Polyamory (Imagined)

Once upon a time, Freud said something or other about how art, music, politics, and the rough majority of human behavior was a product of suppressed and redirected libido. Of course, regular sexual intercourse did not stop Gustav Mahler, Jimmy Page, or JFK from participating in human culture. On the other hand, plenty of my own artwork prominently features distorted genitalia of both genders, and countless times I've exorcised sexual frustration with a particularly spirited singing session. That energy has to come out somewhere, and god forbid that somewhere be into or onto another human being...

A couple years ago, I realized a painful discrepancy between the women I have been physically attracted to and the women I have been spiritually attracted to. There is no overlap whatsoever. My eyes want one woman, my dick wants a second, my mind wants a third, and my heart a fourth. For a long time, I relied on weird little superstitions, prayers, and rituals to bring perfect female affection my way. Needless to say, these methods failed. Is the hypothetical woman who satisfies every corner of my body a legitimate desire thus far unresolved due to poor luck and ugy statistics? Or just a schism in my mind, a moat protecting my soft, pinkish, quivering little ego from the inevitability of disappointment and heartbreak?

I blame sexy advertisements. Not really, but god I'd love to deface some of those gigantic looming slutty women on the sides of buses and buildings. Rip those perfectly symmetrical airbrushed faces right off. There's no room for angels on this planet, and even less room for fake ones.

Anyway, I have noticed that all my friendships revolve around certain axes, each of them unique to that relationship. That's the beauty of having multiple friends. Not everyone wants to share emotional frustrations. Not everyone wants to smoke pot and draw. Not everyone wants to play music until dawn. With a wide range of associates, I can match the individual to my impulse.

Applying the same mentality to lovers is more difficult, thanks to the delights of sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies, and easily bruised egos. Still, I think it something worth striving for, at least until I find someone who does satisfy all my roaming fingers and strange little toes.

“This unoccupied gulf between spiritual or brotherly love and sexual love corresponds to the cleft between spirit and matter, mind and body, so divided that our affections or our activities are assigned either to one or to the other. There is no continuum between the two, and the lack of any connection, any intervening spectrum, makes spiritual love insipid and sexual love brutal. To overstep the limits of brotherly love cannot, therefore, be understood as anything but an immediate swing to its opposite pole. Thus the subtle and wonderful gradations that lie between the two are almost entirely lost. In other words, .the greater part of love is a relationship that we hardly allow, for love experienced only in its extreme forms is like buying a loaf of bread and being given only the two heels.”

- Alan Watts, from the epilogue of the Joyous Cosmology

A woman for romantic walks under the stars at night. A woman for drinks and tokes and frivolous hedonism. A woman for kinky, furious sex. A woman for deep, sensual lovemaking. A woman to hold hands with and never say a word. Could they all be the same person? I have the capacity within me for all five modes of love and countless more, and if it is true of me then it could be true of anyone. And yet, so many people seem content to force a code of conduct on themselves and a set of rules on their relationships.

Of course, all this intellectualization comes down to one big circle jerk. I too force a code of conduct by expecting certain things out of romance before it ever even happens. The only sensible thing is to pay attention to what is growing in my garden, and give my love to whatever blossoms and blooms, however it chooses to do so.