quizzical pussy

“Polyamory is a relationship orientation that rejects the assumption that love is a finite resource…” -From The Rhetoric and Composition of Polyamory, an awesome new blog that now appears on my blogroll

For years I maintained that polyamory was synonymous with drama. With slogging through relationship issues twice as much as doing actual relationship stuff. With inexhaustible neediness. Otherwise, I liked it in theory. I agreed with the overall idea that a person could be in love with more than one person at once. But in practice– every time I’d seen it– its implementation was irredeemably messy and awful, and I made assumptions based on that. Which, as you have likely concluded yourself, was dickish and logically unsound.

I mean, I could have stopped for a moment to consider the fact that most human relationships stoop to varying degrees of messy and awful at some point.

I wasn’t actively shunning and judging poly people, mind, but my main reasons for not choosing it for myself were the potential for drama and my smug estimation that it just didn’t work. There were other factors that made me cling to monogamy and then open-not-poly for a while. I had partners who didn’t identify as poly. I had trouble believing anyone wanted to date me, let alone multiple people, so the whole thing just seemed fantastical. Then there was my rich and storied history of trading my freedom for love. The prospect of a relationship that wasn’t limiting in fundamental ways confused me.

Really, this is just more support for my growing suspicion that when person A waxes critical of the concept of person B’s perfectly harmless, minding-their-own business lifestyle, it really just means person A has some related shit to work out on their end.

Then I met more poly people, some of whom executed their multiple relationships in ways that made more sense to me than what I’d previously witnessed. I even met people who did it more or less the way my open relationship functioned, but called it poly, and that made the word less scary. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, polyamory kind of started seeming like an increasingly attractive idea for me. Well, let’s be frank: I probably never wasn’t attracted to the idea. I harbor no doubt that person A is actually often just a mite envious of person B.

I realize I’m single and in zero relationships now, so it may not be the optimal time to declare myself poly (fun fact: most people call the multiple partners thing that single people do “dating”). And it’s certainly hard for me to conclude that it’s my orientation without actively trying it. But I have come to the decision that I prefer not to be entirely monogamous in the long-run, and that I am entirely open to polyamory, inclusive of casual as well as more serious multiple relationships.

In short, I think I might be poly. I’m going to try to check that out.

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“If you can’t love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else?” – RuPaul

The sentiment that you have to love yourself first before loving another person never rang true for me. There are dark places in me, places where I use my own face as a dartboard and trample my own spiritual tulips because bitch stole my sweater. Oh, and also because when we get right down to it, I’ve never cared for her much.

But with other people, I can be very loving. I try to plant and nurture their tulips, lend them sweaters. Once I get warmed up, I love unstintingly and honestly and sweetly. I’m really rather good at it. Until it blows up in my face. A lot. Every single goddamn time. Maybe that’s the point of the adage. Maybe you can’t successfully love someone else until you love yourself.

But then I see all these people in seemingly successful relationships and I wonder if I’m really so much more messed up than they are. Don’t we all secretly loathe ourselves¹? How many people on the planet actually love themselves? Are those sixteen people the only ones capable of real, healthy love? I don’t buy it.

However, I do generally like the idea of loving myself. So there’s that.

I’m afraid of it too, though. As far back as I can remember I’ve worked tirelessly to avoid arrogance and self aggrandizement. Maybe it was because early on, a lot of flashy things like getting good grades and the arts came naturally to me; maybe at some point someone told me to keep my head down and stop showing off and I took it ridiculously seriously. I don’t even know. I just know that I became convinced that overconfidence is more repugnant than crippling self-abasement. I no longer actually think this is true, though. And if it is, I’m pretty sure I no longer care.

I’m usually good at projecting confidence even when I don’t feel it. I’ve also mostly avoided outright self-destructive behaviors; I’ve always been terrible at giving up and pretty good at finding silver linings. And I have to admit that I do often suspect I’m rather awesome. I think my nature is probably fundamentally confident, but I’m afraid to really commit to it, and instead I’ve taken on a lot of fucked up beliefs about myself.

