Not that we’ve actually had the breakup talk. No. While he likes to advertise himself as valuing communication very highly in a relationship, I’ve gathered that his ideal communication style involves his partner being able to read his mind so that he never actually has to say what he thinks or feels. (God I fucking love Scorpio men. What the hell was I thinking?) So the fact that I’ve indicated that I want my space heater back, while expressing no interest in actually spending time with him, seems to be enough “communication” for him about the status of our relationship.

The thing that has infuriated me about him — the same thing I initially found really compelling, naturally — has been his apparent apathy toward me. While there’s something to be said (by assholes, to aspiring assholes) for “playing it cool,” this, I think, has been extreme. And because I experienced my father as indifferent, emotionally unavailable, and unable to express any kind of love or affection toward me, of course I jumped at the chance to get romantically involved with someone who bore all these qualities. In fact, my first thought when we started dating was, “Oh, I bet he just has to warm up to me, and then he’ll totally drop his guard and be this great, affectionate, concerned, loving boyfriend.” Again… was I fucking high or something?

So anyway, the fact that he is letting things go at this — not expressing any disappointment, sadness, or really any emotion at all, not even confusion! — without any discussion is making me even crazier. While I can’t tell whether his indifference is genuine or feigned for the sake of protecting himself, his lack of reaction to this gesture of closure is making me think he really doesn’t give a shit at all. And that feels just plain crappy to me. I mean, I liked this guy a lot (or thought I did). What the hell is wrong with him? Why does he feel nothing for me whatsoever? And if he does feel nothing, why has he continued to string me along and see me for two months? What the fuck?

I don’t even think I want to know the answers at this point. I think it would be too devastating to find out for 100% certain that he really just didn’t care, and didn’t like me all that much, or whatever. I don’t need this kind of bullshit. The real question is why I let things get this far in the first place.

Happily, I seem to have found the answer in the form of a book called Getting the Love You Want, by the psychotherapist Harville Hendrix and his wife, Helen Marie Hunt. A little introduction to Hendrix’s theory of romantic relationships, and why we tend to fall for the people who are best equipped to hurt and disappoint us, is available online. I strongly recommend the book for anyone who has noticed their destructive relationship patterns or is in a particularly painful (but not abusive — that’s a whole other can of worms) committed relationship.

So that’s been distracting, but I look forward to having that ugliness out of my life in a couple of days. Meanwhile I am still dating Luke and Seth, and still questioning what it is I’m trying to get out of those relationships, and what’s reasonable to ask for and expect, given that I’m pretty much dead set on getting the fuck out of this city by the end of the summer.

MFA programs have already begun notifying admitted students, which has created a new kind of stress in my life, exacerbated by my helplessness in the process at this point. The best I can hope for is to find some healthy obsession to dive into for the next two months while I wait for programs to call (or not call). It would be nice if I could actually start writing again…

I finished my MFA applications less than a week ago and have been anxiously awaiting the recovery of my creative drive. Having attended a reading tonight featuring Aimee Bender and Sean Stewart, I think the moment has come.

My tendency here has been to write like I knew what I was talking about, and even when there was uncertainty, to contain that for you in a neat package, to make sure you understood it was manageable. Which meant I had to believe, too, that it was manageable. It took some work. This is part of why I haven’t written in a month or two. As time closed in on me, my anxiety gained dimensions I couldn’t measure, much less quarantine. Eventually it swallowed me, right around the holidays — as such overwhelming negativity is wont to do — and now I am back on the other side, still a little fragile for the whole experience, but feeling my way back into functionality.

Two months ago it seemed everything was about sex, or at least featured it prominently. My sex drive has been gone for weeks now, and though I am still dating three boys (god help me), they all know it and at least two of them know better than to press the issue. Is it ever really about sex, for me? When I want to act tough and cold, I say it is. But no. It’s about vulnerability. Softness, the kind of softness that breaks with careless handling. How does one operate in the world like a clenched fist? How can one feel anything at all? All I could feel was the tension, the fear that held me in and back.

Is it ever about sex? My interest in the pain of ropes and knives and teeth has dissolved, at least for now. I don’t need more pain right now; it doesn’t take anything away, just bruises the tenderness that I’m trying to heal. It doesn’t distract me. Nothing has been able to distract me. Maybe that’s the scariest thing about that depth of depression. There is so little in the way of consolation, except the gentle kindness of someone who cares. Everything else is meaningless. And maybe even that is sometimes not enough to get through. The pain of isolation is the worst possible aspect of that state, for me: to feel absolutely sure that my uncontrolled feeling frightens even good people away, and that the rest could not fathom it even if they wanted to. Thank god I found out I was wrong about that last part. This was my first major depressive episode in a while, and definitely one in which the turning point was clear to me. Such is progress.

