I Feel Just Like a Local God When I'm With the Boys

We do what we want. Yeah we do what we want.

*spoiler alert* I *might* be a little bit poly. I know. I know. (First Name) Never Back Down from a Challenge (Surname) they call me. I would also like to point out that the below men were only pursued in friendship, and I expect nothing more and want nothing less.

At the moment I'm playing with my feelings the boundaries they create, and I've found myself in a not so unique position. For the sake of context I shall distinguish the two men as 1 and 2.

I met 1 through a friend of a friend who introduced me to more friends. I clearly outlined in the beginning that our relationship would be platonic only. He agreed and we began. He was lovely and gentle and in the throes of physical intimacy we became emotionally intimate. We have always been very open with each other and in the spirit of that he declared his feelings for me. Which is a shame, as I am a very VERY open person and had clearly demonstrated my fascination with my physical attraction to him as he was clearly not my type *headdesk*. That night and the proceeding few after that were terribly awkward.

Then something amazing happened. Just as I was considering shutting it down, he had the epiphany I was praying for when with an ex of mine: his jealousy and the sadness it caused was associated not with the girl he couldn't have, but with the lack of social life and opportunity he felt he had. Then he did something about it. He became social. He put himself out there. He talked to me about his feelings and experiences and then... He became my first best friend up here.

And I think I love him. It's not romantic. Not in the least. It's the same love I have for my dearest friends back home. I feel safe with him. I can trust him. We chat during the week about things we hear and see and do and I look forward to our time together because I have so many things I want to tell him and get his perspective on, or ask him about his experiences that he told me about. It's weird because I've never made a friend with my vagina before, but it's also terribly lovely. Especially considering he can keep pace with me when I run (unless I sprint, which I can do for a kilometre). He makes me feel happy and safe and cared for.

I met 2 through a friend of friend who introduc... Waiiiit. I picked him up (in one of my smoother moments), took him home and fucked him. Then we chatted and in the interest of pursuing an orgasm (something I rarely do on the first night, which is why I don't enjoy one night stands) I secured another meeting with the boy. By a couple of weeks in (because Openness and Consent) I had to declare *my* feelings.

With a twist. I'm sick of serial monogamy. Every relationship I've been in has had an underlying 'is this it?' feeling underneath. I'm not done. I want to have new experiences, and there is every possibility I may not want to stop having those experiences. My idea of long term monogamy has always included sexual experimentation. So, with his consent, I told him I was interested in continuing our existing friendship so that I could play with my feelings and experiment with my boundaries.

Which has been interesting. Especially of late. We talk about our experiences of the week and we share (or I share, and then I'll pick his brain. Seriously, he's done some interesting things. He's just very Don't Kiss and Tell, whereas I'm very Eh, Its a Common Experience), but he'll say something about being sweet on another girl... And I realise he's not sweet on me. Or I'll feel jealousy that he's sleeping with other girls. Or get paranoid that the things he does with me he does with other women. Which is ridiculous. I don't own his body, why get upset when he does something with it? I have a set of moves that I perform that are natural to me, it makes sense he would as well. The hypocrisy to the feelings I'm feeling is... Ludicrous. I don't own him and he doesn't own me, never mind the fact that 1 and I are still seeing each other. Never mind that I am still actively pursuing other relationships.

When I realised I was having the Bad Feels I immediately resolved to cut it off. Then I realised what I was doing. How do I get to Learn and Grow as a person if I baulk at the first Bad Feeling?

Oh, Again I Wait...

For this to fill the holes.

It's funny how songs jog your memory. I'm on the tram that takes me close to home, and All of This by Blink 182 featuring vocals by Robert Smith comes on.

I remember:

When the album came out, my second boyfriend (and the long term one) played it all the time. He loved Blink and this was the only album of theirs I thought was truly spectacular. Added bonus Robert Smith. There was bonding.

This was on my shuffle in my car probably weeks or days before another ex and I got together. The tension between us was palpable and every word counted and he expressed his love for the song as well.

Another guy (relationship undefined) had invited me to a party, but by the time I'd finished work and gotten there it was winding down. He and all his friends were younger than me, but eventually the conversation turned to music as this song came on. His mate was an avid Cure fan but had failed to recognise Smith's voice and was shocked when I told him.