This isn’t even about my romantic life, although I have been told multiple times that my self-esteem issues are by far the least attractive thing about me. Really, I’m just sick to death of being so hard on myself. It’s irritating to spend so much time with someone who doesn’t appreciate me. And yes, it is worrying that I have consistently sought out relationships with people who one way or another end up treating me how I feel I deserve to be treated², and I would prefer that that change. Honestly, though, me treating myself like I’m worthless is more troubling, by far.

So I’ve started working on all that self esteem shit, more aggressively and purposefully than I’ve ever done before. If I overcorrect and start seeming at all egotistical as I work through things, I hope you’ll understand. I’m trying out this new thing of not being a dick to myself, you see.

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1. I understand that I may be projecting a rather lot, but really, don’t we? [↩]
2. Although, it needs to be said, this is trending better and better. [↩]

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You may have already figured out that I am single now. You’re smart like that; smarter than I am subtle. But it’s high time I explicitly stated it here, it being an important part of the narrative and all.

Laramy and I aren’t together anymore.

No, it wasn’t my idea, and yeah, of course I was crushed. I’m still kind of crushed. If you’ve been reading this blog you may have noticed how smitten I was with him; that doesn’t fade overnight. But I’m not asking anyone to feel sorry for me or take sides. Fundamentally, we had a good thing together, I’m grateful for what time we had, and I respect his choice even if it’s hard for me to understand.

So that’s the official update and declaration of QP’s singlehood with special bonus resolution to stop moping about it.

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I lay no claim to being exceptionally dateable. It can’t be easy to let yourself fall for me, and maybe it’s not even smart. I realize everyone has their own personal red flags, but logically, I must live in much of their overlap.

When you read discussions about evolutionary psychology, debates about weight, or even conversations on general attractiveness, someone will always raise the point that human beings are fundamentally attracted to health. This probably seems like a diplomatic, benign way to speak about physical beauty: Can’t we all just agree that we’re programmed to read signs of health as beauty? Isn’t health really the most important factor in choosing a mate?

Every time I hear that, read that, I flinch just a little. It’s such a casual way to tell someone that no matter how she actually looks,  she doesn’t count as pretty.

I am not healthy. My body has not been healthy for several years. I am disabled; I am sick. I have debilitating fatigue, chronic pain, a compromised immune system, and a low tolerance for activity.  I wouldn’t have a breath of a prayer of surviving in the wild. Despite the fact that even I get mesmerized by my ass sometimes, in one sense I’m unattractive on the most basic level. And even ignoring bullshit theories and pseudoscience, being in a relationship with me day-to-day must be frustrating.

Want to do a fun activity together? Depending what it is, I might be able to do it if I have a week’s notice so I can rest. And a free week after, so I can rest. Want to do a fun, spontaneous activity together? Haha fuck you no.

Feel like grabbing a bite to eat together? Okay, but right now I’m off gluten, dairy, sugar, and fifteen other things just in case it helps my illness. So far it hasn’t helped much, but it means we definitely can’t order that pizza. Also, I bring my own sugar-free ketchup or wheat-free soy sauce along, which I acknowledge might be weird.

Do you want a partner who can be your workout buddy? Who’ll go dancing with you every weekend? Who lives a normal, productive, active life? Who can work a normal full-time job? I’ll say it now: you can’t rely on me. I may never be this for you no matter how much I try.

Add to this the fact that even if I were perfectly healthy I’d still have my emotional issues and my weaknesses, just like anyone else, and most people would run away, sweating from the adrenaline rush of having just dodged a bullet. Wouldn’t they?

But I know something they don’t: I’m worth it. Not to everyone, maybe, but to the few, I’m so entirely worth it. I will love them so fiercely and sweetly, we’ll laugh together so joyously, and those things I do offer will bewitch them so thoroughly that my health will be a detail, trivia, like the maze of color in my eyes. Like the ridiculous songs I make up. Like the brownies I bake that I can’t even eat myself, but I know you like them. Like my insatiable lust for the people I love.

I’m no one’s textbook ideal mate. No one describes their perfect woman as always sick. But I make up for it. I try to. I have to believe I do.

