping is fun, but taking your dog to a place where there are 20,000 people and at least 1,000 other dogs: not such a good idea.

I asked them how much stuff they have, and it's a backpack plus, each. I have a Subaru Imprezza station wagon, so we should be able to fit everything without resorting to putting stuff in a travel bag on the rack. Seeing as I don't have a travel bag for the rack, I hope we can fit it all and save me $60 for a decent waterproof carrier.

That is because I want to spend most of my discretionary funds on trade goods. Rainbow operates on voluntary donation and barter. Cash is only for magic hat, which buys food for everyone, and gas for couriers and scouts. The best barter items are packs of smokes, batteries, and candy bars. Seriously. You would not believe what a hippy will barter for a candy bar after ten days without.

I also need to put together a first aid kit. I definitely need some vitamins, some fiber supplements, some antacids and anti-diarrheals. Rainbow food, and sharing the great outdoors with tens of thousands of untrained campers can be... scary at times. Things spraying out of both ends scary. Add to that band-aids, ointment, a splint and ace bandages, a bunch of sunscreen, and some stuff to make dehydration fluid. Lemons, salt, & honey. Works better than Gator-Aid when you mix it up right.

A paper notebook & pen for putting up notes at Information. That's our creative name for the managerial level focal group that takes care of day to day business such as coordination of groups, information dissemination, and individual volunteer assignment. Rainbow is true anarchy in action. While one can raise the critique that it only works as well as it does because it is time-limited, the fact is that it is a complete social-anarchist community that functions impeccably two months out of every year. The number of people on-site varies from five to forty thousand based on proximity to the Fourth of July, and to local large cities with significant hippy populations. This year it's near Austin, so it should be huge.

Hmm, what else? I'm not setting up a full kitchen, or acting as a major liaison for C.A.L.M., or Shanti Sena, or Main Council, so I don't have to bring stocks of medicine, walkie talkies, or a bus full of cooking gear. Let's see: Shovel, hatchet, knife, stove, tent, mat, sleeping bag, tarps, leatherman, flashlight, first aid kit, spare batteries & assorted trade goods, WATER FILTER! That's what I've been forgetting. I need a new pump filter. One does not want to rely on Rainbow's water system. We do our best to set up a good community system, but it is very, very busy and you can end up waiting an hour or more for your turn. I've been meaning to put together a $100 group filtration unit from home improvement store parts, but I've got four full days during which I am also working full time, and I don't think I can pull it off.

The one thing I am really kicking myself for getting rid of is my hand cranked grain grinder. One does not use it for grinding grain, oh no. One uses it for grinding freshly roasted coffee. The swill we usually manage to mass produce at Rainbow is cowboy coffee, made from cheap-ass beans. Cowboy coffee as in cut, tap and sink cowboy kettle coffee, if any of you know the procedure.

I had the sweetest setup. French press, stove-top espresso machine, and espresso milk steamer. A big cast iron skillet for roasting, and a grain grinder for efficient grinding. Those little hand cranked coffee grinders take five minutes to grind enough for four cups of espresso. Three trips through a grain grinder on the finest setting takes at most two minutes, and makes a perfect espresso grind. I bought one from Mexico for twenty dollars, including shipping. I would make batches of lattes in the woods, using reconstituted condensed milk & fresh roasted green coffee beans. It was, as they say, off the hook.

Man, it's amazing what you pare down to when moving via air freight. We arrived here in Albuquerque with eleven large boxes full of stuff. Everything else we sold on the street in front of our apartment in San Francisco, and what was left over, we gave away.

Hmm, anything else? No fishing at Rainbow, or hunting, so no guns or gear. A cooler for snacks on the road, but I have that. AH! Road trip. I need some CDRs for burning custom, Rainbow Road-trip CDs.

I think all three of my passengers have driver's licenses, so, hmm? Twelve hours from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Fallsville, Arkansas. Probably two hours more to the site, as much of the last distance will be on dirt roads. I have to pick one of them up at the train station, say we are on the road by ten at the latest, which means 3-4 hours driving each and we hike in at midnight, which I have certainly done before, and it will be a full moon. Assume it isn't raining, then we won't need to pitch tents, not in the Ozarks in summer. In and asleep by two A.M. It's a long day, but do-able, and I am leaving plenty of wiggle room in the schedule.

Holy crap. I have so many people I haven't seen in four years. Not since the wedding. I shaved my beard and mustache off today, I've had those suckers since I was twenty. I wanted to look older, I guess. Now I want to look younger. Seriously, without facial hair, I look about twenty six. I wonder if they'll recognize me? Jenny just about shit a brick when she saw me at her play last night. Thank FRM's (I'm a heretic, I think It is actually Ramen, not Spaghetti) noodly blessings for good genes. My grandmother was 74 when she died from throat cancer after a life of smoking, drinking, and sunbathing, and she looked fifty. On my dad's side, I have at least two relatives who lived to be over one hundred.

Four hippys and a dog in a Subaru. What a far cry from fifteen San Francisco freaks packed into the back of a rental moving van, like Rob Batista and I did it in the old days. If it was suicide, Rob, and there is an afterlife, I am going to kick your ass for a hundred years. If it was murder, like I think it was, then what can I say? I'm sorry. I'm sorry I could never be the life partner you always wanted me to be. I'm sorry you ended up dating that utterly contemptible person. After Mark, I was not willing to fake it with a man just because I loved them anymore. Your tough luck, I know, but Jenny needed me as much as you did.

I'll take a hike to Fairy Camp and look up some mutual old friends and reminisce about you, how's that? You stupid fucker. You couldn't have me, but you could have had Eric, who was quite frankly more your speed. Or any of a half a dozen other guys who were your equal, if you could have given up your poor-lost-lamb fetish. Whichever way it went down in the end, you have yourself to blame more than me. I never promised you anything more than my everlasting friendship.

You know? I am one of the most loyal and devoted people I have ever met. If you make it into my heart, and I do have good screening mechanisms, there is nothing that will ever dislodge you, and almost nothing that I am unwilling to do for you. That has led to a lot of heartache in my life, not to mention some amount of sexual confusion, but I would not trade the connections I have made for any amount of peace-of-heart on the planet.

Rainbow is going to be very good for me, as it always has been. It restores my faith in humanity. All my personal struggles seem ennobled just by my being a part of it. It gives me hope, and makes the ideals I believe in seem a little less ludicrous.

Looking back on ten years at this site, I can't help but be struck by the fact that I have never, before tonight, read Slashdot while drunk. I came here before it was even Slashdot. Back when this space was Chips & Dips, I made my way here because Malda had written some doofy little applet for a window manager most current slashdot members have probably never even heard of, Enlightenment. I can't even remember what the applet did. Something about sound, maybe? Anyways, I was here way before there were user IDs, let alone a moderation system. The only reason I don't have a lower UID is that I didn't see the need for them when they were introduced. But I have signed my name "spun" here since the very beginning.

Spun was the name I used on spinnweb's Dysfunctional Family Circus, if anyone here remembers that. You can still find my captions from that period archived all over the web, look for DFC 450 to the very end, when Bill Keen personally contacted the site and asked us, please, for the love of his family who are represented in the comic, please would we stop making the incest jokes?

Well it's been ten years. Ten of the strangest and most growth filled years of my life. I went from being a hard core anarcho-syndicalist activist to a fairly conventional divorcee in those ten years. I haven't posted to or read this site continually during that time. There have been periods of up to a year where I haven't even glanced at Slashdot. But I always come back.

So why am I drunk? Good question, imaginary reader in my head. I went out to a bar tonight, that would be why. My mom has a lady's night out every Friday with other single women from Boing-SVS, where she works. I thought it would be a good test, to see if I've still got game. I do.

No! They are not all her age, if that's what you're thinking.

One of the nice things about having a hippy mom who has always tried to be "more of a friend than a mom," as she puts it, is that I can talk to her about anything. One of the only nice things, really. But that's something, isn't it? You know, I might have come out of my co-dependent childhood better off if I'd had any kind of father figure, but I guess no one can have everything.

I had to make sure my pseudo-adopted half brother, Malcolm, the Republican Native American gay ex military guy, would be there. I can't actually hang out with my mom unless both of our lives our going well, it gets too weird. But Malcolm and I are soul-brothers. We have nothing in common except our understanding of the universe.

That's one thing about enlightenment. Well, first, unless you are (and you will know), that word doesn't mean what you think it means. But the point is, we recognize each other at first glance. Or through a sentence or two of writing online. And we can verify, through a short conversation that no one else gets, each other's status. I've met more than one enlightened individual here on Slashdot. I've even met at least one person more enlightened than me. You can tell that, too, and both individuals know where they stand.

Anyway, that is a tangent I won't get into while drunk. The point is, Malcolm is someone I trust.

So I went to this ladies night, and I was charming. I know how to turn it on, and make the person I'm with feel special, when I want to. Chicks dig that. But you can't be too into them, you almost have to create this paradoxical situation where you are totally into them, but you are kind of doing them a favor. I think a lot of that has to do with the state of women's oppression in our society, but it is something real that I have observed and not just stereotyping.

I asked Malcolm afterwards, "so have I still got it?" And he said, "Oh my God! Yes." It was easier because I wasn't really that into any of the women present. I mean, they were cute, and obviously nice people, but you know? No spark. And I am not that desperate that I will hook up with someone I'm not really into. Actually, it's kind of hard to be into anyone right now, with Jenny still so fresh in my head and heart.

So is that bad? Flirting when you have no real intention of following through? I obviously don't think so, or I wouldn't have.