Currently: I'm sitting on a tram, texting another ex, speaking to an old childhood friend and offering support, after having spent the evening volunteering for a festival and making connections, getting drunk for free and Art Wanking with strangers. 

Sex and the Inappropriate Behaviour

Its that time of year again. Its cold, I'm sick, I've reached an epiphany regarding my dating life and I've started to rewatch all my box sets again. Normally I start strong with Buffy and Battlestar Galactica but this year I thought I'd start with Sex and the City (shut up, if you removed Carrie its a story about three different women who all have real problems and act like adults).

So I'm up to the episode where Carrie is dating the Politician- the one who has the golden shower fantasies. Carrie, then, throughout the entire episode makes fun of him (which we all do, however with more love and disbelief at this situation we've gotten ourselves into, again) and avoids drinking liquids in his presence for comedic effect. At the end of the episode she suggests some alternatives, he gets defensive and makes her feel inadequate about her article and they break up. Then she writes specifically about the issue in her article.

Anyone else hear alarm bells? How is it so hard, at that original conversation, to say that she's just not into golden showers and to discuss alternatives that they can compromise on? Why did she come to him with alternatives without discussing what he actually needed from the sensation first? I have had a similar, although less shower related, request made of me, and although we broke up before I ever became fully comfortable with it, I still asked a lot of questions and tried to figure out what I was comfortable. In true SATC style I'm going to end this in a question. Shouldn't the bedroom be a safe place for open discussion and sexy times?

I'm Not, I'm Not

I'm not the killing type.

I've had a good experience with Polyamory and I've had a bad experience with Polyamory.

I've learnt the same lesson from each experience. The 'open' in Open Relationship means being open emotionally. Omitting details, quashing your feelings and failing to recognise feelings in others have no part in it. It's about consideration and love and OPENESS.

This is Just A Tribute

Tonight I was listening to a music podcast who asked and then gave examples of ways to bond with your social media audience through music. One of the questions asked was 'Do you remember your first?' which for them meant their first album but because I'm fairly sex oriented I thought of my virginity. So I put the question out on Twitter and had a lovely and hilarious conversation with friends. I don't remember if there was music playing the first time I had sex, but I do remember a couple of sessions later, we had finished and were lying together in bed, listening to the radio, and we both heard for the first time Tenacious D's Tribute.

My ex sent me a text a while ago to tell me 'our' song was played on the news. I knew exactly which one he meant, even though we'd never explicitly said what songs made us think of the other. Probably didn't hurt that I would hum it whenever I was with him (it was stuck in my head for a fortnight), but I was touched regardless.

So the two above stories combined and got me thinking about the songs I associate with my past loves.

The First: Without You I'm Nothing - Placebo (from Black Market Music). What can I say? We were teenagers, it was our first big relationship, we were drunk on hormones and the drama they brought. In saying that though it is an incredibly beautiful and sad song. When they released the Molko/Bowie version on  Once More With Feeling I could have died. Tick. Tock.

The Long Haul: The entire Crow Soundtrack (my taste, shut up I was also still a teenager) and the entire self titled Blink 182 effort (his taste, although the Robert Smith collaboration at the end is magnificent, and the song before it with the same melody only sped up is also clever okay shut up I quite loved the album at the time). Clearly we were different people with different views and different ideals and we stayed that way until we broke up. Which is strange because we did love each other at one stage. He's the reason why I don't think common interests is really that big a deal. Provided you agree on the basics, like money and family. *cough* turns out we really didn't agree *cough*

The Sociopath: We didn't actually have a song. I should have seen that as a warning sign. There is something wrong with a man if he can't make me happy enough to sing. So I've just learnt something new. However, after the pain, he did make me very angry, so Nightwish's Bye Bye Beautiful became how I thought of him. Ironically, Nightwish is one of the reason's we became friends in the first place. When they debuted the first song off Imagenarium on the radio we rocked out in his car, and we were so caught up with each other that first week we were together we failed to realise that Imagenarium had been released in full.

The Stoner: This is embarrassing- I can't think of the title of the song or the name of the band- but it was an acoustic guitar and a scratchy rough voice and somehow it was very punk and whenever I think of the tune I can immediately smell cheap wine and weed and tobacco. He was lovely and I feel very bad for using him the way I did.