Obviously I’m writing all this at the risk of sounding insufferable, one way or another. Again I fall into the trap of writing only when some semblance of clarity imposes itself upon my self-perception. But I’m feeling forgiving tonight, so on I go.

Vulnerability. Intimacy. Abandonment. Conflict. Connection. Wholeness. Completion. Integrity. Authenticity. Spontaneity. Self-awareness. Trust. Innocence. Courage. Curiosity. These, I guess, are the things that have been weighing on my mind over the past couple of weeks. My goals don’t really change; my values, at their core, only clarify over time, and cycle in importance. I want what I’ve always wanted.

Jung talks a lot about wholeness as a goal. There is a difference between wholeness and completion, though. We cannot be made whole simply by introducing another person or people into our lives. We become whole by expanding our self-awareness to encompass all aspects of ourselves, to acknowledge the depth and breadth of our selfhood. Maybe it’s impossible, at least functionally, to fully achieve this. Completion, on the other hand, is definitely impossible within our lifetimes. And yet we yearn for it; this is, in fact, the foundation of our incompleteness. As humans, we want. We are capable of seeing what’s missing, how things could be better. And, pleasure-loving creatures that we are, we want whatever it is we’ve thought of. It’s never over. The Buddhist mentality may be better understood as an attempt to lighten up our approach to our desires. They’re never going away; stop taking them so seriously! No matter how many desires you fulfill, there will always be more. Freedom comes from not letting them rule your life, and from recognizing that having what you want is not going to make you happy.

I imagine I’m preaching at least partly to the choir. Or then again you may be wondering what the hell my point is. That’s a good question. I guess I’m just rambling. So if fulfilling our desires isn’t the path to happiness, what is? I don’t know. All I’m saying is that there is that void in all of us, the yearning, for most people totally unarticulated, sometimes even unrecognized. It is part of the human condition to feel this emptiness, this incurable ache. And yet we are conditioned to ignore it, to pathologize it when it can’t be ignored, to hide it from each other. And doesn’t this just increase the pain? We are alone and shamed for our acknowledgment of incompleteness. I wonder how a universal recognition of this as a fundamental human experience would change the way we treat each other, the ways that we could interact and live and love in the world. Is it so wrong to want to bond over a shared pain, to make that the keystone of compassion?

From the start of my current job, I began to idolize one of my coworkers. She is my age — a couple of months younger than I am, in fact — but just so amazingly smart and insightful and, perhaps most astoundingly to me, compassionate. She can see everyone in a forgiving light, imagining keenly into their wounds. This touches on what I see as some of my biggest weaknesses: my unwillingness to be soft with people unless they’ve already revealed weakness to me, and my capacity for cruelty when I’ve been hurt. The amount of personal power she holds because of her compassion is what really amazes me. Yes, she can still be hurt, but she can never be psychologically victimized. Her sense of self seems unshakeable. Her sense of purpose is crystal clear. I can barely imagine what it must be like. I am almost afraid to want the latter. My devotion to this image of her makes me anxious, because I recognize on some level that it’s a projection and that someday I will discover she isn’t perfect, and when I find this out, I’ll be both disappointed and relieved. I guess, not surprisingly, there’s a part of me that wants to find unmitigated good somewhere in the world, preferably in a human being. Yet, for the moment, her presence in my life is enough to make me tentatively reach for these things: to develop firmness of purpose, to know and love and forgive myself completely, to draw my boundaries and take care of myself and still take care of everyone around me in a way that makes them feel honored and loved and seen. Wow, just writing that out makes it seem incredibly daunting. One thing at a time, I guess. I’m working on the sense-of-self part at the moment.

I’ve done a lot of abstracting in this post. I guess I’ll have to come back and flesh it out with the concrete events that spurred all of this lofty stuff… all the melodramatic stuff of soap operas. Tune in next time.

Flash forward to this morning, a day before our scheduled date. FINALLY he IMs me (I’d held out to see how long he would wait: consider that he didn’t even bother to check in with me during the week to see how my cold was progressing. Ugh). Below is an excerpt from the ensuing conversation:

11:43:40 AM Luke: I was thinking about seeing you tomorrow
11:43:57 AM Jana: that’s good. you remembered
[…]
11:45:52 AM Jana: were you thinking anything in particular about tomorrow?
11:46:52 AM Luke: I’m excited to try the restaurant we’re going to
11:47:17 AM Luke: I was also thinking about fucking you
11:48:18 AM Luke: both good things to think about
11:48:20 AM Jana: sounds like a good time all around
11:48:36 AM Luke: and I was wondering how you were feeling
11:48:42 AM Luke: so I’m glad you’re over the cold

OK. To recap: “I’m excited about food and sex and I hope you’re not sick anymore so we can have food and sex.”