Afterwards, I went back to my mom's place, and we all had a nice talk about the whole breakup thing. We're all going to go see Jenny's new play tomorrow night. I talked about my conversations here at Slashdot, and we all agreed based on our knowledge of Jenny and Yanniq, it was not as bad as some here make out. But we also agreed that their relationship was pretty much dead in the water. She's too much of a princess to be any kind of healer, no matter what I may have taught her.

Yeah, my mom knew about this whole thing from the get-go. I was born into a three way marriage, after all. Jenny's parents didn't know, until I made her tell them during our break-up. Have I mentioned that they are pissed off at her, too? It's ironic, of all the people who know both of us, I am probably the least pissed at her. Now anyway, I let her have it with both barrels when it first happened.

So tonight was a good trial run. I am an attractive, desirable male of the species. There are women out there in similar situations to mine. I'm hopeful. Now, if I were really trying to hook up, I wouldn't have talked about the divorce at all. That is a total game-killer. But one of the women there mentioned hers, so I talked about it a little.

The interesting thing? One of the divorced women there was still very good friends with her ex. Similar situation, as I said. They knew that neither one of them was a bad person, but they just weren't right for each other. She said that she and her partner were better as friends over the last ten years than they ever were as partners. So that lends me a bit of hope, anyway.

The other one had married an abusive partner, and that is always a good reason to leave. Especially if there are kids involved, as in her case. If that line has been crossed with you, how can you ever trust them with your children? She was the one I really turned the charm on for because she was the cutest. But she was a little too square for my tastes.

That will be a major stumbling block for me, I think. There aren't that many individuals who are both complete rebels, and not too fucked up. The kinds of experiences that make a person a rebel also tend to fuck a person up. Unless they are also exposed to the idea of personal, as well as societal responsibility, most rebels aren't going to be able to move beyond the blame game and into something constructive rather than reactionary.

But maybe my exclusive attitude will work in my favor. After all, won't someone like me, but female, also have the same high standards? And isn't it possible that she, like me, will have given a go with someone less than perfect, and had it come to an end? I'm only thirty six, that is not too old to find someone I can actually create a family with, is it? I sure hope not.

I am so looking forward to the Rainbow Gathering this year. I've called people on the ride boards, but it seems most people want to leave earlier than the 29th. I could pull a twelve hour drive by myself, but company would be nice. Once I get there, I have more old friends to look up than I have days to do it in. I know I have mentioned that I met Jenny at a Rainbow gathering. About a day before I met Meg, for whom I left all my activist work behind me, in order to learn how to be a better person.

You know, the year I met the two of them, Meg and Jenny, I was complete in myself, and I did not need a partner. In the two years I went in between the time I broke up with Meg, and the time I hooked up with Jenny, I really wanted a partner, but did not meet anyone I wanted to be with at Rainbow. Even though (or perhaps because?) I felt more desperate than in years prior.

This year, I go with no goal of meeting anyone. I go to reconnect with old friends. I go to renew my faith in humanity. I go to experiment with anarchy in action, rather than theory. If I meet someone there, someone who feels like a soul mate, I won't turn away from the experience. But I'm more looking to find me than anyone else.

Five more days! Then I'm off to explore an alternate reality that exists only because of the freedoms that the country of my birth upholds. I tell myself things like that so I don't hate America. It is something that is almost indescribable to anyone who has never been. One can describe the actuality of Rainbow, the physical acts involved in its existence, but one can not describe the feeling to someone who has never experienced true community.

I go this year in memory of my dead best friend, Rob Batista. You made Rainbow happen in San Francisco every day for fourteen years. The Rainbow Gathering will never forget you.

I had a bad weekend. I suffer from depression, and having my wife leave me has kicked off a serious bout. Slashdot user o1d5ch001 tried to warn me about playing video games and it was really that that kicked off the depression. Video games are like a drug. Using drugs for the right reasons can be fine. Using them to hide from your pain is a sure fire recipe for disaster, and that is what I was doing with gaming. I'm not saying gaming is bad. In its place as a part of a balanced, rich and fulfilling life, video games aren't bad at all. It is when they are a substitute for a rich and fulfilling life that they are a danger, like any drug. And gaming socially is different than hiding away in your room like a junkie and playing.

For those who do not suffer from depression, let me try to describe it. It is not simply being sad. In fact, during a depression, the bouts of sadness are a welcome relief from the crippling numbness. Depression is feeling cut of from everything good inside you and in your life. Nothing motivates. Things that would normally make you feel good feel feel empty and pointless. Even if you know exactly what to do to get yourself out of a depression, as I do, it doesn't help because you have no motivation to get yourself out of it. You can't remember what it even felt like not to be depressed.

I've been eating one meal a day, and that has tasted like ashes in my mouth. I felt nauseous all the time, dread in the pit of the stomach nausea. I couldn't concentrate at work, and all my grand plans for rediscovering myself felt hollow and achieving them felt hopeless. I'm ashamed to admit, I held a knife up to my wrists. No, I would never do that. Suicide is the ultimate in egotistical selfishness. It may end your pain, but it creates far more in others that care about you, so it is a net loss. It is also selling out all your future possibilities. Even if you can't see it at the moment, chances are it WILL get better, and you are wasting that opportunity. So don't worry, I won't. But that is how bad depression can be, it seems easier just to end it. Fortunately for me, I have never really been comfortable taking the easy way out of anything.

Is that a paradox? If it was the more comfortable way for me, wasn't that then the easy way? What an egotist I am some times.

Jenny had asked to spend the night Tuesday so that we could talk and figure out where we both go from here. Monday, I had a bit of a breakdown and called her in tears. She feels awful and she really, really wants to be my friend. She listened and said that Tuesday, she would be there for me to vent and process as much as I needed.

Now, I'm going to be revealing a bit more about Mr. Y. I know, I said I wanted to respect his confidentiality, but Jenny admitted to me near the end of the night last night that despite his assurances that he was okay with our polyamorous situation, he was not. He had asked her to leave me. Sorry Mr. Y., but in my book that kind of cancels out any implicit deals we had. I'm still not going to reveal his name, but I'm no longer concerned if this gets back to him. I actually want it to work between him and Jenny, if you can believe that. But last night I downgraded their chances of making it a year from 70% to 30%, as I found out a lot of things he'd been hiding from both of us.

Mr. Y.'s major problem is his childhood. I had a difficult childhood. More so than average. I've heard some stories from my friends that top mine, but his takes the cake, the presents, and the magician, then runs off and feeds them through a wood chipper, spraying the children with a bloody mist of shredded happy birthday. He had the worst kind of hippy trailer trash parents. They left him in an orphanage as a baby, then came and got him. They would go off and leave him alone with his slightly older sister for weeks at a time as a young child. Once, she stabbed him. I won't go into all the details of the physical and mental abuse, lets just call it horrific and leave it at that.

The only adult relationship he ever had was at the age of twenty four. Ten years ago. She was, by his account, a horrible, ball-busting, demanding princess, fat and ugly to boot. Jenny is a little overweight, but this girl was 250. And SHE left HIM. He felt no reason to live, retreated into a shell for ten years. Four years ago his body tried to tell him he needed to do something to fix that shit, by coming down with a horrible psycho-somatic disease. He wakes screaming from nightmares and throws up every morning. He is in pain all the time, and is on several different medications. The side effect of that is impotence.

Jenny is his one last shot at redemption. The man has a bachelor's in psych, he should see what's going on, yet he refuses to go into therapy. He's built himself a rut, but it's not even comfortable. But I'm actually getting ahead of myself here, because we didn't talk about him at first.

The night started out with the first official ritual of our breakup, signing over the lease. I got an apartment in the same complex, because I am still going to be good friends with Jenny. She has made that very clear to him, and of course he has said he is okay with that. Of course he is not. He was there, but he brought a check stub without any information on it. Did I mention he works at an awful failing small business with a crazy boss, and that he comes home in tears every night because of it? This was all shit he hid from Jenny while wooing her. Well, not the bad job part, the coming home crying part.

He went home, and Jenny and I did a thorough post-mortem. Anyone going through a breakup would be well advised to do this if they and their partner are capable of doing it relatively dispassionately. Ours went fabulously. We could finally admit to each other all the things that were wrong, and hear the other person's side without feeling defensive. We had settled for each other, and that was what killed our marriage, because neither one of us are truly capable of settling for anything less than all our hearts' desires. We may never find them, but we are the kind of people who have got to be true to our dreams.

Now, by the time I proposed I knew I was settling. It was a conscious decision for me. The wrong one, as it turns out, but conscious. She didn't know that she was settling until much later. She admitted that I had tried harder. But we both felt resentful that the other person wasn't our perfect match. I knew what I was doing, so I took it out on her much less, but my buttons got pushed when she took it out on me, and I would escalate things. I felt resentful that I was trying harder than she was, yet she still felt resentful. In the end, we crossed one too many lines in our fights with each other, one too many times.

She offered to have sex with me, but I had to ask her, does Mr. Y. know? Will you have to lie to him? Yes? Then no. That's one thing you learn through months of weekly polyamory discussion groups. Absolute, complete honesty is imperative in relationships. Now, all this was before I found out that he consciously tried to split us up. After I learned that, I almost said what's the point in being that honorable with him? He wasn't with me and turnabout is fair play. But I can't play the game that way and live with myself.

We had dinner, and Jenny got a bit tipsy. Mr. Y. drinks too, and I warned her last night. I said, "I'll only mention this once unless things get very bad. As your friend, you need to watch that shit. You and he could sink into a really destructive pattern of drinking. That's all I'll say." So that's part of why all this came out about him. but the real reason boils down to his resentment of the situation, inability to admit that, and subsequent passive aggressive crap.

