I don't have many. I'm writing about it to express the angst. Burning Man was as always amazing but it was also an overload and I don't remember more than a few disconnected scenes.
If I try to rebuild a sequence, it will come back.
If I had pictures it would come back but I deliberately took no cameras. There are a few pics on my phone from the trip up and the trip back -- trip back including the slow melancholy exit cruise through a disappearing city.
At this time, and I apologize to gekko for not as yet letting go, but at this time my memory remains dominated by the stress, created by myself, of managing two relationships. The apology arises from the fact that my two amazing women made it incredibly easy for me. I made it difficult for myself, and the jury's still out on whether that was an artifact of ignorance or of how God really made me.
So the incredible memories are tinged; and not just by that so-called stress, not at all. BMan is a participatory place and a place where people from all walks come to let go their default personae, let go their inhibitions, let go their fears. For the fifth year in a row I failed to let go my fears and inhibitions sufficiently to come home satisfied. I will keep going and keep trying, and will keep using other opportunities for the same thing. I will get there.
But so long as you can accept that walking around in a crowd naked, slapping strange men on the ass, or leading a woman around a dance club with her hands manacled to a chain can be the actions of a man wrestling with his shyness, then you can understand that I still have a long ways to go.
p.s. - If I ever slow down enough to write something, memory will return, and if it has any coherency, I will put it here.
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AN ADJUNCT TO THE ABOVE: The so-called "stress ... of managing two relationships" was seen as such only in hindsight, and during a finite stretch of time. But the phrase effectively suggests how I allowed the way my brain operates to impede my experience. Occasionally, when with gekko I worried about Sunny, and when with Sunny I worried about gekko, and thus prevented myself being fully present with either one. I also worried about this or that to prevent myself being fully present with myself or with whatever immediate situation I was in. Not even sure what "this or that" was, but the result was to shy away from interesting scenes and friendly smiles far, far too often.
What I need is to turn down my brain. Well, that's why God made drugs. But pot makes me paranoid and shrooms and molly seem to do nothing at all.
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10 comments:
Funny you should post this and me over here starting out posting a kvetch but somehow turning it into a BMan introspection on personal expectations and what we each can do to make the most of our experiences.
Related, in a strange way.
No apologies to me are necessary, sweetheart. Just keep on.
What is molly?
Oh, bourbon works too, by the way, but not too much. Just enough.
It's interesting to me that you feel the need/desire to overcome this stress or whatever in order to have the multi-relationship life. I mean, someone else might say fuckit maybe I am cut out for only one relationship, but for whatever reason you are determined to force yourself into polyism, which seems possibly wrong for you. Just like a naturally polypeep might end up not-good from forcing him/herself into the monog lifestyle when s/he is not meant to be there. Just a thought.
Yours is a very good point and raises the question of how much I should put myself through for self-discovery. But all that growth-inducing stress aside, I simply do not want to break up with g nor with S. Love outweighs the fuckits.
:-) Sometimes personal pain is good. Sometimes, not so much. It's always a cost/benefit tradeoff, even if you're not aware you're doing it. Like when I opted to withstand continuing my marriage for a time. Eventually the costs overcame the benefits.
He'll figure it out eventually.
Abd both S and I totally rock, so it's all clearly worth it! ;-)
What's a Molly?
Abr. of 'molecular'.
Pure form of MDMA (ecstasy), usually a free powder or in capsules. Oftentimes MDA is sold as molly. Should be white in color (when it's pure) but is more often beige or yellow-brown, and sometimes brown or rarely gray.
Aha,yes. I see.
I'm with you on the chronic making me paranoid. Won't touch the stuff unless I'm in desperate need of sitting in the corner being a pain in my own ass.
And I'm not sure rolling is going to resolve the problem, either. (For Harry - "rolling" = using MDMA/Ecstasy.) It can lower inhibitions to near zero and make skin-contact-touching stuff - well, people in particular - a massively enjoyable, multi-sense thing.
I know you didn't ask, but I've been armchair psyching people all day today on the job, which has kinda got me primed, and you had a particular sentence that caught my attention:
"Occasionally, when with gekko I worried about Sunny, and when with Sunny I worried about gekko, and thus prevented myself being fully present with either one."
Since neither of THEM are worried about it, it's obviously something in YOU, and more to the point, something YOU expect from THEM that they aren't doing that's pissing on your parade.
In particular, your "worry" (even if you "know" better) is that they're going to be jealous or drove up over one another or time-share or whatever. They obviously aren't, so the question is what's the problem?
The worry/stress isn't because maybe they are - it's because they in fact aren't, and that fact is keying into some kneejerk thing in you that EXPECTS them to be, and that thing is therefore unhappy.
To rephrase yet again: They aren't sitting around grinding their teeth over the lack of monogamy in their respective relationships with you, and it's making some big chunk of you nuts because they OUGHT to be.
In short, YOUR discomfort is caused by THEIR comfort in the non-standard relationship(s). You, on the other hand, down in that dark mental sub-basement where stuff imprinted by religion, society, parents, and God knows what else goes on out of sight, feel its "wrong," even if your forebrain can't figure out why.
There's no judgement intended in this, by the way. I'm a mono, probably always will be. You've taken charge of your life and stepped out into a new world, and have had the spectacular good luck to have almost instantly landed in a place where two (or more) fine-in-every-sense-of-the-word women have taken your hand and brought you in. My instant reaction is "You're kidding, right? WTF is the problem?"
There's more than a tinge of jealousy here - but realistically I'd have (I suspect) similar difficulties with figuring out just where I fit in a poly relationship that somewhere back in my "lizard" brain feels "wrong." It would likely result in life-sapping worry/stress that would sound a lot like yours.
You (or me) would have to completely let go of OUR expectations of the fine women (who seem more-or-less baffled by them) to make any headway, and there's the rub. Turns out that easy-sounding thing is the troll under the bridge that has to be fought before you can completely cross over into the promised land.
Or maybe I'm completely full of shit, and it's something else altogether. Whichever.
Either way, I'll be interested to see how you work it out.
So will I. Here, at 1:34am Friday after a particularly interesting Thursday, I think you have it right. Not full of shit at all.
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