This has got to be the stupidest guy I’ve dated since, like, um, middle school. EVEN THE GUYS IN MIDDLE SCHOOL were nicer than this.

I just can’t understand it. Why does he think it’s appropriate to talk to me this way? Apparently my conversation with him a couple weeks ago about not treating me like a fucktoy hasn’t sunk in. I’m beginning to wonder whether he’s even human.

If I’m trying to give him a break, maybe I would guess that he thought he had bought some leeway with me for bringing me soup last weekend, so he could go back to being vulgar with me. And to be fair, things did start out this way between us back in August, with no concern for each other’s humanity. But things were different then. I desperately wanted sex, was still recovering from my breakup with Poly Dude, and was happy to objectify and be objectified in turn to get my needs met. But now I am getting sex, and I’m dating someone who is good to me in many ways. While it would be fun to have another sex partner, I’m not willing to compromise my self-esteem for that privilege — and anyway, the one thing I’m really missing is a sense of emotional intimacy with someone I’m sleeping with. So, yes, things have changed a lot since I was last talking to Dumbass. And he isn’t aware of any of this. And so he may be acting inappropriately because it’s the dynamic we’ve established and he has no idea what I really want from him, because I haven’t exactly, you know, told him. Aside from the “respect me, beeotch!” speech, of course.

But come on. It would have at least been polite to say hi during the week and ask how I was feeling, considering he SAT AROUND ALL WEEK DOING NOTHING.

Given all of this information, here are the options I’m considering:

1. Go out on my date with him tomorrow night, as planned, and wait to see whether he does anything else to piss me off that will push me over the edge and make me yell at him for being such a dumbfuck (possibly in front of an entire restaurant full of people).
2. Go out to dinner with the intention of telling him what a jackass he is either while we’re eating or directly after he pays the bill.
3. Go out to dinner with him tomorrow night, order an assload of food, make myself sick on said food, then beg off the rest of the date and go home.
4. Stand him up.
5. Wait until he comes online again (he hasn’t been on in a few hours and I know he’s going out tonight), then tell him everything I’ve said above, effectively explaining to him that I will not be going out with him tomorrow night or ever again. (This option runs the risk of his not being online again until tomorrow, which would mean I’d be canceling the date within hours of its scheduled commencement. Why I’m so concerned with being considerate, I don’t know.)
6. Send him an email containing this information, immediately.

That’s about all I’ve got. I’m worried that if I go on the date I’ll chicken out of telling him off. I’m also worried that I’m being too hard on him or failing to consider some more compassionate perspective that would make his sins seem more forgivable.

God I am such a fucking sucker.

I’m leaning toward the email, though that seems rather cowardly and rash. Am I being rash? Am I being unreasonable?

Honestly, if I didn’t have to go on this date, I could get a lot done on Sunday night for my grad school applications.

Full story: I started getting sick last night and thought I could tough it out for my date with Dumbass this evening. Unfortunately, my physical discomfort won out over my sense of obligation. He offered to reschedule when he saw my gchat status (yay indirect modes of communication!). Then he offered to bring me soup.

First thought: how sweet! I mean, really. Holy shit.

Second thought: maybe he is just offering because he knows I wouldn’t ask him to do that, and is thereby trying to earn himself points without actually making any effort.

Third thought: only one way to find out!

So I told him he could bring me soup. And he said okay. Then I went home and spent an hour cleaning my room. He finally showed up around 6:45 with ramen from some Japanese place downtown and we settled into bed with bowls and watched some Daria. Then we cuddled. Then we had a nice fuck. Then we cuddled some more. Then he said he had to go to the grocery store before it closed (he was borrowing his roommate’s car… I’m not sure this is really a legitimate reason to leave after less than two hours, but then again, this was technically a charity visit and not a proper date).

Other thoughts from the day (in chronological order):

