What the Pelican Knows

Recently, I was working at the seaside resort where a year ago I lost my mind, drew a couple hundred dollars from an ATM and handed it over to Mermaid Minnie for 15 minutes of flaccid slapstick comedy. (See blog entry, Actually Ramona Was Not My First,6/6/2009.) I decided to go back to the marina where I met Minnie, this time with my head screwed on straight.

Looking at the white fiberglass floating bedrooms, I wondered if I could find the one that Minnie escorted me on. I could not. They all looked the same. It was something like the one above. But, again, it could have been this one. Southern Nights??

Everything was quiet on this cold winter afternoon... as quiet as my passions now seemed to be, satiated by Pearl's caring attention. But, quieted as well by having let myself explore new territory at a time when most men my age are retreating into safer places. But, honestly, "love for sale" is not for me. I can't afford it, and I can't stand the excitement. Still, I value my brief experience with it, and the interesting women who chance such a risky line of work, and I would defend anyone's right to responsibly engage in the business as either a client or entrepreneur.

This doesn't mean that I've come to a peaceful place with my passions. I'm still confused by them. However, there is comfort now knowing that our society is even more confused than me. Hypocrisy and deception seem to be the preferred way to handle passions. The Tiger Woods and Eliot Spitzer stories tell of marriages gone awry: husbands condemned as ogres, wives admired as innocent victims, and the "other women" disparaged as not even worthy of respectful attention. Either no one is at fault, or everyone is at fault. To use the term "cheating" in these stories is ludicrous. It's far more complicated than that. One thing I feel certain ... we know how to fuck, but we don't know how to talk about it. We don't even know how to talk during it.

We are all way over our heads in this passion business.... it's larger than our ability to cope. We are like idle sunbathers basking on a warm shore, then getting hit by the tsunami of roaring emotional tides that few of us have the skills to handle. Possibly, the polyamorists are closer to the reality of the situation. They have one thing over the rest of us.... honesty. "Do as you wish, just don't lie about it. If you have to lie, don't do it." The solution is as varied as there are humans trying to find their way. So, just because one person's way is not yours, do not judge.

As I turned to walk away from the marina, a shadow passed over me and I saw an enormous pelican flying overhead. It looked wise and grandfatherly. The pelican seemed to peer at each boat, each one a ship of fools.

Human society has yet to formulate a sexual ethic that works. There will never be a workable sexual ethic as long as men see women as either angels or whores, good girls or bad girls; and as long as women see men as either cheaters or faithful. The self-righteous are the masters of the double standard.

Pelicans are monogamous for one mating season, yet seem to start all over with new prospects the following year. Who knows what the pelican knows? That we all want to belong to someone and have a safe place called home? But, that home should not feel like a trap?

Whatever, in the end and in a perfect world, love should not be for sale; love should be free.

Happy Valentine’s to Everyone

However it might come to anyone who might read this, I wish you a moment of romance on this day. It could be a glance of sensuality in a crowded space or the pleasure of full embrace in a private one. It could be given freely, or given at a price; though a case could be made that we all pay some price for the love we receive. In that light, we should drop the judgmental crap and honor the giver and receiver in whatever way it happens. It's trite and overworked sentimentality to say it, but I'll say it, "Make love not war!"

I was lucky enough to visit Pearl over Valentine's weekend. Friday night, I drove through a snow storm; crashes and flashing lights on the interstate in the blinding white swirl, and behemoth trucks flying by spraying slush in my face. But, I arrived safely to find myself by Saturday afternoon in the steamy warmth of Pearl's loft studio room. Teenagers do this, but grownups can too, as I did, catching Pearl in an unsuspecting moment with the camera on my cell phone.

She had been giving me some well-appreciated attention, but turned for a moment to pet her new male kitten, Spike. I had suggested the name Spike to give the little kitty a hook for validating his manhood. And, on this Valentine's weekend, Pearl validated mine.

As Sam and Dave said in the 1968 Motown hit: "You didn't have to squeeze me like you did, but you did, but you did; and I thank you."

Another hooker movie: “Combien tu m’aimes?”

I watched this one for a second time on streaming Netflix last night. It's irresistible; a 2005 French film, "How Much Do You Love Me?" If the color, the light, the ambience, and the music in the opening scene doesn't completely captivate you then you don't have a pulse. It's essentially a comic farce with heart, satirizing elements of 70's French "art films" and spoofing Ingmar Bergman's existential Swedish dialogues from the 60's. Does the director know he's doing that? I don't know, but he's old enough.