She has been very upfront with him. He has great dreams of marrying her and fathering her children, but she is, to put it mildly, not pinning her hopes on that. She's had a bit of a rude awakening, and on finding all this out I had to give her more of one. The kind of healing that Mr. Y. needs takes YEARS. At least two unless you devote your whole life to it, or get lucky. There are NO quick fixes in personal growth. Change takes time, and it has to come from within.

Now, Mr. Y. has put out the effort in some respects. He's shown a willingness to change and grow, and he took up theater to shake himself out of his rut. That's how he met Jenny, so it turns out: wise move. If anyone can shake him out of this rut, it's her. But he is going to have to step up and be a mensch. He wants to, I just don't know if he has the tools or the time. But you know? I'm rooting for him. This will be the ultimate underdog come from behind victory story of redemption if it pans out. I like stories like that.

I don't want to give the impression that I look down on him. I do pity him a little, is that a form of looking down? I mean, there but for the noodly grace of FSM go I. He and I are a lot alike, and given his circumstances but my genes, I don't know if I could have done as well. You have to throw that, "and my genes" in there, even though they are part of circumstance, because if ALL the circumstances are the same, the outcome is the same. There is no difference between us and our circumstances. It's like that optical illusion of the faces and vase. Both are one thing, though you can see it two different ways.

He had said he was going home, to clean up all the piles of bachelor crap around his place. He got drunk and passed out. She called him three times to say goodnight before he woke up. She starts a new job tomorrow, and this is one of the things about her: she doesn't drive. She is terrified of cars, even as a passenger. She is fundamentally uncoordinated. She crashed the car on her driver's test, and she hasn't driven since. So she had said she needed a ride home. She would take the bus in, but she gets off after him and he lives five minutes form her work. And they are going grocery shopping. He wouldn't commit to picking her up. Like I said, passive aggressive crap and he's trained in psych. He should know better. Ah, who am I to judge?

Anyway, that is when she confessed to all the problems. She doesn't know if it's going to work, but she knows he is going to have to come out of his shell and really be himself if he wants to keep her. She is being up front about that, not passive aggressive. They are signing a six month lease, and her sister is coming out in August to room with them, so if it doesn't work out the two of them can make it on their own.

We made a pact that we would always be there for each other, that we would always be friends, but that we would never get back together as partners. We both think that's the healthiest thing for us. This happened for a reason. It was ugly and painful, but to be honest, if it hadn't happened this way, it wouldn't have and we would still be stuck in a dead end marriage silently resenting the other person, but we are both better than that. We deserve better than that. Our pact is a potential deal breaker for future relationships, we agreed on that too. If a potential partner can't hang with the fact that we are friends, it's not happening. Now, we both know that if we do find another partnership, that comes first in planning, so we may move apart. But there is always the phone, and email, and chat, (Leh turs? What's that?) and we are always going to be at least a small part of each other's lives.

I got what I needed from her last night, and it wasn't sex. It was a pep talk, her telling me how fucking awesome I am, what a great partner I was, how sexy I am, how much of a catch I am. How much I deserve a partner with whom the relationship will not feel like work so much of the time. I feel the same way about her. The thing is, we don't need someone better, we just need someone different. She needs someone who is naturally into theater, and art, and film. I need someone who is into (at least some of) sci-fi, fantasy, RPGs, video games, or the outdoors. Now, we both need someone who shares our political and philosophical outlook on life, and we had that, but that is a necessary condition. It is not sufficient, at least for us. And those people are out there, and they are probably just as desperate to find us. It's a big fucking world, my friends, bigger than any of us can imagine.

I also got confirmation that she would continue to be my friend, that I was one of the most important people in her life. And one of the best things for me, I could see the confidence in her face. She knew it might not work out with Mr. Y., but she wasn't scared. When I met her, she felt no hope of ever finding love. I've gotten her to the point where she has the philosophical and emotional tools to become the person she wants to be.

And seeing that in her, and knowing that I helped her achieve that, suddenly put my problems in the proper light. I was, again, indulging. Wallowing in my pain when I have all the tools to get out. Feelings can be a very good guide to right action, but the conscious mind decides what to do with the feelings. Sometimes it is appropriate to simply let them wash over you and control you. Most times, it is not. I'm not ashamed of my weaknesses, though. To be ashamed is to need to hide, to become unaware, and that is when the darker parts of the mind can take control in unseen ways. And that is not an efficient mode of being.

So, I am rooting for her and Mr. Y. But the sad thing is, there will need to be a lot of growth and change before he and I can be friends, if ever. Not that I have any issues, I've forgiven him. It's just that it's hard to start out a friendship when you stab someone in the back due to neediness and hurt. How can he be real with me with that hanging between us? I know if I had tried to steal someone's wife, no matter how good the reason, I would have a hard time being real with the man I did that to.

I just don't think it will work. If Jenny were stronger, yes. He needs someone more seasoned, like I had with Meg, someone who can really give themselves to his healing process. Because all this crying, sickness, and passive aggressive crap is going to get worse before it gets better. I know how this shit works, healing isn't pretty. And Jenny isn't strong enough. She's fresh out of mensch school herself, as it were. That's less pretentious than calling it enlightenment or self actualization, I think. Or less prone to misinterpretation by people who don't know what those things really mean. Mensch just means a person who does what good people do, a person of integrity and honor.

Now, I'm not claiming anuttara samyak samadhi for myself or anything. No perfect and completely enlightened being am I. I can claim with some reason and conviction to be a conscious traveler on that path. And being a conscious traveler on your chosen path is the very definition of self actualization.

I think that one can make distinctions between say, those seeking the path, those on the path, and those who have internalized the path to the point that it is no longer the path. And amongst those on the path, one can distinguish how much someone has internalized what they have learned. Jenny is a newbie, and Mr. Y. needs at least a junior class guru. Unless he has reserves of inner strength I don't know about. Or he gets lucky and achieves grace, a quite useful concept from Christianity.

Anyway, last night was a good ending to the first phase of my relationship with Jenny. I feel a renewed sense of self worth and hope, I know I'm not going to lose my best friend, and I woke up this morning not dreading having to get through the day. I'm looking forward to the Rainbow gathering. I'm taking six days and two weekends off. I'm feeling less simultaneously desperate and hopeless about finding another partner. In fact, Jenny recommended I play the field and date casually. There are a lot of decent women out there looking for a man like me. She thinks I need to find myself before I find another partner, and not lose myself when I do, like I did with her. I think she's right.

So, I mentioned Kare Bear Mafia in my last long-winded post. I liked the album so much, I had to buy a copy. Of course, they are so damn obscure no one outside of Ohio carries their CD. So I bought the CD through a link on their myspace page, and it just got here today. I'm now listening to it for the second time straight through. Holy crap, it's funnier than I remember. http://www.myspace.com/karebearmafia Warning, music will play. Check out the links to the member's pages to hear more songs.

I'm feeling a bit blah right now, but I had a great weekend. Micah always knows how to cheer me up. He was Jenny's friend before we met, and he didn't like me that much when she and I first started going out. He didn't think I treated her well enough. I won him over though. Now, he's totally reversed position and he's pissed at her. She can't understand why. I told her, "Well, you acted very selfishly, made a huge mistake, and hurt someone he cares about."

There may be another part to it. Micah has a thing for "daddies," older gay men who pay for everything. But he always screws it up because he's not being true to himself, and he doesn't really love these men. I think he's mad at her because he sees himself in her and he's pissed at himself.

They are two peas in a pod. To be blunt, they're both spoiled little princesses, and they both know it. Micah's friends always joke about "The Micah Show," which is playing anytime Micah is around, and you'd better not upstage the star. I kid, he's not that bad, and he's had years more practice at being a cute and endearing princess, whereas Jenny just comes across as demanding and bitchy. I still tell myself this is all just part of her learning to assert herself. She never had the self-esteem to be a princess before I met her.

I'd packed everything the night before and taken it with me to work so that Jenny and Mr. Y. could have the house for the weekend. But I'd forgotten my cell phone, so I called and asked Jenny to run it down. She came down with the saddest look on her face, so of course I had to ask why. I've mentioned she's a fantastic actress, right? She swears she is emotionally honest, and would never use her powers for evil, but sometimes...

It turns out her parents aren't going to give her as much money as she'd thought they would to bail her out of her self created mess. I had told her she needed to help pay for rent and bills if she was going to be using our apartment. No more coasting on my dime so she can persue her art. So she asked her parents for money rather than immediately looking for a job. But it turns out that they are kind of on my side, what a shocker! They are good people, and they know their daughter had just treated me like shit without even thinking through the consequences for herself.

I keep telling myself, she's got self esteem now. She has perspective. She knows how to make herself a better person. That's enough, man, I've done enough, I've given her the tools. I can't do the work for her. It's just a bit of an ego blow, which is just a way of knowing you still have some things to let go of. Jenny, Jenny, Jenny. Sigh.

I'm the sap who said, sure, I'll lend you the money. But lend, not give. And I'm still honest with her. I tell her I think she's fucking up, and I tell her exactly how. And, to be brutally honest with myself, it's something I can hold over her head if she chooses to be a thoughtless bitch to me again. I know, I'm a sick sad puppy, don't rub it in.

I drove up after work and met Micah at the restaraunt he works at, the San Francisco Bar & Grill, right on the plaza. Now Santa Fe, for those who have never been, is a beautiful town, and the plaza is the prettiest part. It's all old adobe, or made to look like it if it's newer. The plaza is the center of downtown Santa Fe. It's surrounded by upscale shops, galleries, and restaraunts. Tiny streets, little more than allies, wind around downtown, which is built on a vaguely circular layout like many cities that were built before cars. It reminds me quite a bit of small villages in Europe.