1. When Dumbass (whose pseudonym Luke is now being reinstated on grounds of good behavior) saw I was feeling crappy online, he called me “sweetie.” I was surprised by this. After all, we’d only been on one date, and I’d already expressed serious doubts about the appropriateness of our continuing to see each other. It seems a little familiar, doesn’t it? I mean, I don’t even use terms of endearment with Seth except for the purely physical ones (hot stuff, handsome). Then while we were fucking he called me “sweetheart.” Also strange. I’m not going to pretend I don’t like terms of endearment. I do. But I like them because of the level of emotional intimacy they imply. So what kind of stunt is Luke trying to pull, using these with me?
2. I think it might be time to institute an actual points system for the boys I’m dating. After all, the messy tally I’m used to keeping is just not going to cut it for comparing three people at once. So I’m going to start assigning point values (positive and negative) to various behaviors, statements, etc… beginning immediately. I’ll be posting and updating the list here.
3. Luke is definitely the one I find most attractive of all the guys I am dating at the moment. Nom nom nom nom nom. The blondish hair, nice narrow jaw (heart-shaped face), tiny waist and triangle it makes from his shoulders, hipbones protruding like cup handles, freckles across his back. Lovely cock, of course. And I kind of wonder how much more prone my physical attraction to him makes me to forgive his faults, and to think about becoming more emotionally attached to him. You can’t deny the power of animal magnetism. I think we also have better sexual chemistry… Anyway, the part of me that hates superficiality is upset by this realization, and the rest of me is like, “Jeez, give it a rest already.” I like being totally turned on looking at a guy and touching him. It makes a lot of things way easier to deal with. And now he has earned major points by rescheduling our second date an bringing me soup instead. I could be cynical about this — he knows how to get back on my good side though it may not indicate anything major about how interested he is in me — but I can’t decide whether to go this route. Naturally, I’d like to believe he’s actually a good guy, despite all prior evidence to the contrary.
4. FUCK.

Now it’s only 9pm and I have the rest of the evening to chillax, maybe work a little, and sleep sleep sleep. I’m glad I didn’t go on that date. And I even got the cuddling! I give this night a 9.5 of 10 (minus .5 only for not getting more cuddling).

P.S. He is a good kisser.

By that time he had already brought me well beyond my comfort level several times, but I am apparently the kind of sub who accepts as much pain as possible to please her partner… it’s a test of will and a test of my submission. Maybe this is typical or necessary. I don’t know. But I was thinking throughout this process that, well, if there really are people out there who experience typically painful sensations as physically pleasurable, I am sure as fuck not one of them. I am in it for the sub’s high, the chance to get out of my head, the totally  foreign experience of giving up control.

Anyhow, after I told him that tears were “fine,” he kissed me some more and then said quietly, “I’m glad. Because they really work for me.” This, I thought, was pretty twisted, though, you know, definitely not the first time I’ve heard that. My ex-husband, for one, felt the same way. Nothing could soften him — and then get him hard — like seeing me cry. I so rarely let him see me that vulnerable. And then there’s Luke (who, due to his egregious behavior on our first date, will henceforth be called, simply, Dumbass) who really gets off when I call him Daddy while he’s fucking me. So: being hit so hard that I cry, which hasn’t happened since my father used to spank me when I was five, and then calling someone Daddy while he’s fucking the daylights out of me. I really wonder how this is warping my already traumatized psyche and exacerbating my intimacy/father issues.

Since my night with Seth, I’ve been feeling really fragile. I had a first date with a new OkC guy last night, whom I casually refer to as Nice Guy, but whose official pseudonym here will be Michael (since he reminds me of a Michael I once knew). After dinner we went back to his place, which may have been a tease move on my part since I knew he wouldn’t get to see me naked, but we watched some TV and cuddled on the couch. It was so nice just to have this soft, warm, grateful body next to mine, happy to simply be touching, holding. We made out a little bit before I told him I was going to leave. He responded with the profoundly stupid “You’re no fun!” which I still haven’t forgiven him for, but given that Dumbass gets another chance, it would hardly be fair to kick this otherwise very sweet (if awkward) guy to the curb. I am supposed to see him again next weekend. I have some vague hope that he might provide the kind of gratitude that I sense might be missing for me in my current interactions: the gratitude for my presence, the desire to keep me there — all of me, I mean, my full presence, not just my body or my willingness to have sex. Maybe i’m dreaming, but I’m usually not too far off with these things. He’s really lonely and I think he values that human contact, the emotional intimacy, and is starved of it much more than either Seth or Dumbass. And I could use that kind of attention.

Tomorrow night I’m supposed to see Dumbass again, and I’ve already told him to expect me to sleep over that night (just to make sure he doesn’t do anything fucking idiotic like make breakfast plans with his dumbass friends again).