Francois is a boring French office worker who one night walks into a hooker bar and meets Daniella (Italian actress, Monica Belluci.) He offers her the proceeds of the lottery he has just won if she will live with him. She accepts knowing she'll eventually have to deal with her gangster pimp, Charly (Gerard Depardieu.)

As with most "hooker movies," it's a man's fantasy, wanting it all in one woman (good girl/bad girl, devil and angel.) The women seem want to give the same. Ahh, what fools we men are! And, "fools rush in where....." Well, you know.

It's one of the most forgiving films of human frailty I have seen. Everyone looking for love in whatever misguided way seems to find it in some measure. The musical soundtrack is sensational alternating between musky saxophone jazz and Puccini arias... the arias punctuating the farce.

The finale, a party scene worth the whole movie, recalls Woody Allen's comic Greek chorus finale in Mighty Aphrodite, an "I'm OK, you're OK" song and dance. It expresses what I'm finding to be the burgeoning theme of this blog: We are all voyagers on a "Ship of Fools." Be tolerant of each other and hug your neighbor.

Women’s Shoes

I've always known about and marginally appreciated a woman's love of shoes. I love shoes myself, but in less quantity. I have a 25 yr. old pair of Brooks Brothers loafers (they sell today for $400.00) that I polish with loving care, and have resoled three times.

So, I wasn't entirely surprised when Pearl, again picking me up at the train station, drove me to her home in a new pair of fantasy shoes. As I relaxed on her sofa in my jeans and Brooks Brothers loafers, Pearl parked her legs across my lap to give me a better view of her Hollywood/fairy shoes.

Well, that was the beginning of another wonderful evening of exotic lovin' with Pearl. The next day, Saturday, we decided to go out to lunch. Pearl dressed in an equally interesting, but alternatively bold manner: Harley-Davidson boots. Talk about making a statement with your feet. I was beginning to understand the female psyche more than ever, and better late than never.

Saturday night, was a retake of the photo session from the last visit, a refinement of a few details, but this time I fully appreciated the shoe impact. The entire photo is so theatrical that we are saving it for the right presentation, but here again is a cropped corner for the footwear.

Of course, the greatest delight of shoes may be the moment that they come off. We even have a colloquialism for it: "Sit back and kick your shoes off." In anyone's mind, it's a sign of relief and relaxation. So, Saturday night was eventually shoeless, exhilarating, and passionate. Again, I get up early on Sunday for coffee and personal inventory. As I drifted back to the bedroom with my camera, I found Pearl in restful repose as lovely asleep as she is awake and engaged with life.

If you are wondering here, how I am so immersed in my experience with Pearl, yet still write posts regarding "open relationships," I should explain that I have no interest in pursuing anyone other than Pearl. My writing about "alternative relationships" is a purely theoretical exercise that I feel intellectually compelled to explore, but at the moment have no interest in acting upon. I will continue to explore and write about it because I think I may have something to contribute toward solving the mess that our society has made of sex and relationships.

Open by Jenny Block

In this wilderness of erotic blog writing a book title, Open by Jenny Block, kept getting attention, and I finally read it. She has written a very personal and honest story of her search for happiness within a traditional marriage. The search resulted in an "open" marriage keeping her family with child intact and functional, yet allowing her the freedom to pursue extra-marital relationships. She did this with the consent and cooperation of her husband, and in a prosperous residential community that frowned upon such arrangements.

Jenny Block's story is worth reading for the fact that she emphasizes the very personal and individualized nature of each person's and each couple's search for happiness. She wants to free society from it's judgmentally restrictive view of marriage, but at the same time preserve marriages for the good things that they provide. Though easily dissecting all the hypocrisies that society promotes about love, relationships, and sex, she wouldn't begin to tell anyone else how to do this. She just explains very well what finally has worked for her. And, apparently, with the afterword by the husband, it has worked for him as well, though he has felt very little need for extra-marital relationships... an ironic myth-buster in itself.

I would disagree with some of Block's assertions, such as, that love and sex can be completely separated in the human heart. It seems more complicated to me than that. And, understandably, her book gives a feeling that her entire life has been a search for sexual happiness, which is a bit one dimensional, but probably understandable since she is paddling upstream against public opinion and has been working very hard in the last couple of years to get this issue as an acceptable topic in public conversation.

Her blog, http://open-marriage.blogspot.com/, and her website are promotions for her writing, and are really worth seeing for the attention she has gotten in the national media. She does mention, in her blog, going to the porn awards event in Las Vegas, which disappointed me since I consider porn to be about 95% a pretty nasty business, and not a healthy way to explore our sexual desires. She also seems to question that there is anything such as excessive sexual preoccupation or sexual addiction, though there is plenty of evidence (as I can personally confess) that one can be as self-destructive and compulsively obsessive with sex just much as someone can be with food or alcohol.