He had to work until ten, so I got his keys and headed over to his place, which he shares with our friend Jeanna. They live in an ancient adobe building just blocks from downtown. The walls are at least a foot and a half thick. Rough timbers support the roof, made of planks and more adobe over the top. Probably, this being the modern day, there is some kind of higher-tech sealant up there now. I mean, it doesn't leak when it rains, so there must be something more up there than just sun dried clay.

After he got back, we were off to his friend Dave's birthday party. I hadn't met Dave before, but I had met his wife Sharon. I've also met a lot of the other people who were there, all very cool friends of Micah. I said before that Micah always knows all the hot chicks in town. Well this is not entirely true. He knows all the cool people in town, many of them just happen to be hot chicks. He dousn't actually know any bitchy hot chicks, which is astounding. This somehow happens within a month of him moving to a new place. Socially, the man is a genius.

Okay, I may as well come right out with it. No, I didn't even try to get laid this weekend. I need sociality more than I need sex or love right now. Just friends, you know? Micah's friends all like me a lot, and everyone is happy that I'm going to be spending more time up there. Hanging out with Micah has been hard before now because of our opposite schedules and Jenny's theater projects. He works nights and weekends, she does her plays mostly at night and on the weekends.

Everyone had already heard about Jenny breaking up with me before I got up there, bless Micah's gossipy little heart. So I didn't have to tell the whole damn story over and over, which would have been a bummer. You don't win friends being negative. That's a privilege that comes later, so even though several people went out of their way to offer a sympathetic ear this weekend, I didn't talk much about it. People would say, "Heard about you and Jenny..." and I would say, "Yeah, it sucks. It was pretty rough but we're still going to be friends. I was mad at her for a while, but I've forgiven her and I'm doing all right now." And that would be that.

Now, Micah would probably love the fact that I've been talking about him. He wouldn't even care what I'd said. But he'd hate me if I didn't mention his performance that night, a gift to Dave. He did his "Roxy Roxxane" drag show. There is no way that Micah can pull off being a woman. He's tall, skinny, and has a beard. Worse, he doesn't bother to tuck and he's pretty well hung. He's incredibly cute in the face, though, in an elfin sort of way. The boy was a high priced male companion (if you know what I mean! Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more!) in San Francisco at one time, and that is a very competitive market. He's only thirty one or thiry two now. Well, anyways, he's still got it, and he had us all hooting and hollering during his act, even the straight guys.

The party was pretty big when we got there, but it gradually tapered off . By four, Micah, Dave, Sharon, and me were really the only ones still conscious. I'd been taking it easy because I had to drive Micah and me back to his place. It was really only about ten blocks, so we could have walked if I'd wanted to get really trashed. The only problem is I get pretty bad hangovers.

Okay, actually I have awful, hideous, mind bending hangovers most times I drink, which is why I don't that often. Even if I drink water and take lots of advil before. Well, I was hungover the next day. I can't imagine how Micah felt, and he had to go to work the next morning on two hours sleep. He's a trooper. And by "trooper" I mean "Master Class Profesional Alcoholic."

He probably weighs a hundred and thirty pounds. He somehow manages to drink every single day with no apparant ill effects. He holds down a job, as a bartender mind you, where he drinks on the job mind you, and does very well. The owners love him. He takes in two to four hundred dollars a weekend in tips alone. The other employees dote on him because he's totally a sweet, loving person. And he tips out well. The customers love him because he can sense when to be friendly and folksy, and when to back off and just be professional and prompt.

He can mix brown liquor with clear, throw in a few beers, maybe a little wine and then a few more shots, and wake up feeling fine. I drink seven beers over the course of five hours, and the next day I wan't to rip my own head off to stop the pain. If it were just even that, I could manage. But I also have a queasy stomach and feel naseous, but almost never can I manage the release of actually throwing up. And that's not even the worst part. I can't think right for two days afterwards. But I do like the effects.

Well, I felt terrible the next day, so I came home after driving Micah in to work and fell back asleep. He usually walks, but he woke up late, suprise. I woke up at three, almost when he would be getting off work, and began nosing about looking for something to do. His house is a pigsty but I really didn't feel like pitching in and straightening up. He's not one of those fastidious gays. In fact, the only really fastidious thing about him is his garden.

It's beautiful, but small. In the two months since Jenny and I had come up for his housewarming party at his new place, he'd packed the front beds with flowers and bushes, lined them with river stone sunk into the ground, put in a path, bought a garden sphere sculpture thingy, and gotten rid of most of the elm suckers. If you know anything about elm, you'll know that getting rid of the damn stuff is a pain.

Nosing through his and Jeanna's music collection, I came across a CD that I knew I needed to play. It had a Donkey Kong scaffolding with bloodthirsty care bear looking things climbing it. The only thing written on it was "Kare Bear Mafia." I played a few albums I know I like, Scissor Sisters & The Killers latest. Then I popped in KBM. Holy. Fucking. Shit. If you are a nerd, and you somehow have never heard this, RUN, do not walk, to the nearest purveyor of musical discs. You have no right to call yourself a nerd or a geek if you've never heard this album. It is the ultimate in nerd-core. I can't do their sound justice, so I must resort to their myspace page "sounds like" box:

Fagangsta Rap, Wonderful Colors, Atari Sex Noises, Zappers Fireing, Lazer Tag Beeps, Dragon Punches, Smurf Farts, Big Birds' Orgasm, Rainbow Brite Record Scratching, Bubbles poping, Saturday Morning Cartoons, Pokemon Orgies, with a healthy dose of Kare Bear Stares.

And even that doesn't do it justice. Holy crap, http://www.myspace.com/karebearmafia Check it out. They are M.C.Donalds,Orkgazm, and Kaptain N and they are the funniest shit I've heard since Flight of the Conchords. Dirty, dirty, foul mouthed nerd rappers. Hot.

My work kept calling and texting me. I hadn't told anyone at work about the divorce until today. Something about the SMTP servers being down. It turned out not to be true, it was something our network staff had done over the weekend. I could barely get any reception at Micah's, so I had to resort to texting. Gah. Passwords over SMS? I know, but it's behind several firewalls. It's a completely internal spool for when the guys at the state who handle all state email muck something up, which happens more than it should. Me and another tech there made a nice little Linux high availability mail spool out of a couple of old computers and four spare network cards. Which is why it suprised me to hear it was down, and why I was pretty damned relieved to hear it wasn't my screw up.

Well, after Micah got home we went over to Dave and Sharon's again. We hung out for a while trying to kill the keg from the night before. Oh, man! I almost forgot about the lesbians from the night before! Micah and the butch one fell in love, it was adorable. They may even start dating, omigawd! I can't really picture it. I, on the other hand, put my foot in my mouth in a completely endearing way.

We were talking about San Francisco, one of them said something dirty, and they all started laughing and making same fairly raunchy inuendos. Before I could even think, I piped in with "You're a bunch of naughty little lesbians, aren't you?" Which they are, but that's not the point. I'm a fairly straight looking guy. I can't say that! I mean, not until I've demonstrated more lesbian cred. Which I promptly did by looking mortified and begging their forgiveness. So they loved it because I'd not only immediately noticed my faux pas, but humbled myself and then proceded to play along as they jokingly ribbed me about it. We all had a great laugh.

Anyway, back to Saturday. We hung out shooting the breeze with Dave and Sharon and a few friends until eleven. Micah wanted to go see a friend perform downtown at his favorite bar, El Paseo. We headed downtown and miraculously found parking right in front. Parking in Santa Fe is atrocious, most nights we would have circled and circled and ended up five blocks away.

His friend was great, the band was a whole lot of fun, though I can't remember their name. El Paseo is a working class bar. It's a favorite hangout of a lot of folks who work in downtown Santa Fe. The bartenders there are all good friends with Micah, of course. So of course they had all heard my sad story already. I had a pint on the house.

It was nice being out in public as a single guy again. I flirted a little, and got some appreciative looks from some cute girls. Gone are the days of me as an awkward, antisocial dork. I'm hot property now, and I know it. I'm witty and I have interesting stories, but I know how to listen. I've had plenty of women and men tell me I'm attractive, and had dozens of sexual partners, so at least some of them weren't lying. I make good money. I'm willing to consider a family, with the right woman. I'm sensitive, but no pushover. I'm open with my emotions, but I can reign it in and be a man when I need to. I'm a fucking catch, and I know it.

So it was good to get out and mingle a little. It helped that I'd already decided I wasn't going to hook up with anyone this weekend. That takes the pressure off, you know? So I flirted, a glance, a brush in passing and a smile, you know, casually. The chicks seemed to dig it. Hehe. I do crack myself up sometimes, with my arrogant attitude. You just have to imagine me saying it all to myself in that Stuart Smalley, "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me!" kind of voice to get the correct impression.

Micah had to work Sunday, too, and he got home late. I just lazed around the house and finished Stephen Baxter's Manifold: Time. Great book, very Olaf Stapledon. I'm a huge Sci Fi/Fantasy nerd. Chances are, if you've read it, so have I. Or at least something by the same author, if they are any good.

Jenny called and left a hurt sounding message, When would I be back? The puppy will be lonely and she has rehearsal. Turns out she'd tried to call Micah and he'd snubbed her, didn't answer her text, either. He didn't want to deal with her just yet. I had told him, "Micah, I'm the one she DID it to and I've forgiven her, chill out." But she asked me and I had to tell her the truth: Micah is mad at her.

I explained to her that I had been very fair in everything I'd said. I hadn't tried to make her look like the bad person. In fact, I'd gone out of my way to show her side of things. Turns out, it's just such a messed up situation that most people who are good and decent but not smart enough not to judge others, are going to judge her.