[EDIT: I just realized I didn’t explain how it came about that I am giving him another chance. Well, I gave him several days to explain himself. By Friday (we’d gone out on Saturday night), still nothing, so I told him we needed to finish our conversation discussing what I needed from him if he wanted to see me again. He said, OK, soon. The only reason I said anything to him instead of dumping his ass without explanation is that I thought it would be more mature to talk about it with him. Anyway, an hour after that little exchange, I IMed him again and told him to forget it, I didn’t want to talk about it, I just didn’t think it was going to work out: I also thought that he just wasn’t interested enough to make an effort. He argued with me a little and made the excuse that he had been totally preoccupied with his contract ending at work, blah blah. He also had a bad headache that night (ha) so I told him we could continue discussing later. “But don’t wait too long,” I told him. So on Sunday he IMed me and FINALLY fucking apologized for being such an asshole to me the previous Sunday morning. I made him grovel for a while before agreeing to give him another chance. So there’s the story. I’m still wary — after all, why the fuck did it take him a week to admit that he felt bad about it, if he felt as bad as he said he did? My guess is that he somehow didn’t realize what a fucking dumbshit thing it was to do until he, like, talked to a female friend about it and she smacked him upside the head. In any case, my faith in his judgment is severely compromised. Here’s a pattern of mine: a guy does a dumbshit thing and I freak out, and he apologizes, and I’m like, “What the hell were you thinking when you did that?” And they say, “I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.” Well, I’m sorry, guys, but that’s not fucking good enough. I just have such a hard time believing that men can be just that completely oblivious. There must be ulterior motives! Unconscious urges, resentments, power plays, whatever. And I fucking expect you to be capable of digging them up and talking to me about them so we can make sure that shit doesn’t happen again. Is this unrealistic of me? Is it delusional? Should I just believe that guys really are that stupid, and let it go?]

Anyway, I’m a little nervous because I’m sure Dumbass will be looking forward to, you know, beating the crap out of me. I just hope I’m up for it by then. My period started yesterday and maybe that’s why I’m feeling so weepy and fragile today. I have fucked with my birth control pill cycle once again to accommodate my partners’ sexual requests. I really need to stop doing that. I think it’s affecting my sanity. It would be healthy to give myself a few days to unravel and let go of all the bullshit that’s been piling up. Right now I just want to be curled up with someone, limbs entwined, breathing slowly, warm, watching TV, not saying a word… and I’m 99% sure that is not going to happen tomorrow, unless I really snap before then and ask for it, and even then I think I will get a less-than-gentlemanly “no” for an answer.

I think it’s painfully (heh) clear that one, or a couple, of my issues is coming to the forefront in these varied interactions. Sure, I’ve got this consensual, acceptable way to give up a great deal of autonomy in a certain realm of my relationships with men. But it only highlights to me how much it bleeds out into all my other interactions with them, in ways that aren’t healthy at all. It’s still so difficult to expect a guy to respect me, and to draw the line when he doesn’t. It’s still my habit to do what I know they want me to do, without ever saying a word about what I’m giving up for them. This was one of Poly Dude’s big problems with me, and while I always knew it was an issue, I guess I never saw it so clearly until now. I mean, look at me: I’m doing it even for guys who I know I have no future with, who I couldn’t possibly have a future with. Who I wouldn’t even want to have a future with, if I were totally honest with myself. There is nothing to be gained by sacrificing my desires here, except this little bit of attention that I’m afraid I would lose. But who cares? It’s not like I can’t find it elsewhere. I mean, really. This seems to be the kind of arrangement that most guys would love to have: a hot girl has crazy sex with you on a regular basis and expects nothing more in return than honesty, a little chivalry, and a proper date, on which she will happily go dutch. It’s not like I would be hurting for candidates, amirite? But it doesn’t matter. The idea of bringing my needs and desires into the open is scary enough in itself to prevent me from doing it. It is probably one of my greatest fears.

What the hell is wrong with me — by which I mean, how do I fix this?

i have worked through the weekend. technically there is one more day of weekend but it is booked solid for working. weeking workend. i don’t miss my social life because it’s tenuous on the best weeks. i do miss cheeseburgers with sam, and sunny days on hawthorne, the easygoing ambience of portland. but i don’t know what else i miss. the last months of portland i was clawing to get out. i kept wishing to be unnamed elsewheres. sometimes i named them after boys: LA, boston. what a fucking joke.

everything is closing in, flattening, so that nothing can look only good or only bad–all the facets merging to make a lightless gray.

i am compiling possible pieces for my writing sample and i have nine that have some hope, and only one of them is not about botched romance, and of the other eight, only two others are not about some very real piece of my history. broken boys in rows like dolls. i read travis’s livejournal as i sometimes do and as of two weeks ago there is some girl, some crazy-about-him girl, and he is overwhelmed with joy and gratitude and his ever-present fear. my old professor tells me that his latest ex-wife is sending him emails twice a week, saying stupid shit, and that all he wants is to have a real conversation about the end of their marriage, and all she can do is pull this adolescent passive-aggressive bullshit. sam is dating a girl and he is happy and excited and, i’m sure, good to her. a friend in portland goes through the same motions, meeting boys, losing them, walking away in disgust, wondering what’s wrong with him. i tell him, you’re fine. your standards are reasonable. other friends find no one, and keep waiting and dreaming. others talk about romance, about commitment, and their partnerships make me want to run thousands of miles away from their bicker, bicker, bicker. a famous okcupid couple has it out on their journal posts, airing their ugly secrets for their bloodthirsty friends. i read through all six hundred comments.

it doesn’t matter what the story is. i feel like i am drowning in them, they are all sounding the same. right now, i don’t feel like i believe in this kind of happiness. it either doesn’t exist, or it is far out of my grasp, and quite possibly i am kicking it away at the same time that i reach for it, exhausting myself at both ends, pushing and pulling.

this is what i get for spending the weekend alone.

i’m tired of myself now.

it is the hope that kills me. i have put it aside to make room for other things, and now i’m afraid to pick it up again. tell me: is it worth it?

