::Pontification.

…Oy, I am a wilted flower.  Feverish and wobbly and stupid.  But this, too, shall pass.

– On Trilogies.  (Paper, not film.)

I have a couple of traits that are causing me trouble.  One, I’m a voracious reader.  Two, with very little exception I’m a genre reader.  SFF is my game.  Probably not a big shock to you.  

The trouble is, you get to my age after 30 years of reading everything you can get your hands on, and you run into speedbumps called TRILOGIES.   Because when I was reading all the trilogies and series from back in the day – Zelazny, Brooks, Eddings, Anthony, whoever — all the books were *there* on the shelf.  I could go *read* them.  Now I’m caught up on all those guys.

So a new author comes out, I love his first book, then find out at the end — because it’s never plainly printed on the fucking cover — that it’s the first of a trilogy.  Which means it will be, at minimum, a full year before I can read the second book.  Maybe longer.  By which time I will have forgotten everything important about the series, and probably lost interest.

I’m all for sequels, mind you — but I prefer series where each book tells a self-contained story with a beginning, middle, and an end.  So many modern SFF trilogies dispense with that part in favor of dropping the story off a cliff for the next book to catch, instead of wrapping things up.  Infuriating to spend six hours on a book and find out that nothing is resolved at the end, knowing you’ll forget all about it by the time the rest of the series is out.

And I know that in the unlikely event that I’m ever published, I’ll be pushed to do that kind of work, too.  Ugh.

– Polyamory.

Everybody means something different when they talk about polyamory.  It raises hackles.  Out of fear, jealousy, revulsion, or what, I’m not sure.  I saw that just mentioning the word, all by itself, last entry.

I think polyamory is going to be the next big thing in about sixty years.  Shhhh!  Follow me for a minute.  In the 1960s, interracial marriage was illegal in many parts of the USA.  We repealed that shit, grew up a little bit, and now most folks don’t bat an eye, 40-odd years later.  Gay marriage is following the same course now, slowly and painfully.  Sooner or later it will pass nationwide, as more conservative bluehairs die off, and the country will grow up and get over it, and in a few decades nobody will bat an eye at Adam and Steve.  I think the next thing that follows is the group marriage.  Probably not in my lifetime, but sooner rather than later.

Here’s why:  there are so many tiny, tiny families that would be better served with more adult ‘spouses’ incorporated into the family.  So many single-parent families broken by divorce.  So many couples who waited until their 30s or 40s to marry and breed — suddenly the elders of their family aren’t there to help.  K and I are kind of in that situation.  In the state, between us we have one mother, one cousin, one aunt and uncle.  That’s it.  And none closer than an hour’s drive.

I think there’s no reason why two honest adults can’t look for a third or fourth or fifth, fall in love, and make it work.  Is that more complicated?  Of course it is.  There are differing degrees of love, of libido, of honesty, of neuroses.  I’m sure it’s like balancing plates.  It works the best in books, like Stranger in a Strange Land, where it’s all made okay by supernatural Martian powers that none of us have (well, and everyone is a perfect Heinlein human being… but I digress.)  I don’t think it’s immoral as long as everyone in the relationship is getting his/her needs met.  Nobody lied to and nobody left out in the cold.  The partner with the high libido can get a little more of that nekkid action in brand new flavors and kinks.  The more cerebral partner might love someone who shares interests.  Whatever.  There’s another income in the household.  Another safety net for when things break.  Another pair of hands for the baby.  Another heart warming the winter nights.  Another hot bod for the cuddle pile.  All good things… IF you can make the emotional side work.

Because not everyone is wired that way, emotionally or sexually or in terms of jealousy or territoriality.  A lot of people are hardcore pair-bonded.  That’s cool:  I remember being that way.  Back when I was 19, my first love.  It was the ONLY time in my life that I’ve never thought of or looked at or wondered about other women.  Genuinely zero interest.  

And a lot of folks can’t drop that natural jealousy.  I mean, really — you might have to work on some things in yourself before you’re ready to see your boyfriend of ten years kissing another girl in front of you.  And that might just never be something you can handle.  And that’s okay, too.  I still don’t know that truth about myself. 

I guess what it comes down to is this:  if we have another child, we don’t have to stop loving our first one.  Similarly, if we find a lover that we both care deeply about, it doesn’t mean that we stop caring for one another.  There is always more love at the bottom of the bucket.  The bigger your bucket, the better your life.  More love is always good.  It doesn’t mean that we’re both beholden to get physical with that hypothetical person, either — one or the other of us isn’t going to swing that way.  We’re both distressingly hetero.

We’ve talked about this a lot over the years.  As our families die off and move further away, and as our circle of friends shrinks, we both want to get out and date.  To bring other great people into the fold.  Together, honestly.  Nobody creeping around ‘cheating’.  We want to find someone we can bond with and bring into our circle.  To trust.  Maybe, to get naked with.  Maybe not.  It seems like a good solution, and we’ve experimented with it a little.  It was surprisingly uncomplicated — nobody freaked out, nobody cried.  Everybody was cool with it.

Then the great old friend that we/I moved into dating… she up and moved out to California to be with her other ‘metamours’.  Because — well — she is way, way, WAY more open/polyamourous/freespirited than we are.  And that’s okay, too.  I find that I’m not jealous.  But I miss her sometimes.  

K and I occasionally talk about how we need to get the ball rolling again:  get out and date.  But then again, I was never any good at that when I was single.  No idea how to get started now.

– Drugs and whether or not I miss them.

I was always the cautious one.  I’ve never been blind, puking drunk.  Never done a hallucinogen (always meant to, never seemed to find the time).  I did enjoy some pot back in my 20s.  The most intense d

rug experience I ever had was when me and my friends smoked out… then realized the pot had been cut with opium or something similar.  WOW.  I understand why opium is so addictive now.  The body buzz was like nothing else.  

Anyhow, I’m the cautious one.  It’s been probably five years since I’ve even laid eyes on anything like that, and I’m cool with that.  I wouldn’t even know who to buy from anymore.  At the last concert I went to, someone handed me a hit of acid, free of charge.  I considered it for a  while, but ended up chucking it.

The stakes are a lot higher now than they were back then, if i got caught doing such a thing.  I’ve got a nice car that could be impounded.  A nice house that I could lose.  A wife and baby I’d miss out on in jail.  So, yeah.  Drugs, not so much anymore.

Although I do miss that fuzzy, giggly sense of well-being and creativity, sometimes.  Just a little.