Later, as I was driving home, the sunset peeked through the towering storm clouds, turning the whole sky into this incredible scene of majesty and power. I hadn't felt so bitter-sweet in a while. Going home to a lonely house, staring into the face of the infinite.

On Friday Jenny had told me that we'd get together Monday to talk things over and go over some details. I still haven't had a chance to sit down with her and ask her, why? Why like that? And of course there are all the little details of a divorce, of separating two lives that have been so intertwined for seven years. And she hadn't mentioned anything on Sunday when we'd spoken, so naturally I assumed we'd be talking today.

Never make assumptions. That's one of the four agreements of the Toltec path. The others are: Never take anything personally, always be impeccable with your word, and always do your best. The first two mean exactly what they sound like, the last two need clarification. Being impeccable with your word means not lying and not saying things to hurt yourself or others. Always do your best means, always know that you ARE doing your best, given the circumstances.

Well, I was only assuming someone would stick to their word, or at least have the courtesy to tell me otherwise before breaking an appointment. Again. Then there is always "Don't take things personally." I've just been failing so much recently. But then again, I know I'm always doing the best I can, given the life experiences I've had until now, and the things I'm currently experiencing. Hehe, it's the South American version of Buddhism!

Anyway, of course Jenny has had to reschedule a rehearsal and can't come over tonight. And of course she forgot to tell me Sunday because she was so sad about Micah hating her now. So of course I have to reassure her that, no, Micah doesn't hate her, he's just mad at her because she's been a big dolt and hurt a friend's feelings quite badly. Big sap that I am. But I still lay into her, and I do hold the free rent and bills over her head, and she cries appropriately, and offers to cancel her rehearsal, and I say no of course not, and I forgive her, but she had better not take my friendship for granted like she took our partnership for granted.

We are, ahem, how to put this politely? Better off apart. I know. Hell, I know I can do much better. I deserve someone who isn't going to be pushing my buttons all the time, don't I? A little slack? I know I asked the universe for relationships that would teach me things about myself, but I was young and foolish, can I go back on that now?

But I still love her, and it still hurts. And the house is still lonely at night. Even with the adorable puppy. It now just makes me so, again, bitter-sweet. On the one hand, she's an adorable little ball of fluff that loves me unconditionally. On the other, of course, she reminds me of Jenny.

Coming home is now the worst part of my day. After I am home, I'm fine. At work, I'm fine. It's all I can do not to cry on the drive home, though. I keep hoping Jenny will be there, even though I told her not to be. She doesn't want to live in Mr. Y's tiny apartment all the time, he has no cable and no Internet. We are still legally married, and she's on the lease so it's not like I can kick her out, even if I wanted to at this point. I have asked her not to be here when I'm here, at least for the near future.

I got home and the puppy was barking, a sure sign someone had just left. She'd left in such a rush she'd forgotten to lock the door. I got inside and she'd cleaned, done my laundry, gotten out a suitcase for this weekend, left a detailed account of our finances including all account numbers, usernames, and passwords we use, bought me a new bottle of shampoo/conditioner, and get this: a box of condoms for this weekend. She is trying to do right by me, bless her.

Interesting note, I got a message from a couple on adultfriendfinder.com. I'd kind of forgotten that I'd signed up for that site. After doing so, I'd come to the conclusion that I'd rather have less sex than casual sex. But frankly I'd rather have casual sex than no sex. I'm a little conflicted, it's a three way, what if I break down crying in the middle of it because it makes me think of Jenny and Mr. Y? On the other hand, they're from Santa Fe, I'm going to Santa Fe this weekend, what can it hurt to just meet them at a coffee shop or something to see what the vibe is like?

You know, lots of things can be addictive. Like love. Or safety. Or even routine, because routine means safety, doesn't it? You see, this is what I forgot about myself: I'm a balls to the wall motherfucker who isn't scared of anything. I used to live in a van on the street and do nothing but volunteer because I didn't want to take part in a corupt and degrading system. I went to protests and marches and rallys, got involved with Food not Bombs, the IWW, Earth First, a bunch of groups.

But I've changed. You know what Janis said, "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." I used to live with nothing so I would be free. Then I told myself, I could have something, as long as I didn't get attached. You know, if you're not attached, you still have nothing to lose, right? Then it became a little more. I told myself I could do more if I had a little money. I forgot to keep checking if I was getting attached. Work from inside the system, yeah, that's it! I became mainstream so gradually I never even noticed.

I guess I needed to. I needed to prove to myself that I could, that I wasn't just a failure who was blaming the system for his mistakes, that I could really do it and had just chosen not to. That's now been proven.

I'd also started to see the futility of the movement. Where was it getting any of us? I'd seen my friends beaten by cops for trying to hand out free soup and bagels in a public square, and for what? Then I met Meg, with all her enlightened ideas about how we could help people to be free, inside, and then they would never accept oppression from the outside.

She really wanted to teach me, and I'd asked for a teacher, so... That was when I lost my eye. In a mugging, in the U district of Seattle. Completely random, but there I was, hospitalized, facing surgery, the prospect of being deformed as well as having no sight in that eye staring me in the face. But the doctors did a good job. I learned a valuable leson in forgiveness. Meg was there for me, and off we went to Hawaii to learn how to better revolutionaries.

And learn I did, from a number of sources, not just her. Those were a good couple of years, growth wise, but hard. After Meg left, I had a number of interesting experiences, including being part of a polyamory community discussion and massage group, doing 5MEO-DMT for the first time, meeting Mark Pesce and falling in love, meeting Matt Stone and Trey Parker, having them write the two of us into South Park...

Yeah, that's right, you read that right. I am in South Park. Mark and I are in two episodes. Yup, we're the two geek characters. They look just like us and they debuted right after I had met Matt & Trey. Mark is the fat dark haired one, I'm the skinny blond guy with the ponytail. Okay, I don't know for certain because the two of them wouldn't say, they just laugheed. But it's a mighty big coincidence if the two of us weren't their inspiration for those characters. I don't think we ever actually argued about whether there were 72 or 73 original episodes of Star Trek in front of Matt & Trey, but we may as well have, we're that geeky.

Mark was head of the newly formed Interactive Media department at USC at the time. In fact, USC had created the department for him. They also gave him the chair of Annenberg House, which meant he had a cushy double suite on the top floor and a $100,000 house entertainment and activities budget to blow every year. I cost him all that.

That may have been what ended our relationship. It wasn't my fault, but damn, that has to hurt. The whole thing was so stupid, too. You see, most of the professors from the traditional media departments hated him. They saw him and his department as usurpers.

He tried to get me a job as his admin for his computer lab. He forgot to tell the hiring comittee that he had a relationship with me. I guess he must not have read the employee manual, because evidently, at USC, that's a fireable offense. He didn't know, so he didn't think to keep our relationship a secret from anyone, and at a dinner party a week later, it all came out.

Even so, given his reputation and status, they weren't going to fire him. They were going to strip him of Annenberg House, make him a regular professor with no hope of getting tenure, and put his department under the control of one of his rivals. Well, he was not about to take that. He quite and got a job at the Australian Film, Television, and Radio School. I think he's now with University of Sydney, we haven't talked in a few years.

So, he broke up with me. I moved back to San Francisco. My best friend Rob Batista came and rescued me after everything went, as the British say, all pear shaped. Rob was in love with me. But I was feeling guilty towards his other best friend, a certain Jenny, who I'd met and fucked within half an hour, at a Rainbow Gathering a mere day before I'd met a certain Meg and run off to get my eye slashed open.

Have I mentioned that I've led a strange life? I'm going to write all this shit down in detail and make millions. ;-) And this isn't even the weirdest part, by far!

Yeah, I felt sorry because I'd fucked her and then run off with another girl without saying goodbye. And the next year, when I saw her again at Rainbow, she'd lost weight and died her hair bright purple. So I didn't recognize her when I saw her, and she thought I was doing what every other guy in her life who fucked her did: pretending he didn't know her in public. She was hurt, and though I tried to apologize to her through Rob, she thought I was just making excuses.

The next year was 2000, when I met Mark, moved back to San Francisco, and hooked back up with Jenny, much to Rob's dismay. Jenny had been pissed at me, and she told me later, she thought I was kind of a dork and wasn't that into me. But she was desperate, and I was the first man who had ever shown her continued physical affection. No lie, she'd never even dated. Just fuck buddies who wouldn't talk to her the next day. The San Francisco punk/raver/underground scene is a little image oriented, but honestly that wasn't it. She's actually cute, and especially now, not that overweight. She just put out this completely asexual vibe most of the time.

I taught her how to be a sexual creature, how to feel good about it, and how to be open about it. I helped her learn to love her body. Before she met me, she would have transfered her consciousness into a computer in a heartbeat if she could, and done away with her body altogether. Now she's a raunchy dirty girl who fucks like a porn star.

So there it is, she loves me but she has never been in love with me, and during the whole relationship she has been resentful because I'm not the one for her. Up until recently, she thought I was the best she could do. Actually, she didn't even think that romance and infatuation like it is in movies and books even existed. I think I've mentioned her aversion to 'kissy scenes' in movies. Now she has met someone she actually feels that spark for, and who has all of her same interests, and who is very much like me in many ways.

I've had that infatuation before. Many times, actually, to the point where it's not that important to me anymore. That's why I didn't miss it in our relationship. We had a good solid partnership and the sex was great, that was good enough for me. I didn't need butterflies in my chest.

Romance and infatuation are fun, and a good thing because I'm sure I'll be going through them again. Just not for a while. But Jenny has never, ever had this. Not with me, not with anyone, and she'd just about given up hope. I'd actually be a bastard to stand in her way here.