I ended up agreeing to go out on a date with Luke last weekend. The good: he looked pretty much exactly like his pictures, but for a slightly weaker chin, so he was pretty cute. He managed to hold up his end of an intellectual conversation. He paid for everything (though really we just had drinks at several different bars). He had a yummy body (pale and skinny and hairless, with protruding hipbones and a tiny waist and freckles across his back). And the sex was good; I was impressed with his stamina and relentless enthusiasm.

The bad is, actually, too much for me to fully go into at this point. In summary, I really should have paid attention to the red flags I’d seen before I’d even met him. Yep. How many times do I need to relearn this lesson? Anyway, he displayed abominably bad manners, and while some of this can be chalked up to his total lack of experience with girls he can slap around in bed ( “oh wait, she’s not just a fucktoy? ” ), I’m also less than impressed with his communication skills and his ability to, like, not be a stupid fucking indecisive flake. OK then. I was willing to give him another chance and explain to him the rules of etiquette (primarily: hi, I’m still human, you need to treat me with some goddamn respect and appreciation if you want anything from me), but his ability to even allot me some time to finish this conversation is apparently nonexistent. SO NOT IMPRESSED. So I think I am going to just tell him TTYN. (By the way, I’ve become addicted to the new MTV show “Paris Hilton’s My New BFF.” OMGWTFLOL.)

The good news is that going on a date with this dude who may justifiably now be labeled a Total Creep (and maybe many of you would have given him that label two months ago, but I guess I’m more generous/naive than that) has made me appreciate Seth a lot more. It seems the key to keeping that relationship in calm waters is to just avoid all possible party-related interactions in his company. I don’t deny that part of what makes me somewhat comfortable with this arrangement — more comfortable than I might otherwise be — is a healthy dose of denial about the extent and range of his other relationships. On the bright side, he has modified his OkCupid profile to indicate that he is way too busy to start dating anyone new. So I guess I’m on the permanent schedule, even if it is just once a week.

Meanwhile, I’ve started seeing a therapist — an intern, a student of the California Institute of Integral Studies. The first session (intake) went okay, but then again I didn’t let her talk much; she just asked background questions. The second session, this past week, was a little rougher. I once again talked almost the entire session, but I ended up talking a fair bit about poly and kink and giving her a perfunctory education on these things. I’m not sure whether her total ignorance will end up being problematic in the therapeutic relationship. I did manage to talk about nothing but Seth the entire session, which I thought was pretty funny. Relationships are a great diversion, like a tangled ball of yarn you can just sit and pick through for hours without getting much of anywhere. And I guess they make a good icebreaker for me. I talk about relationships to everyone — even to complete strangers like you! The deeper issues, whatever those are, will have to be worked up to. Earned, so to speak. Ha.

The other change that’s happened in me since my date with Luke is that I seem to be more eager to go out and find some more people to date. Who knows why? Maybe the one date was enough of a blow to my self-esteem that I feel like I need to go trolling for someone who will appreciate me more. And yes, even more than Seth. And with whom I can have a great intellectual conversation — that would be great. And as long as we’re wishing, how about some emotional bonding too? Not to get greedy or anything.

Nothing much else is happening, sorry to report. See you next week, by which time I hope to have at least two new prospective boytoys.

I saw Seth a few days ago for the first time in over a week, since he had been sick the week before. I wasn’t feeling much like going out with him, since I had a lot of shit I needed to get done and anyway I seem to be perpetually in a state of talking myself out of the relationship. But I showed up and then he showed up and the first thing he did was give me a mix CD for my long vacation drive. Aww! I’m a sucker for gifts. And it was a kinda cute thing to do. So the date went decently. After dinner we wandered over to Mitchell’s for ice cream and while we were eating it, he asked me, “So are we dating yet?”

“We’ve always been dating. We go out on dates,” I told him.

“I guess that’s true!” he responded, though not exactly happily.

“Are you trying to bring up the girlfriend/boyfriend thing again?”

“I was mostly kidding,” he said.

“OK.” I ate some more ice cream. “Wait — mostly kidding? I almost let that slip.”

He grinned at me uncomfortably from behind his sugar cone.

“I have to say I really don’t get the difference between a girlfriend and someone you’re dating when it comes to the polyamorous lifestye,” I admitted.