On the more positive side, Block really brings the issue into the mainstream for those of us who have thought polyamory was the sole province of "Pagan/Unitarian/computer geeks." And, her use of the term "open" more often than "polyamory" frees the issue from the ideological side trip that polyamorists seem determined to journey.

Still, something seems missing from the open marriage argument. My take on it is, more than providing an outlet to find new partners, it may be better seen as a way to keep from losing old ones. This is something I rarely hear mentioned, the tragedy that in our culture of serial monogamy, we leave old partners... those with whom we spent so many years, however haplessly, trying to find some love and meaning.

The other thing I miss in writings about open relationships is an emphasis on how we can care about and care for those we love, whether they be one or more. Once the numbers issue is settled in anyone's mind, we are still back to square one: how can we actually connect with the heart of another person.

More from that Night

Photography was supposed to be part of that train station/trench coat evening. It turned out that Pearl had much more of a planned scenario than I realized and she had put together some props with a bit of "red velvet swagger" mixed with erotic literary references and some other items of mythical meaning that all added up to a few really special photos. Here's one very small cropped corner of one photo which is her foot resting on a copy of "Delta of Venus."

I was feeling a little silly about the posed shots I wanted to take since her theatrical sets had been so creative. Mine was just a typical run of the mill "dominance fantasy." In fact, since Pearl had hinted at what she would be wearing, I had made a sketch of how I would like to pose her for a photo and emailed it to her a couple of days earlier. Here's the sketch followed by the actual photo I took.

Though I'm fond of the enhanced photo, I must remind myself to tread very lightly on the dominant/submissive theme. I can lose myself in places I'd rather not be in that state of mind, like digging a hole I find it very hard to mentally and emotionally climb out of. I'm much more comfortable with the view of Pearl in the drawing I did in the last post, sunny and free, surrounded by flowers and blue skies.

I've always had some suspicion that having dominant sexual leanings, was the refuge of emasculated men... a sort of compensation for a lifetime of non-assertiveness. So, playing these games: blindfolds, bondage, etc make me question my integrity and worth as a man. Still, to photograph a woman in a such vulnerable position and attitude gives me a powerful erotic rush. But, it also scares me and makes me concerned for my character.

But, Ok, sometimes I just want to be bad, and enjoy a little naughty side trip into the netherworld.

She Wore Little More than a Trench Coat

Visiting Pearl has been the most fun I've had in years, but the 2 ½ hour drive was tedious, so I decided to take the train. Pearl was delighted with the plan, and said, "I'll pick you up at the train station wearing my trench coat and very little underneath."

Train stations... trench coats... my film noir dreams come true!

When her car pulled up at the station and I hopped in, to my surprise, the trench coat was red, and very short. Ahh, glad this movie was in color. I couldn't resist pulling out my camera for this shot on the drive to her home. Pearl has no lack for imagination on a Saturday night. It began with her flashing me from red to black lace in her candle lit boudoir. So, the evening was a long narrative dance, slow and seductive.

However late I'm up, I still get up early for coffee, pastry, and reading or meditation. I returned to the bedroom with my camera to find Pearl still comatose from our night's delights, and her cat very impatient with the situation.

All my photos of Pearl have been oblique and discreet to preserve her privacy. But, I've wanted to show her face just to reveal her vibrant approach to living life to the fullest. To do that and preserve her privacy, I've drawn her instead, as I see her, but really, much as she is.

To make clear the personal and meaningful side of all this, I'll remind the reader (and myself) that this blog began in a state of dire deprivation of human touch that I had imposed on myself for several years. This was because, for me, touching and being touched by a woman carried a price of eventual hurt and confusion almost too painful to bear. But, the touch deprivation became unbearable in itself, and I solved that in the most impulsive and unplanned manner. It was a real step forward in personal acceptance and understanding. Now, the desire for touch has been satiated far beyond anything I had hoped, and I'm back to the human situation we all eventually face, "How do we relate to and care for another person?" That's what really matters, and possibly we should throw away the rule book and reinvent the story. Maybe we'll end up back home where we all started but with new rules and a new awareness of and appreciation for those we love.

(PS. A pleasant surprise to me is that Pearl has left a couple of comments on this post, humorously giving the story from her point of view. Of course, I became progressively aware that she had made considerable preparation for this night. That she was thirty minutes late to the train station didn't matter one bit to me. I would have waited hours for the evening that we eventually had. And, her comment that her mother went shopping with her for the exquisite bit of black lace that she wore under the trench coat amused me enormously. We should all have such mothers.)