She's incredibly grateful for everything I've done for her. I'm her best friend. I know more about her than anyone else in the world. I've been her mentor sexually and spiritually. I've opened her eyes to politics. She's taught me about art, and theater, and music. She's taught me how to be better at talking with people without freaking them out. She's taught me how to be clean and organized which is no mean feat, as my mother could surely attest. So I'm grateful to her too.

Well, that's enough writing for tonight, I'm off to hang out with my mom and adopted brother, the gay republican native american ex military fellow. Yes, I do like throwing that in just for the weirdness factor but it does happen to be true. ;-)

Yes it does get better. Jenny knocked me for a loop, no doubt. But here it is, four days after my wife broke up with me and things are already feeling much better. I'm not dead yet ;-)

Now, I've taken o1d5ch001's advice, and I'm not going to call her. Let her call me. Which, of course she has, three times today. Sigh. It doesn't even hurt anymore when we both sign off, "I love you," because we still do. We're going to be friends, but I told her, that's not going to be for a couple of months at least, and we should try to keep things short and light between us for the near future.

So everything is okay between us now. Sunday, when I was in the pits of loneliness and despair and was texting her pathetic messages of hoplessness, she pragmatically reminded me that I do have friends here I can count on, outside her circles. And family that I love and trust and actually enjoy hanging out with.

Of course, I did not want to hear that then. I mean, even without that, I have the tools to pull myself out of any situation, and I knew the whole time that I was indulging my hurt, and indulging my anger, and I did not want to be reminded, by HER of all people, that I was fine, and just being a big baby.

So today I called Micah, one of our best friends from San Francisco who had moved out here to the Southwest a year before we did. He lives in Santa Fe, and he's one of those gay guys that is bestest friends with all the hottest chicks in town. He said to come up on Friday and stay for the weekend, he'd have some friends over and we'd all get drunk and have a party.

Here is an important lesson, guys. Do not be afraid of the gays. The gays will help get you laid. They know what looks good on you. They know how you should do your hair. They know all the hot chicks. So you stand the risk of getting 'tricked' into getting your dick sucked or some such. Oh, the horrors, having your dick sucked by a man! Geez! here's a clue: if you worry about that, you know, think about it a lot, uhm, how to put this? You're gay. Get over it.

Me, I'm not gay. You know how I know? I've tried it. Fun for the kink factor, fun if it's part of a group scene, and of course if it's with someone you love it can be special even if there's no physical attraction. What? Yeah, that's right. Being gay isn't about guys loving guys, any guy could do that with another guy if only most guys weren't so scared about being gay. No, being gay is about liking dick, and the shape of a man's body. I want something with curves, which is also why I don't like skinny girls as much.

Physical attraction is a funny thing. There was this girl in Hawaii who was in Poly Paths, the polyamory group on Oahu. Pretty blond girl, medium build, nice face. We liked each other and talked a lot, but there was no sexual spark. We decided to try it anyway, and it was just bad, like kissing your sister bad. Seriously, we both thought the other person was physically attractive, but there I was in bed with this hot girl and it just felt like, ewww. So we ended up just being really good friends.

I almost convinced myself I could be gay for this man. He's the one who convinced me to leave Hawaii and move back to LA with him. I was in love with him. He wanted to marry me! But that is a WHOLE other story we won't get into now. Suffice it to say, if it weren't for him, I'd never have moved back to San Francisco and hooked up with Jenny seven years ago.

Going up to Santa Fe for the weekend means I'm going to miss the Saturday meeting of the Southwest Writers Workshop. Nizo (of Slashdot, and evidently, also of Albuquerque) said it was a good resource for writers. I've always thought, and been told, that I'm a pretty good writer. Well, now is a great time for me to do all those things I've been meaning to do. I've signed up for a writing class at UNM in July.

I'm going to do some of the hiking and camping I like to do this summer, too. Jenny was never much for the outdoors. That's an understatement. She hates dirt. She has poor balance and bad knees. She doesn't understand the beauty of it. That, to me, is the saddest thing. She can be moved to tears by great art, but she can't be moved by a sunset. "Eh, yes it's pretty. Why are we out here again?" And I am definitely, absolutely, without a doubt making it to the Rainbow Gathering this year. It's been, oh man, it's been since Rob Batista died. There is a whole other story, too.

Here's an interesting connection, the guy who maintains that Rainbow Gathering website is Rob Savoy, the primary maintainer of DejaGnu, among many, many other things he has done for the GNU project over the years. Omigawd! It's true, did you hear? Open source developers ARE all dirty smelly hippies who live in the woods, holy crap!

What else? Ah, of course! Do I re-embrace my previous identity as a role-playing game geek? Haven't done that in a while. Is that too geeky, do people over thirty play RPGs? Hah, I know they do, I'll have to head down to the local game store and scope out the scene. I've met some really smart and interesting people through role playing. What does it matter now that Jenny thought it was a dorky hobby? Improvisational theater's sad little cousin, my ass!

The local Mensa group has been lax in sending me out my info packet. How geeky is that? I'm joining Mensa! Yeah, I already know I could be a member. I had to take dozens of IQ tests as a kid. I'm going to have to call them. I want to meet more smart people because frankly, when I really open up the throttle, most of the time I leave everyone around me just standing and blinking their eyes in the dust. I don't actually like that feeling.

Frankly, I'm going to have an awesome summer. Oh fuck. Now I see it. Now I see the symmetry. Damn those women with their emotional wisdom and shit. None of you are going to understand this because I haven't really gotten around to explaining Meg yet. She was my teacher, like I was to Jenny.

When I met Meg, I deeply wanted to be an enlightened, self actualized person. I'd taken some faltering steps on my own, and called out to the universe to send someone to help me. I swear, I did not ask for someone cute. Margaret Dougherty, or Nutmeg as she goes by in Rainbow circles, took me to the point where I can get there on my own. I'm not claiming I'm there 100%, all the time, but I know where I'm going. I know I'll get there, and I know that where I am is more than okay. So there's no damn hurry. That's where Jenny is now, right there beside me on the path.

Jenny knew we'd stagnated. She knew I would never leave her, out of love and loyalty. But there was tension. I'd already given her the most important thing there is, and by all rights, when you give somebody that, you let them move on. Jenny needed to. Hell, I needed to, I would have seen it if I hadn't been blinded by my own past hurt from my family about marriages breaking up. That's why Meg had to kick me out of the nest when she'd woken me up, and why Jenny had to kick me out after I'd woken her.

Shit, looking back on some of my earlier journal entries regarding her 'graduating from the school of Seth' or however lame way I put it then, Hah! I should have seen this coming a mile away. Shit, shit shit. I've been spiritually lazy, and I certainly haven't been watching the signs as closely as I should have. That's my problem, I see the future but I see all my fantasies, too. And all any of it does it get in the way of me seeing the present.

So she had to do it this way. Did I mention that neither one of us is fully enlightened yet? Yeah, you see, sometimes we both make things happen for ourselves where we don't really understand why it had to happen that way until later. When one is fully enlightened, I'm not sure if one just sees it all, or if one is simply not there to see, or if there is even a difference.

She had to do it this way. She knows how loyal I am, she had to stick a fucking knife in my heart to get me to agree to her leaving. And we both should have known it was the right time for that. You know, I'm starting to remember. I forgot a lot of who I am. I had to to be the kind of person she could learn from, but I told myself I'd remember when it was all over and she'd gotten where she needed to be. It's a dangerous trick, ladies and gentlemen, one I wouldn't recommend trying at home.

And guess what kind of person Mr. Y. is? Go ahead, I'll give you one guess. You know, she talks about me to him all the time. I've seen it, she'll be projecting some amazing bit of insight or wisdom, and then she'll get all embarrassed and say something along the lines of, "but Seth was really the one who showed me how to look at it that way." As I said, the symmetry is staggering once you see it. Well shit. Why am I always the last to know these things? Hehe.

You know, the period after I graduated from the school of Meg and she kicked me out of our little nest in Hawaii was one of the most interesting, exciting, wild and crazy periods of my life. I wonder what this next period of bachelorhood will be like?

I also wonder if Meg learned any of the lessons I tried to teach her, as she was bringing me up to where she was on the path we're on? Meg of course would kick my ass for even asking such a stupid question. Because you know, it isn't linear. You can have a lot to learn, and still have something to teach. Oh. Oh my. You know, I've tried to tell Jenny that I've learned things from her, too, that we've both taught each other to be better people, but now, somehow, I don't think she really heard me.

Well. How interesting, to me anyway. I literally have been figuring this out as I've been writing this. So I'm sorry if it makes no sense to y'all, (as if more than a handful of people will ever read this anyway) but it makes sense to me now. That's really the reason I write in this thing. It helps me figure things out sometimes. And doing it in public keeps me honest. ;-)

Well it's official. We're breaking up. I just wish my wife had handled things a little more elegantly. Part of the reason I'm into polyamory is that by promoting honesty and open communications in all things, at least in theory, it can protect against that punched in the gut feeling of shock and betrayal that heralds the end of many a relationship.

We had scheduled a date night on Saturday and we had plans to just hang out all day Sunday. She'd spent Friday night with Mr. Y., and she was conducting rehearsals for the play she's directing Saturday during the day, but we'd planned to have a nice night. I'd make dinner and pick out a couple movies for us, nothing too special.

She called and said rehearsal was running late. Then she called and said she and some of the cast (including Mr. Y.) were at the bar across from the theater and would I like to come. Then she called and said that would be too awkward, I shouldn't come and she'd be at least another hour. I was quite unhappy with that, and said as much. We had made a date, you don't blow that off. Not with business, not with friends, and certainly not your spouse or partner.