“That’s a good point.” He thought for a moment. “I guess it has to do with the expectation of continuity.”

I told him my only real hangup at this point is the whole sleeping-with-a-million people thing. We talked about STD testing and such. I told him that I knew it was my thing at this point, and that I just needed to decide whether I wanted to continue to accept so much risk to my “sexual health,” as they say.

He said he understood. “You haven’t decided whether you are committed to poly as a lifestyle or whether it’s just a passing thing, so it makes sense.”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“Well, if you were committed to the lifestyle you might be willing to take more risks for it because it’s a principle around which you organize your life.”

I looked at him. “Are you saying you want me to organize my life around you?”

He laughed at that and apologized for pushing so hard. I asked him why it was so important to him. And then he told me that it was because the last girl he’d dated from OkC had just up and disappeared after a month of dating. He was trying to prevent that from happening again.

Unfortunately, I failed to take this opportunity to reassure him that I would not disappear without warning. Honestly, it’s something I’d consider doing in general, but he’s been too nice to allow me to justify it.

Driving home that night, I realized that he was probably sticking with me — and interested in dating me in some consistent, reliable manner — for reasons that had little if anything to do with me as a person. He wants to be wanted; he wants to be able to consider this experience stable. And I guess that’s what I want, too, or at least the most basic level of it. Which is why it’s okay right now that we don’t have very much in common, that no crazy sparks are flying. We are, perhaps, just serving each other’s narcissistic ends in a perfectly complementary way.

Listening to his mix CD on the drive yesterday, I skipped about half the songs. Approximately two-thirds of the way through the compilation I began to seriously wonder whether this was just some random travelling music mix he’d had on his computer that he had simply burned and given to me — not made specifically for me, but presented that way in order to endear him to me. Am I unreasonably suspicious? Granted, he really has no good sense of my musical taste, nor has he had much of an opportunity to get one. But then why make a mix CD? The songs, for the most part, clearly aren’t about him, or me, or “us.”  This possibility of having been given a generic mix CD depressed me. I’m also not sure whether I should bring it up, and how I could do so without seeming like an ungrateful bitch.

In other news, last night I received my first message from Luke in something like six weeks (i.e. whenever I last posted about him). It said:

Hi Jana,

I haven’t heard from you in a while. How are you doing?

Luke

What the hell? Luckily I was tipsy when I got this, and responded with:

i took an update in your profile a while back to mean that you and the girl had decided to take things between you more seriously. given that you wrote that you were looking only for new friends, and that you and i had already established that you wanted something more than “friendship” from me, i concluded that any possibility of interaction between us had been voided. the fact that you’re writing me now suggests that something has changed on that front, whether or not your girlfriend (or however she’s currently labeled) is aware of it. so what’s the story? in other words: what do you want?

This morning I got his reply:

Yep, the girl and I tried to take things more seriously. It turns out we were just meant to be friends. We left things on good terms. The result is that I’m single.

What I want is to take you out sometime. If you’re available, that is.

If not, no worries. I hope you’re well!

Ugh. Of course, being the person I am, I’m considering letting him take me out, despite the following red flags:

• He was willing to lie to the last girl he was dating regarding sleeping with someone else, which means
• He didn’t respect the last girl he was dating, and
• He was willing to risk her sexual health for this secret fling. Furthermore,
• He didn’t have the balls to tell me that he’d decided with his girl-thing to take things more seriously; he left it up to his OkC profile to inform me. Fucking lame. Finally:
• He doesn’t seem very interesting as a person.

I’m not sure I have it in me to date two guys at once with whom I am far more sexually than intellectually/emotionally compatible. It might get… tedious. And depressing. ALSO, for all I know he could be lying about having broken up with the other chick! Christ.

The reasons I might let him take me out:

• Free dinner. (And he’s a foodie = excellent free dinner.)
• The sex would be good, most likely.
• I am technically in a “poly” relationship and the amount of risk I’m taking being in it is totally stupid because I am not even reaping the benefit of that risk, which is that I get to sleep with whomever I want. So, like, I should start sleeping with more people.

That’s all I’ve got. Oh wait:

• My life is a sociological experiment focusing specifically on male-female relationships. More data!

So, it’s time to vote! Should I let him take me out? If yes, should I include caveats/conditions? Which?

Of course, dear readers, that excuse doesn’t mollify you in your unending quest for boredom-allieviating Internet drivel, does it?

So here are a few morsels for you to devour and shit out undigested.

