RANDOM THOUGHTS of the "PIECE on the SIDE"...

There is an inescapable assymetry in most love relationships; the exceptions are all the more precious for their rarity.

However, it is simply a fact that whatever connection there may in fact be [as opposed to what I might wish for] between the Silver Fox and myself, there will always be a difference in kind as well as the only-to-be-expected difference of degree.

A "piece on the side" simply does not have the weight of "the first man I have slept with in over thirty years," and never will. So by definition, the Fox's importance for me, and the at times overwhelming emotional significance of the fact that he in some [however limited way] responded to me, is out of all proportion to my importance in his life.

One proof of his is that he is off pursuing a well-deserved break, an entire month at his second home [or third home, depending on how you look at it], while I am sitting here with my tongue hanging out, metaphorically at least. There is yet another aspect of his life which has nothing to do with me, and which will occupy his time until he returns and the thought strikes him that it might [perhaps] be worth seeing if I am still available. I think it is safe to say that I will be sitting by the phone from the day his plane touches down on the tarmac. I think it is equally safe to say that he will feel no such urgency. Who would?

It is not just the difference between our rather different ratios of "number of men/last thirty years" in each case. I have entered a world where, as I believe I have said elsewhere, nothing makes sense to me, least of all my own behavior. And the emotions unleashed by this first far from perfect experience resembles nothing so much as the parallel events of thirty years ago. I am just an "emotional over-reactor." I am coming to terms with the resurgent Inner Girl just as surely as the Yugoslavs found their hitherto unmentionable hostilities blossoming in the wake of Tito's death. When the lid flies off after thirty years of repression, the results are going to be far from pretty. "It stands as an edict in destiny," as whoever wrote Shakespeare once said.

This is of course the root of the problem. All the Flame posts of last spring were essentially dancing around the anticipation, and incipient sensation, of this problem. The son of friends once threw out, in a "laundry list" parlor game -- where you have to recite all the past items named and add your own -- " a fifty-foot uranium statue of Ann Heche." That is the scale, and murderous potential, of the Inner Girl who has hitherto been masquerading as Alice. She is one large lady, and she is mad as hell and she's not going to take it any more. If you know what I mean.

Hence her sometimes maddening power. All rational thought bows before the unarguable might of her intent; she just strides from glory to glory, leaving a string of abandoned preconceptions or fond memories of my former self in her wake. She takes no prisoners, and yet, having laid waste to the city of her origins, she drops at the feet of some passing stranger and plays lapdog.

It's a mad world, my masters.

Hang in there, all.
And don't forget to pray for those who really need God's help.

For all my hand-wringing, my life is in something resembling order, however far it may be from where I wish it were. No violence, exposure to the elements, or public humiliation here.

I spent the weekend playing pinochle with my mother and helping her find someone to come bury her donkey, who had the very poor judgment to give up the ghost on a weekend. What we had expected to be an all-day event, however, turned out to be trivial for the people with the right machinery, and they were in, out, and gone in an hour and a half.

Not much take-home work done, though,
and Monday approaches at high speed.
Hang in there.
.