There was a guy online that was nice looking. And his information said he was a physician and he relatively recently moved to the City.
Now, I have a rather long history—professional and social—with physicians, surgeons mostly, and I have found that I have a lot of rapport with them, at least intellectually. For awhile there when I was an undergrad at Carnegie Mellon in Biological Sciences, I gave serious thought to becoming a physician myself.
I would have been a surgeon, of course. People who know me, for better or worse, who both already knew and didn’t know I was considering Medicine as a career, would see the fit.
So anyway, there were very basic pleasantries exchanged in messages and I, wanting to get out more, wanting to meet new people, wanting to stir things up a bit but above all, carrying no specific personal agenda other than what I’ve already mentioned.
And certainly the little information exchanged so far was so generic as to be approaching total fungibility.
Then I asked if he might want to meet up for a coffee or a beer. Translation: “would you like to maneuver a scenario where your person and my person might both be in the same place at the same time where we might consume caffeinated or alcoholic beverages and say hello, like people have been doing for thousands of years?”
His response, which I got the next day, which I’ll paraphrase, included that he was quite busy, which physicians generally are, save for dermatologists and radiologists typically. But then he added, which I will quote, because I just have to
for the sake of being upfront, i have a partner in boston who i am trying to move here, and, with his permission, am kinda seeing a guy here, too. just wanted to put that out there..
and not because i thought you were interested in dating me or anything, just wanted to make sure you understood where i was coming from. hope that’s cool and didnt come across weird!
JesusFuckingSkateboardingMockApplePieMadeWithRitzCrackersChrist.
He thought I’d think he was weird because he was making the assumption that I was looking to date him.
So he wanted to make sure I knew he wasn’t available because he was already seeing someone out here, but he was already partnered to someone else back East but he had permission from the partner back East to date the guy here and heaven forbid he’d “cheat” on the guy he was dating here.
Or would he be cheating on the partner back East if he met someone new over a coffee without having put a ring of emotional-unavailability orange traffic hazard cones around the event first?
I fucking hate open relationships. There’s nothing good about them. They’re houses of cards propped up by the energy they steal from people outside those relationships. They’re dysfunctional. They’re not self-sustaining like real, healthy relationships. They don’t keep themselves alive by energy put into them by the two people involved in them.
No, they’re turned outward, scavenging for emotional energy from the rest of us by each the two in the open relationship, taking more free energy and good will and high quality emotional egress from the social/cultural system than they contribute to it.
Scratch the surface of any of them and you find emotional nebbishes and flibbertigibbets who hide behind sexual braggadocio or worse, that throbbingly ugly tedium they pour forth, one hypocritical platitude after another about being sexually “enlightened” and having moved past petty jealousies and that their openness is about a bigger “trust”.
Ugh.
When none of those tacks work, tantamount to clinquant cat-toys anyway, no substance and all distraction: shiny! shiny! meant to end scrutiny, more platitudes, this time on the offensive: Who Are You To Judge!
I’m Me, that’s who. And I need no other credential. (See? Surgeon material here!)
You’re welcome to your open relationship and I’m welcome to observe. I’m welcome to recount my own history. I’m welcome to think for myself. I’m welcome to follow the paths of friends and others.
I’m welcome to remember.
And I’m welcome to use my brain to put it all together for myself and draw conclusions when the conclusions are there to be had.
I’m also welcome to change my mind.
Why? Because I dare. And because I tired of all the glozing over that small men with small souls do. So many opportunities to learn ignored and so people go on being hurt over and over. In the same ways, often by the same people. New men getting hurt by the same men.
I could say that I’m tired of waiting for things like decency and candor and trust and honor and emotional investment to come back into vogue again, but that’s only true and nothing more.
It’s not as if saying it makes it any different, hastens making it so.
I follow the notes and the blogging of the Prop 8 trial and I read the testimonies of gay and lesbian couples and I find them heartbreaking all over again. And then doubly so, because, in moments of weakness—or, moments of candor—because at least these men and women giving testimony each have a true, if not legal, husband or wife to lean on in their suffering.
And I feel like I’m surrounded largely by men who are pissed off at the Yes on 8’ers and who want same-sex marriage for no reason other than it’s something that other people have that they don’t, a playground sandbox fight over a dime0-store pail and shovel set.
Where have all the good men gone? Never mind the gods.
/// There are no words. (via @jonnodotcom) #
#sb64 #