It's a web log! No, wait, it's a diary!
Well, no matter what I've acknowledged that it's self-indulgent. This was written in response to a mouthorgan thread, specifically about telling people about sexuality .
Two things have pushed me, a fairly vanilla guy whose fetishes extend about as far as "no makeup", to be more "out" about my sexuality:
First: Every secret we have is a hook for shame and a potential barrier to emotional intimacy. It doesn't have to be, but it's easy for a secret to become a block from opening up to another person, a "Gee, if they knew this about me...". I've got quite enough culturally induced crap flying around that's keeping me from relating as honestly with people as I'd like, I don't need another level in the way.
Second: I don't want to call myself "poly", because I haven't felt comfortable in the few groups of poly people I've hung out with, and I'm quite occupied spending time building my primary relationship. But I do have hopes for finding or building a community in which I feel comfortable. Comfortable starts with not having gossip, and extends up through "If I want to have sex in the wildflowers, under a deep blue sky in the afternoon sun, I don't want to have to worry about who else might be coming along the trail", and even goes a bit further.
I've only run into a few spaces that have been glimpses of what it is I'm seeking, but just this last weekend I found a space that went further in that direction than I'd ever been before. What simply being in that sort of a space did for loosening up issues that I'd been repressing, for opening up some deep communication in a relationship that I think we both thought only had a few nicks that needed polishing, was simply amazing.
So I try to be a little more out there because I want to find people who think that the ideal of that sort of a community, where people can be true to who they really are, is something to be aspired to. And I want to find people who love their lives, who do for a living things that excite and interest them, who live passionately.
I'm not going to do that by carefully compartmentalizing myself into separate little boxes for the different elements of my life, I'm going to do that by overflowing each of them and living honestly.
A grandfather recently told me a story. He says that back around the time of the war he was at a dance and someone approached him and said "my wife finds you attractive". Now this is the grandfather who carefully tried to hide his Playboys and Penthouses from the rest of the family, who for as long as I can remember slept in a separate room from my grandmother on that side. And, looking back from the far side of 80, he said "Sometimes I wonder what might have been..."
I could follow the rigid path that society has set out for me. I could close my curtains. I could lie. I could be happy that I've found two or three people in the world that I can be open with and leave it at that. But life is finite, and I don't want to be looking back to an event 60 years ago saying "I wonder what might have been."
No regrets, and the only way to do that is to live honestly.
Friday, April 30th, 1999 danlyke@flutterby.com