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So my ribcage is hinged now, like a huge pair of jaws. It yawns wide, and there’s this chasm, a throat, where I normally expect my heart to thrum. Then it snaps shut in a low growl without warning, crushing my lungs, chuckling at the idea that humans need air. Either way my chest aches. Either way I’m powerless against the grinning beast. It has no tongue. It’s all teeth. Like a heartbreak with no explanation. Exactly like that.

I am all searing thorax. The rest of me is numb.

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One unpleasant side-effect of a campaign to start remembering your dreams is that when you dream about someone who’s died you wake up with their face burned into the back of your eyelids. They’ll gently pad beside you your entire day, drifting through your thoughts and darting into your peripheral vision when you least expect it. Thanks to your lucid dream experiments, you’re now being haunted.

I miss her.

We were roommates for one year in college. I always wished we’d stayed in touch, even though things were a little strained by the end of that year living together. She would get angry at me, she said, because I didn’t put as much work into my academics and writing as I did my part-time jobs and maintaining my long-distance relationship with Reginald. Even then I had to admit she was right, but I also felt like my priorities were my business. I also suspected she resented how effortlessly my good grades came to me. She was gifted, but also a very hard worker. Reginald also moved back in-state at the end of that school year, and he didn’t much like me having friends separate from him. Also, sometimes I’m just shitty when it comes to keeping my friendships together. There were lots of factors, I guess, but one way or another she and I talked a few times over the summer and then passively let our friendship lapse. When we met each other on campus during Junior and Senior year we smiled and were cordial, but we weren’t even a shadow of what we’d been.

What we had been was pretty awesome. She was the only real friend I made in college, considering Reginald’s gentle suggestions that I never talk to anyone but him. She and I, we challenged each other and bickered and then made up and had serious discussions and laugh-until-you-very-nearly-pee discussions. We shared almost everything. We danced together to Leonard Cohen. We competed and supported and comforted by turns. And no matter what, every night we’d read to each other before bed. Both of us being technical virgins, of course we usually read books about sex. Our favorite was (if memory serves) the hilarious¹ Reclaiming Goddess Sexuality, which followed a fictional young woman through what was probably a very historically inaccurate sexual initiation in an ancient matriarchal culture that I have never found any indication existed. It suggested that for first-time intercourse we be positioned side-by-side with our partners². Man-on-top sex is not very empowering, apparently. We sternly reminded each other when our attitudes weren’t goddess-like enough.

At times it was almost like we were having a romantic relationship, except the entire physical/sexual facet was trapped in books and we read it aloud instead of acting on it. Also, we both had boyfriends. But still, I sometimes wondered what it would be like to leave mine and have a girlfriend instead. A girlfriend with perfect lips and big eyes and a mop of short, wavy hair like hers.

And then, a couple years ago, she died.

I don’t know what happened. I was searching for her online one day, thinking I’d email her to see how she was doing, and I found her obituary. She was an award-winning poet. She’d been living twenty minutes from me. She was deeply loved and dearly missed. She was gone. I dreamed about her last night and I woke up and she’s still gone. And I miss her. That’s all I can really say about it. That’s the entire story.

She’d have written it better.

1. Just to be clear before I go into details: we knew it was hilarious. We were naive, maybe, but not stupid. [↩]
2. I’m guessing this meant spooning, but I will likely never know for sure [↩]

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I often forget I’m an extravert. Most of the time I don’t really feel like one. I’m normally not very shy, but I can be reserved at times, and I do eventually stop talking once I run out of things I can convince myself are at least the tiniest bit interesting to other people.

But my Myers-Briggs type starts with an E¹, for whatever that’s worth, and I’ve noticed that being social with people I like does indeed energize me more than time alone. In fact, quite often the former can feel like a euphoric drug. Which I suppose makes me some kind of junkie… besides the orgasm kind, which we already knew about.

But, strangely enough, the E doesn’t actually stand for “Everyone love me NOW!” Orientation isn’t skill, and as it turns out, a vowel doesn’t magically make me the life of the party.