The Adulterer: It may have been short lived (like, incredibly) but we bonded over Michael Jackson and Prince, and he would send me lyrics from Jackson's The Way You Make Me Feel.

The (Redacted): Do You Hear the People Sing? In my defence it was a very fun and silly time. We'd decided to meet again and he'd invited me to a DVD viewing of the worlds worst play. I realised I was going into a room entirely filled with strangers and had a mild panic attack in the car, drank a lot of alcohol very quickly and started insulting his friends once the show was over. Because they were all theatre geeks at some stage the night devolved into watching a million different videos of Les Mis and I poured water into his mouth as he'd fallen asleep beside me. So now I think of Angry Men whenever I see him.

The (Also Redacted): I Wonder by Rodriguez, for obvious and not so obvious reasons. He sung the song to me one morning and it stuck in my head. Then I downloaded it and listened to it about a million times. He'd told me about how Rodriguez was a cult icon back home and about the movie Search for Sugarman. I'd joked about the first people to like my FB statuses were either past or present lovers, and he in a rare moment of vulnerability said that's why he consciously didn't look at those likes, because it was something he didn't want to deal with. Then he asked how many men I was seeing at the time. I told him and he kissed my waist and our previous lighter conversation continued. And I realised that I was one of the many women that Rodriguez sung about, and that maybe someone thought of me when they heard a song. A touch narcissistic I know, but for all my bravado I don't let myself think that kind of thing often. 

Losing You- Solange

I hate it when a film clip doesn't match the mood of the song. Solange's (Beyonce' much cooler younger sister) Losing You is a fantastic example (you'll have to look it up yourself as I fail at ctrl c/ctrl v and embedding).

I love this song. I've listened to it A LOT. I listened to this on a solo rotation for the last half of February and the first half of March. Then I watched the film clip. Its filled with hipster faff. Yes, her outfits are cute but they are exactly too on trend for the moment. Cycling and driving around the streets is too reminiscent of every other hipster clip out there. Together it vaguely evokes Ryan Lewis and Macklemore's Thrift Shop film clip. The only part of the clip I found that matched the song was how she's in the community, the car, the street, the container, but she doesn't interact. She's off to the side and moves out of the way. THAT matches the lyrics.

What I would have done differently: Well. Everything. Matte black room, her in the centre, yellow cocktail dress with 70's wings. Hair in a low bun. I'd keep the red lipstick. Two lights just behind creating a subtle silhouette, but enough light on her that you can still clearly see her. Then she dances a lonely choreography that changes at the chorus before she goes onto repeat it for the repeated verses. *This* is lonely, and simple. Which is what the song is about. She's still with the man but has realised he's not there any more, but hasn't cut the ties, and she's realised she has too and clearly I empathise with the song too much I'll shut up now.

The In Between is Mine.

I Am Mine.

I've learnt a lot about myself this year. I probably should have by now, we're nearly half way through. I've learnt that flirting isn't that hard. I've learnt that if I want sex I can just ask. Something really beautiful happened with my body confidence last year that only increased this year. I no longer care what the guy I'm with thinks my body looks like. I watch their faces and they don't care outside of there being a naked woman bouncing on their balls. In fact I no longer care. I don't just ask for what I want, I tell them.

I've learnt that I am not a polyamorist. I've learnt that I have limits that I can't surpass and some that I don't want to. But I've also learnt that if I want to trust I can ask for what I need to do that. I've gotten confidence in other areas- I know I'm not crazy and I know my thoughts, feelings and reactions are valid. I've learnt that I can talk to the men in my life. I've learnt that I'm not the common denominator to a string of bad choices. That each of these men are going through their own things and I've been something different to each of them.

I know I want to be in love. That has never changed. I haven't been in love for years now and I'm certain that when I feel it again it will be different just like the first two times. I know I can talk to strangers. I know if I want something I can work for it. I regained my work ethic almost overnight. I've learnt that I know how to network. That I can make connections. That I can do things I've never done before and with work can be good at it.

I've learnt that people love me. That I can rely on some like I've never done so before. I've learnt that I can be me and still be wanted. I've learnt that I'm an eye opener to some and that other's like me for who I am. I've learnt that asking the hard questions is me. I've learnt that I need to feel appreciated.

And I do.