She said she couldn't stand me. Now, she had been drinking and she was obviously feeling, how shall I put this? Uppity. A loaded word, I know, allow me to explain. She has always had a problem asserting herself, she's felt unloved and unloveable. When I first met her ten years ago, she would apologize for everything. All the time. Seriously, the words "I'm sorry" came out of her mouth every ten minutes without exageration.

When I first hooked up with her seven years ago, she'd never had a relationship before. Occasional fuck buddies, not even proper dating. At the age of twenty five. She'd always been overweight, even as a young kid. When I met her she weighed 160, which is a fine weight for a woman, especially when she is as curvy as my wife. She's beautiful, nice tits, a full round ass, perfect hip to waist ratio, shapely legs and feet, and a pretty face. But fat, according to society, and she had always felt ugly, which is a self fulfilling feeling.

So now, I've helped her feel better about herself. You must know, there are no quick fixes in personal growth and change. When I say that, I mean over the course of the last seven years I have helped her grow into herself as a person, to become more driven by who she is and less by her fear and hurt. By little, day to day actions, consistently, over the course of years. It's the only way to change yourself or others.

And now she can assert herself, but she goes a little overboard. Especially when she drinks. So, she's been drinking, she's having fun with her peers, who by all accounts think she is simply the most fabulous, absolutely the most talented and most fun director they've ever worked with. And I am her fuddy duddy old husband, asking her for a boring old night at home.

Now can you see the shape of things? The impending horribleness actually has very little to do with Mr. Y. though he was there. So she said she couldn't stand me, that she couldn't stand being around me. I was in shock, and I asked her what she meant, did she want to leave me? She said yes, she wanted to leave me. Details become fuzzy at this point.

I remember getting very, very angry. I remember saying things I regret, saying I would hurt her, embarass her, make her life difficult. Too much in shock to realize that I had no intention of really doing anything like that, that I just wanted to assert that I still had some kind of control over the situation. That she needed me.

Then I did the obvious next bad move, I drove over there and embarassed myself. Needed closure, had to discuss things immediately, what about the dog, had she thought this all through? Perhaps some of you have been there before. She wanted the management to call the cops on me, though I was outwardly relatively calm. Her friends wanted me to leave. Mr. Y. didn't have anything to say, which was a smart move on his part. So, extracting a promise that she would talk to me by one on Sunday, I left.

I went home and played a very mechanical, nay, robotic game of Civ IV. Alternating with bouts of crying and pacing around the house shaking with rage. This whole thing has been a good lesson in anger for me. Sometimes, you think you've learned to control something when all you've learned to do is repress it. Sometimes it's okay to be angry, to feel it, to be in that space. It's what you do with that feeling, especially the words you use to explain it to yourself as it's happening, that then determine what you do externally. That can turn that feeling which is essentially neutral into something good or bad. Good, say, when defending your spouse and children against an enemy. Bad when you say or do things you later regret.

The next day she wouldn't come over to talk until I threatened to toss all her stuff on the porch, call her parents, and write a letter to the theater owner explaining why I wouldn't be volunteering there any more, in lurid details. Star director and actress sleeping with a board member, the shock! Well you can imagine how well that talk went. I'm very ashamed of all this. Shame is usually a sign you should be talking about it. That's what this is, in part, a public confessional. Pardon the mess.

By the next day, I had managed to forgive her. Forgiveness, by the way, is something you do for yourself. It is not for the other person, I can't stress that enough. You will not be able to stop hurting yourself with bad thought-loops until you forgive. Trust me, I had to forgive a pack of thughs for taking my left eye from me, I know these things.

But forgiveness leads to compassion, and compassion leads to understanding. And suddenly I wanted her back. Badly. We just moved here two years ago and outside of the theater circles here I haven't met many people. And those are, of course, her circles and her people and I don't fit in there without her. I'm a computer geek, not a theater geek. I tried, acting, lighting, its fun for a bit but never really did anything for me. It's her whole life. So me, I'm looking at a near future that's pretty bleak and lonely, until I get back into my bachelor habits and start focusing on the things I like, rather than us, and our plans, and her projects, and her problems...

I call her, tell her she's off the hook, I forgive her, I'm not going to "make her suffer the natural consequences of some piss poor decisions" as I believe I phrased it at one point in some lame attempt to justify being a bastard. And I had let her know previously, in no uncertain terms, that this all could have gone smoother if it weren't for her callous insensitivity and blatant disregard for the feelings of me, her friend, her confidant, her mentor and (lately) student, her fellow traveller on the path, her partner of seven years. I do like to pile it on sometimes.

I mean really, we'd had a talk, the three of us, the "could it just be Mr Y. and Jenny?" talk, and it was certainly on the table if that's the way things needed to go down. But the assumption I had was that it would happen with a little more dignity than it did. In hindsight, I suppose a lot of the lack of dignity was on my part. But I still think she could have picked a better method.

I call her and tell her to take some time. We don't have to do anything drastic right away. Then I get lonely and start texting her. So lonely, can't do this. That sort of thing. Blargh. The thing that sucks is that I know better. All of it, it's just me indulging myself. I know how to get myself out of it all, but why should I, damn it, am I not entitled to wallow? Am I not entitled to rage? Just a little?

It's been my downfall in this relationship. Here's a tip. Trying to use the "lowering yourself to their level to show them what it's like so they can learn" method is doomed to fail. And it can become a habit. She and I have always been very honest and open with each other. That has its flip side. You're armed to the teeth. Add that to the whole prone to lowering yourself to their level bit and you've got yourself an unstable situation. All you need is a trigger.

Need to wrap this up. Near midnight, and I've got work in the morning. She called me at 2:30 in the morning last night. She'd had a fight with Mr. Y. Could she take everything back, and come back to me? Woken out of a deep sleep, I babbled yes of course. She called back five minutes later to say forget it. So Tuesday was not a good day for me, either. I'd just managed to start forgiving, then she has the nerve to pull something like that.

So I made her call her parents tonight. And I made her not lie to them about the situation. Call it revenge. I wish I could claim it was just justice, or the right thing to do. Then I wrote them an email, explained the situation, begged their forgiveness for both of us, asked them not to be mad at her especially. My mom has known about the whole situation all along, my dad I don't really talk to, but I had really been enjoying having them as in-laws, and they are kind of conservative socially. Churchgoing democrats in a republican state and city. Nice people.

I told them I'd forgiven her, that I would always love her, and maybe she and I could be friends some day. And I cc'd her. Sigh. I'd hoped to add some moral at the end here, some jaunty little lesson, but frankly I'm a little tired. It can wait. Another day, another jaunty little lesson. It just keeps happening until it stops happening, doesn't it? Thank you, and good night.

Okay, if you've never heard of the New Zealand digi-folk musical comedy duo, Flight of the Conchords, you need to check them out ASAP. We recorded their HBO One Night Stand special about a year ago. Since then, the wife and I have watched it, oh, probably twenty times, and it is just as funny as it was the first time.

Their official website is at http://www.conchords.co.nz/, and their biggest fansite is at http://www.whatthefolk.net/.

I just found out, they have been signed to do an 11 episode sitcom for HBO, premiering June 17th, and the first episode is online! http://www.hbo.com/conchords/

We dropped HBO after Rome ended, this is all the excuse I need to sign back up.

I got a call from the wife last Friday about a quarter to five. She was feeling a bit... frisky, and basically ordered me to get home as soon as I could to take care of her. You see, sex is not a zero sum game. It's not as if her having an affair means there's less sex for me. Quite the opposite in fact. The sexier she feels, the more she feels like having sex.

There's a simple physical fact at work here. Let me put it this way: I am a stud. I can come and get hard again within five minutes, hell, sometimes I can come and stay hard. I can do that maybe five times a night, with some persuasion from a willing partner. That is unusual for a guy. That is not at all unusual for a woman.

I'll admit it, ladies: I'm jealous of the whole multiple orgasm thing. I counted. Over the course of the weekend, the wife was probably averaging about ten a day. Ten orgasms a day! I couldn't even manage that as an eighteen year old.

Anyway, I rush home, we have a bit of fun, a few drinks, a bit more fun, and she's just tipsy enough to put aside her doubts and wonder if maybe, you know, We could all hang out together? Well, I am of course into that idea, even though we had a whole plan that involved the three of us hanging out with mutual friends first to test the waters and see how the whole jealousy thing would play out.

So we decided to tempt him over with the promise that if it was too uncomfortable, he could take her back to his place even though it was my day with her. What do you know? He's into the idea. He comes over, and the three of us proceed to have one of those animated, free ranging, philosophical, political, spiritual, intellectual conversations that, and I can not stress this enough, make life worth living for me.

Wow. Just wow. My wife has good taste in men, what can I say? He is so like me in so many ways, if he weren't so different in a few I'd think she found my unauthorized clone. (Note to govt. agents: there is no clone! Disregard all rumors to the contrary. Really.) He has all the characteristics I find appealing in a person: he is courageous about being himself, smart, curious, introspective, and, like my wife and I, an absolute bulldog when it comes to doing what we feel is right.

Several bottles of wine and a twelve pack of beer later, we look up and realize it is four in the morning. I'm feeling a bit tired, and say as much. A series of looks are passed, and somehow it is nonverbally agreed, he's staying the night, I'm sleeping in the guest room, he's sleeping with her.

Okay, I'll be honest, I've thought about this. We all hang out, the night is over, what happens exactly? How do we do it without jealousy, someone getting their feelings hurt? Say this works long term, we're all living together, how would that work exactly? I'd thought that if I had to be the one sleeping in the other bed, listening to them having sex, that it would be difficult.