For an instance, the people I already knew who attended last week’s poly munch with me all came back with at least one or two new Fetlife friends. In my case, not so much. I’m pretty sure this means I’m doing munches wrong, or at least that E is most definitely not for “makes friends Easily”. Which again, like my continuing addiction to orgasms, we (or at least I) already knew.

But even though I had moments of feeling like I had nothing to say and no one to say it to, the people were awesome and geeky and I’ve probably seen at least half of them wandering around local Sci Fi cons over the years. We’re not friends yet, obviously, but I could see it happening. Eventually.

So that’s cool.

Going back to vowels, Laramy’s a classic I, and wasn’t in the mood to meet a score of new people, no matter how enticingly geeky they might have been. But I think he might enjoy it another time.

A digression: To overgeneralize blatantly, I can imagine downsides and upsides to every introversion/extraversion configuration: Two Es never getting lonely, but also never shutting up, or two Is becoming blissfully happy shut-ins. An I and an E probably balance each other out fairly well, but it’s important to make sure the I’s needs for time alone are respected because it’s easy for Es to overbook their partners in the process of wanting to share the fun, and the Is can get burned out very quickly that way. When really Es can be social with other people while the Is recharge. So it needs to be I before E. Except after C, which is children. Once you have children you don’t get to be alone anymore, ever. Sorry.

(digression ends)

After mentioning jealousy in my last post, I realized that I didn’t make it clear that jealousy is not something I’m particularly struggling with right now. Rather, it’s just an example of a thing I wish I had someone to talk to about. Currently, there are a lot of things like that: my curiosity about kink, navigating my first open relationship, even just figuring out how to make sure my emotional needs get met.

I’m allowed to talk to Laramy about these things, but it’s difficult for me to make the conversations productive because he and I relate to these issues so differently (and in the case of kink, Laramy is more or less just not interested). I don’t know if it’s our vowels or if it’s other letters, or if it’s just that I have a really difficult time describing my wants and needs, but things don’t seem to go well when we try to have these talks. It seems like it’s better to have myself sorted out before I broach these subjects with him, otherwise I just end up making him think he’s doing something wrong.

But sometimes I want emotional support while I process things and explore all aspects of how I feel about them. I want to feel like it’s safe to explore new things. I don’t want to worry about things getting a little messy. It’s no one’s fault, unless perhaps it’s my own, but I don’t feel like I have that. Lately I’m feeling overwhelmed and lonely and frustrated.

Obviously I don’t expect anyone to step in and fix these issues for me. It would just be nice to have someone to talk to, at some point, who could relate to what I’m feeling, not think I’m ungrateful or talking shit about my boyfriend, not blame him, not blame our non-monogamy, and maybe give me some advice. Or, like, a hug. Most of all I want someone to tell me it’s okay– normal, even– to feel things and want things and need things. Right now I want so much. I feel ravenous with it, and it’s beginning to consume me.

Oh, god! I hope it doesn’t start on my ass…

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1. More precisely, I’m supposedly an ENTP, for those who are curious [↩]

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There is an ancient prophecy. It’s been passed down from crippled harlot to slutty gimp through the generations¹. Though originally recorded in ancient Sumerian, the English translation somehow manages to be a perfect Petrarchan sonnet. Disabled trollops must have been quite magical at one point.

The tablet upon which it was carved so long ago is kept in a secret underground vault at the base of a wheelchair accessible ramp, and is guarded by vicious Gila panthers. I’ve seen all this with my own eyes. Once.

Of course, I didn’t memorize it. Even if I did I couldn’t share it on the internet, not verbatim, on pain of Hitachi Magic Wand torture. But trust me, the rhymes are ingenious coming from people who couldn’t have possibly known the English language would even be a thing.

I can tell you the gist of the prophecy, though, and it’s this: Someday thou, Quizzical Pussy, shalt stoppeth being so damn insecure. Verily.

It’s actually a little surprising that this ancient, precious prophecy ended up being about me, when I stop and think about it. Was that nice of those Sumerians or what? Anyway, knowing the future like that is a great comfort to me in times like this.

Because really, I am ridiculous.