Last weekend I attended SF’s Folsom Street Fair for all of 15 minutes before being irritated, then overwhelmed, by the impassable horde, and finally whisked away by Seth to a party, at which i was presumably his “date.” At said party, for which I was lamentably underdressed (not wanting to embarrass myself in my Hot Topic faux-leather), I had the dubious pleasure of watching Seth make out with pretty much every girl there. One of them in particular I found excruciatingly undeserving of my presence, so when he invited her to dinner with some small subgroup of the partygoers (myself included) I half-feigned sickness (in truth I was pretty sick of the whole scene, including him, by that point) and retreated to the safety of my sister’s company. Jesus christ. No more poly parties for me, ever, especially in the company of that attention whore Seth. It is starting to squick me out how many people he is actually more or less “actively” sexually involved with. Fortunately, telling myself that I have more urgent matters to worry about has successfully quelled my anxiety. It’s becoming painfully clear that I really don’t have time to maintain a relationship more serious than the one I have with Seth, so I should stop complaining about having the opportunity to get laid once a week or so.

On another, completely unrelated, note, please do yourself, as a reflective, authenticity-seeking human being, a favor and read this.

I’ll try to update once a week, but I probably won’t get into full swing again until 2009.

I saw Seth twice last week. The first time, over dinner, I did manage to mine him for information that would lead me to believe he is a wounded, sensitive soul like yours truly, and that was basically a success. The fact that he isn’t batshit-crazy means that I am not tearing my hair out over the prospect of spending my life with him (or is that, dare I suggest it, a sign that I might be growing saner in the realm of relationships? A girl can dream…) but I’m pretty happy with that.

On Saturday night he met me at the Makeout Room and proceeded to drag me unexpectedly to some Google party a few miles away. If you didn’t know this about me, I really dislike surprises that involve putting me in a room full of strangers for any length of time. I’m completely socially inept and it takes me hours, sometimes days, to mentally prepare for that kind of event. (For this reason I am terrified of this weekend’s Folsom Street Fair, which will be my first, in the company of Seth’s poly entourage no less.) So I knocked back a second G&T (jesus, were they strong; props to the Makeout Room) and we headed over. Well. First of all, it was a costume party which of course I was not prepared for. Luckily the cocktails were working their magic and I didn’t care much about any faux pas I may have committed. I was served champagne and was promptly drunk, but managed to keep deadly quiet throughout our appearance. I got to meet Seth’s long-term partner, who seemed nice enough, and her other boyfriend. I also got to listen to conversations among several Google employees and their lovers or whatever. Let me tell you, I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so stupid in my life. And I enjoy dating nerds, or at least I continue to gravitate toward them, but these were SuperNerds. Which is cool; I respect formidable levels of intelligence. But man oh man. I felt like some brainless piece of arm candy. I guess there’s a first time for everything.

In the morning after brunch, Seth walked me back to my car and referred to himself casually as my boyfriend. Now, I could have been a good little girl and let this slip right by, then spend the next twenty-four hours agonizing about it with my friends. Instead, I cocked an eyebrow and said, “Boyfriend, eh?” He seemed to be caught off-guard, and began to backtrack. I assured him that I wasn’t trying to argue; I was just curious about whether he really meant it. After all, this was our fourth date. I was, of course, flattered; it’s clear that he likes me, though I honestly can’t comprehend why (if he doesn’t need fixing, then what the hell good am I?). But I hate when people – no, let’s face it, I hate when guys say shit like that just to make a girl go all soft and fuzzy. If someone wants to use a word like “boyfriend,” well, there are expectations attached to that. But then I thought about it: what the hell is so special about being a girlfriend to someone who’s poly and already in a primary relationship? This commitment that in my previous relationships has meant that I must take myself off the market and certainly not sleep with anyone else suddenly loses all of its regulatory import. All I can figure the label to mean is that we like to spend time with each other (and fuck) and plan to continue to do so for as long as that remains true and other things don’t get in the way. Big fucking deal. I don’t even think we know each other well enough to be able to offer serious emotional support. And besides, it’s clear to me that he gets most, if not all, of that from his partner. My obligations are basically zero. His obligations to me are basically zero. And my expectations of him haven’t changed at all. To wit:

Expectations of a Boyfriend (as previously defined by Jana and as still defined in monogamous situations):

• be completely enthralled with me at all times
• read my mind
• understand all of my crazy bullshit and display infinite patience with it
• split my esthetician bills
• plan major events for my birthday
• promise to be with me forever
• plus all of below.

Expectations of Seth as a “boyfriend”:

• be a decent human being
• always tell me the truth when I ask for it
• honor commitments
• be respectful of me
• be great in bed
• think I’m pretty awesome.

But, see, I require all of the latter list from people who choose to spend any time with me at all (except for the great in bed part). So, even if I hadn’t scared Seth temporarily away from the word “boyfriend,” the only thing that would have changed was that I would feel like less of a pathetic waste of flesh for being Single. Which is in itself pretty goddamn pathetic.