I mean, I got jealous over stupid things like phone calls, come on! Could it work? Turns out, it can. The guest room is right next to our room and the walls are pretty thin. I heard everything, the moaning, the spankings, everything. And I was not jealous. Weird, huh?

I wake up the next morning, and there are more noises from the other room. Then the wife comes in to visit me for a bit, then she goes back to him, then comes back to me, then back to him. Then we all get up. He looks a bit sheepish, like he still can't really believe this is all okay. I cut the ice, asking who's up for breakfast? They run out to Sonic and get us some food, and we spend Saturday sitting on the couch, her in the middle with quite possibly the biggest smile I have ever seen on a human plastered all over her face, watching TV and recuperating.

It's nice, and a nice contrast from the night before. We don't feel the need to talk. The three of us are just comfortable being together. We had all planned that they would go back to his house Saturday night, but I'm feeling magnanimous so I volunteer to spend the night over at my mom's. After all, my gay Native American Republican ex-military adopted brother has just gotten out of jail and I wanted to catch up. Seems his bad-boy brother had stolen his license, done some things, and gotten caught, and poor Malcolm had to pay the price. Family, eh?

It's nice having family I can talk about this with. My mom is understandably worried, seeing as how she tried this and fucked it up. Well, Sandy and my dad fucked it up by lying to her and getting Sandy pregnant, but we already covered that a while back, didn't we? She's generally pretty supportive, though, probably because she knows I would call her out if she made too much of a stink. "Yeah, mom? It didn't work for you three because you were children who could barely hold a single relationship together, m'kay?"

My cousin the ex gang member came over with her three kids on Sunday, wow, talk about a success story, this girl goes from 15 year old pregnant gang member to college grad, mother of three, and the eldest is in sixth grade now, an honor student, vice president of her class. Anyway, enough writing, my server installs are needing some attention and I should sign off.

Wow, great weekend!

I've been feeling much less jealous of Mr. Y recently. Except for yesterday when I called my wife at lunch and she said she had to get off the phone, as she was with him. He calls her every night when she's with me, and she doesn't say that to him. But when he understood that this was causing tension, he volunteered not to call while she is with me. Of course, then I felt like a heel and had to explain that it wasn't the calling, but the perceived inequality.

My wife's attitude has shifted a bit, she is no longer completely infatuated with him and they've had an argument or two. She's actually glad, new relationships can be a bit overwhelming. The whole thing has ceased being new and is now just a part of our lives. They are over the initial shakeout period, the hormones have worn off, and they are still into each other.

The whole "I'm gonna run out and find me some casual sex!" thing hasn't really panned out. I was sick all last week and didn't feel like it. Since then, every time I've thought about pursuing that option, I've felt unmotivated, and a little sad. Don't get me wrong, I love sex! But I've never sought out casual sex before and there's a reason. I like deep and meaningful connections with other people, sex for me is a way of deepening connections and sharing something primal with someone I'm into.

I want what she's got. It's funny, I'm not terribly jealous, but I am a bit envious. I don't want casual sex, I want a fun new relationship with someone who shares all my interests. With lots of non-casual sex. And I'm not likely to find that through adultfriendfinder.com. So, it's back to the original plan, going out and doing more of the things I love to do, and meeting people who have similar interests.

I'm sure, if anyone is actually reading any of this, they must be wondering, "Wtf?! Why are you doing this, what are you getting out of it?" Okay, obviously I'm getting the opportunity for sanctioned extra-marital nookie myself.

Beyond that, well, I'm married, not a slave owner. Philosophically, I'm opposed to limiting someone else's freedom to have loving connections with others. Second, my wife is very inexperienced, relationship-wise. I'm the only long term relationship she's had. She has felt fat and unattractive her whole life, though she's anything but. She needed some perspective. Third, there are Mr. Y's issues that I am not at liberty to discuss, but I can say that he has been hurt by some pretty callous and manipulative women and some pretty shitty life circumstances, and she is just what he needs to start healing.

Healing is good. Wounded, frightened, desperate humans scare me. I want sane, happy humans around me. You've got to put your principles into action or you might as well not have them.

I've been meaning to write my memoirs for years now. I've had such a weird life, I need to write it all down before I start to forget. I mean, the kinds of things that have happened to me, you don't normally forget. Not normally, because normally, maybe one or two things that odd happen to a person in a lifetime. After dozens of such odd incidents, you start to mentally edit out the less important bits. I'm editing out stories that would be the highlight of most people's lives, the stories they'd be telling their great grandkids on their deathbeds. So I really need to start writing it all down, because there's no indication this crap is going to let up anytime in this lifetime.

Okay, let's start at the beginning. I was born into a three way marriage. My mom and dad were legally married. After my dad graduated from Stanford and went to Yale to get his Ph.D. in psychology, he and my mom met Sandy, a radical communist woman. They all fell in love, and this being the sixties, and them being college intellectual hippies, they decided they were going to do the polyamory thing.

Here's a hint if you plan on trying this. Don't sneak behind your real wife's back while she's pregnant and get your other wife pregnant too. Things will likely end badly, as they did in this case. Sandy ended up leaving with her son, Max, and my mom and dad ended up splitting up by the time I was about 3 1/2.

I did have some good times before this. Yes, I actually remember some of them. Or I remember remembering them. You know, memories from that long ago tend to be edited and re-edited, and the ones that get saved tend to represent the general gist of the times rather than the truth of specific incidents.

I was insanely smart as a kid, speaking by six months, and in full sentences by seven months. My mom worked in the Montessori preschool I went to. This is where I learned to call my parents by their first names, Jayne & Don, instead of mom & dad. As well as being very smart, I was emotionally mature and physically strong and coordinated.

You know, a lot of the reason I am writing all this down is to figure out why I haven't (conventionally) lived up to all that potential. Sure, I've made something worthwhile of myself. I'm self actualized. Enlightened, some might say. But not wealthy, not a great sports star, or a famous scientist, or any of the things that society says are important that I very well could have been.

In our next episode, my mom and dad split up, she marries a lunatic trucker, they buy a beefalo (cow buffalo hybrid) farm in the inbred backwoods of West Virgina, and an eight year old girl tries to introduce my four year old self to sex. They start 'em young in West Virginia!

I never thought I was the jealous type. Share and share alike, right? Sigh. It's never so simple. When you've lived a life like mine, begging every step of the way for the Universe to show you where you still have work to do, you shouldn't be surprised when you get the lessons you ask for.

My wife's relationship with her new lover is going very, very well. They love each other. It's been almost two months, and this is definitely more than a fling. In the beginning things were easy for me. She was on a New Relationship High, and I was getting a lot of the benefit of that, sexually and emotionally.

But New Relationship Highs never last. Eventually relationships either end or transmute as the 'fuck me now' hormones wear off. As those hormones wore off and their relationship entered it's next phaze, I got less of the spill-over of I got less of what it is, I hate to admit, that I really need.

TMI Alert, go ahead and skip this paragraph if you're squeamish about sexuality. High sex drive runs in my family. One benefit of having hippy liberal parents, I guess, is that you can have conversations like that with them without it being too weird. I'm thirty six and I still need, bare minimum, two orgasms a day. I'd prefer more, and at least an hour of skin on skin time. I get grouchy and sullen when I get less.

Anyways, as things cooled off and I was getting less sex than I wanted, I got grouchy and sullen and jealous. Luckily, my wife is very emotionally inelligent by nature. Add to that the fact that I have helped give her the tools and mindset of self actualization over the seven years of our partnership, and we were well equiped to deal with the situation.

Except... except she had told me I needed to be more in touch with my anger. Perfectly acceptable to say given that we both understand that niether of us is the teacher or the student any longer. And true, I don't want to be an angry person, so perhaps I have not looked at it as honestly as I should. Well. Let's just say the last week hasn't been easy on her, either.

I'm coming to a balance. The more you look at an aspect of yourself in a nonjudgemental way, the more you bring it into the domain of consciousness. I'm learning how to stay conscious while being angry, instead of that odd phenomenon where one's consciousness seems to retreat to the back of the skull, to stare in impotant horror at the things one is doing and saying.

It hasn't been easy. Growth takes work. There are no quick fixes, but that's okay because there is no judgement involved in being where you are while you're growing. Everyone is always doing thir best, given the circumstances. We're all right where we need to be, and fuck any little voices that may be trying to tell us different.

Her lover, we'll call him Mr. Y, finally had a good, if somewhat short, face to face with me. It went well, although I'll admit to being more flustered in reality than I was in any of my preparatory imaginings. We're on the same page, for now, and he is a good guy who obviously wants to do the right thing in the situation. Everyone is looking out for each other, so I've upped my estimate of the chances this thing has of working long term.

But we'll see, as in any adult relationship, it has had and will have it's dark and rocky rapids. It's the navigation of those stretches that really defines what a relationship is, not the calm and sunny shallows.

Anyway, the wife, ever the pragmatic one, has a solution. I just need more casual sex. So I joined adultfriendfinders.com yesterday. I've never been much of a swinger, I mean, I've had about forty or so lovers over 18 years of total sexual activity, with 13 of that being monogamous so, 5 years of singledom and around 37 partners, call it 35 as 40 was a guestimate, so seven a year average while being single. That's neither abnormily slutty or celibate for a guy, right?

I have my wife's full support to go out and have casual sex, I'm sorry, but how cool is that? There is the hint that three ways may not be out of the question, either. We'll see how it goes, as I said, I've been in other polyamorous situations before. But swinging is different, and I've never been absolutely blunt and put an ad out saying, essentially, aavailable for sex with women if you like what you see and I do too.

I'm a reasonably attractive guy as it is but this is now a big incentive to trade that twenty pounds of fat back in for the muscle it was before I got married.