I told Laramy a few days ago that I’m kind of waiting for him to get sick of me and leave². Which, as it turns out, is not a charming thing to say to one’s sweetheart. In retrospect, it was hurtful. It brushes up against ignoring what we have together, telling him I don’t really think he loves me even though I absolutely know he does. The problem is really that I don’t understand why, so I keep waiting to fuck it up by accident.

This is all mostly-to-entirely because I’m insecure. This is the same reason I lose touch with friends while I’m trying not to bother them. This is the same reason I feel like a creepasaurus creep whenever I try to flirt. It’s even why I’m afraid to say no to people I don’t want to have sex with. Insecurity has gotten me into so much more trouble than cockiness that I wonder why I’m still careful not to brag or build myself up. It should really be the other way around by now. But! Here we are.

Laramy never seems insecure about our relationship. We have a good thing going, and it doesn’t seem like I want to end it, so he doesn’t worry about it. This is pretty much just sense, but it feels like alien logic. I can’t imagine feeling that way. I’m glad he does, but it’s so counter-intuitive to me that part of me insists he’s not worried about losing me because it really wouldn’t matter much. But that isn’t fair. He’s probably just doing what emotionally healthy people do.

Why should anyone assume they’re on borrowed time in their relationship? What good does it do? And it’s not even that being single scares me as a general rule; I just specifically don’t like the idea of not being with him. We really do have a good thing going. And I think my insecurities have the potential ruin it more thoroughly and efficiently than anything else.

Does anyone ever really know why they’re loved, anyway? Is it necessary? Is it possible?

1. Did you not realize we have a sacred fraternal order? Cause we do. [↩]
2. This is not because of something he’s done or anything in particular about us. I’ve tended to feel this way even while in shitty, ill-advised relationships. [↩]

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The other key, of course, is Pong.

If someone with a not too terribly impressive amount of judgment were to come to me and ask, face so straight and tone so earnest: “Quizzical Pussy, what’s the key to a good relationship?” my first priority would be to not snort while I was doing all the laughing. Really, the “I Make Wonderful Romantic Decisions, And In Case You Were Wondering, Yes, That’s Sarcasm” sash I was awarded in 2004 didn’t win itself.

And then I’d be tempted to say “blind luck” because that’s certainly how I’ve landed in the one I’m in. But then I’d give my real answer.

Inside jokes.

Yes, love and trust and patience. Absolutely. And fabulous sex usually doesn’t hurt either. But it’s harder to quantify those first three things, and sometimes even tricky to detect when they’re fading away. And the sex? It’s possible to have fabulous sex with someone you actively dislike.

But if you’re always laughing together at things that would elicit shrugs and eyebrow twitches from all the rest of humanity, you have this secret language. You’re each choosing to be in closed, joyous company, which in my experience is the last thing you want when you’re fundamentally unhappy with each other. In essence, inside jokes are an old magic that transports you to the island nation of Us, a place of moderate climate and ruthless border control. You are never dragged to Us, although you can often convince the other person you’re already there just by smiling and nodding politely. But there will still be an ocean between you.

And this isn’t just romantic relationships. Not at all. I never feel like I’m fully friends with someone until we have at least one inside joke together. We’re just on the shore, friendly together but sharing no homeland.

Maybe this is just me. I could be biased by the amazing sex Laramy and I had yesterday between spates of laughing at things that are sheer nonsense to everyone else. I could be placing too much value on laughter for this to apply to anyone but me. But that would be my answer anyway.

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Guess whose desktop PC bricked out the day after her computer genius boyfriend went home after visiting? Yeah, totally me. And I may be a nerdy in my useless, fact-spouting, “It’s a Fact” girl way, but I don’t know enough to get myself out of this kind of mess. That is a fact.

Laramy, aforementioned computer genius boyfriend, insisted on making a special trip back up here yesterday after work to fix it for me, which he did. Utterly. Then he insisted on taking me out to dinner. Why, you ask? What did I do to deserve all this, you ask? Nothing. I’m just unreasonably lucky and he’s incredibly amazing.

And the very best part? I got to see him an extra bonus day.

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