LJ Idol Week Six - The Lightning Strike
Sometimes we become the villain of our own story. It's a curious thing, realizing that I have been an unreliable narrator of my own behaviour and decisions, of my own life. I have unknowingly possessed a destructive power to wound and shatter the same way I had been wounded and shattered. Weapons can be infinitely more dangerous when you don't recognize their potential.
We've been "officially polyamorous" for a few days now, I can't help but feel this nervous anticipatory energy that accompanies every important transition in my life. Soon Alex and his friend Tom will be leaving and I will have almost a month to myself, in my tower in the woods. Every time I return to the Lodge I experience a familiar sensation of shrugging off every attachment I feel to the outside world and am left with only myself, as I am in that moment. It's a sturdy, tangible feeling, something I need after this free fall that has been the past several months.
Alex has a look of unfocused concentration. I want to ask him what he's thinking about but we're not alone. I like Tom, but since he has been here I can't seem to shake the feeling that Alex is trying to pawn me off on his best friend. I'm confused by this because I thought we were in agreement to take this process slowly. He's constantly asking me if Tom and I have discussed pursuing a relationship and ignores me when I tell him I'm not interested in anything beyond this easy friendship we have. Does he already trust me so little? Alex claims he shares my insecurities on non-monogamy but this suspicion, this poisonous jealousy that has been growing within me doesn't believe him. It sends memories that I shouldn't have rocketing to the foreground of my consciousness: an unfamiliar woman's name flashing on his phone screen, his smile when he reads her messages, the fact that I don't exist in their relationship because she doesn't know about me. It feels wrong, deceptive. I'm jealous of his ability to exist without insecurity permeating everything the way it does for me. I am constantly fighting it, fighting to keep my worst fears from controlling me and that self-destructive whisper telling me soon the man I love will be completely indifferent to my presence in his life because there will be so many more important and special people for him to love.
Suddenly Alex is talking and he's telling Tom that I'm attracted to him and I am sitting there completely dumbfounded and then Alex invites Tom upstairs into our bed with us. I am terrified, I'm not terribly interested in this, but when am I going to have this opportunity again? I would be a fool to turn this down, wouldn't I? This seems outrageous, I feel like we should've sat around and had a properly thought out conversation about boundaries but soon all of us are naked and I am feeling empowered and sexual and revert to acting on instincts. It's not until afterward when Tom says "Good threesome, everyone," and we're high-fiving that I realize Alex is visibly upset.
Later he accuses me of crossing a boundary that I had mentioned once before several months ago in a hypothetical conversation about boundaries, before we had even agreed to seriously consider non-monogamy. This seems flimsy to me, but his hurt manages to turn this liberating memory into one of transgression and betrayal. He makes me accountable for the way he feels the way I was never able to make him accountable for the way I felt. I'm angry, I have so much anger but I've suppressed it so far down that I don't even know that I feel angry underneath the layers of self-doubt and hurt and insecurity.
I am grateful when he leaves, even though I know that I will miss him. Before he goes he tells me to take things slowly with Mike. Take it slow, like he did with me? Be patient, like all of the patience he exercised this past winter while he was miserable unless he was high, and then deciding that it was our monogamous relationship that was causing his unhappiness? My bitterness is palpable. I have never felt this petty, this out of touch with myself.
I comply to his terms, even though his definition of slow seems to be immediately jumping into bed with his best friend without any kind of discussion or planning. I selfishly use this to my advantage, failing to ask that he elucidate on the matter. My mind is always on that car ride, Mike's hands squeezing my hips, my hair in his face. I so badly want to be alone with him.
My opportunity comes the following evening, Mike asks me if I want to come over for some wine drinking. We sit across from each other in his living room and the electricity between us is staggering, it crackles around us like the air before a lightning storm. Every time one of our limbs come into contact it transfers into my body and I feel drunk with it, drunk with wine and chemistry and this beautiful tantalizing energy that jolts through me whenever we touch.
Later, we're alone and looking at the stars, talking idly while our fingers intertwine. We talk about the car ride, about the time we traded shirts at a dance party and the curious chemistry we both feel for each other. I'm grateful for the darkness so he can't see me blushing furiously. When we finally kiss I am filled with a longing I wasn't fully aware I possessed until that moment, and it becomes the only thing that matters. He holds me close and I need more, this moment of decision, like boldly stepping onto thin ice and watching the delicate network of cracks making their fissures across a pond. The cracks in my relationship, my unhappiness, my loneliness. I could shatter them now if I wanted, and I do, because I want him so badly. As we rip each other's clothes off I'm setting events into motion that can't possibly be reversed, but it isn't even registering into my consciousness. All I care about is this moment, this feeling of desire and being desired, this gratification of acting on lust. I am acting on pure, selfish need, and I have never done anything like it before. I feel powerful, I feel wanted, I feel beautiful.
We've been "officially polyamorous" for a few days now, I can't help but feel this nervous anticipatory energy that accompanies every important transition in my life. Soon Alex and his friend Tom will be leaving and I will have almost a month to myself, in my tower in the woods. Every time I return to the Lodge I experience a familiar sensation of shrugging off every attachment I feel to the outside world and am left with only myself, as I am in that moment. It's a sturdy, tangible feeling, something I need after this free fall that has been the past several months.
Alex has a look of unfocused concentration. I want to ask him what he's thinking about but we're not alone. I like Tom, but since he has been here I can't seem to shake the feeling that Alex is trying to pawn me off on his best friend. I'm confused by this because I thought we were in agreement to take this process slowly. He's constantly asking me if Tom and I have discussed pursuing a relationship and ignores me when I tell him I'm not interested in anything beyond this easy friendship we have. Does he already trust me so little? Alex claims he shares my insecurities on non-monogamy but this suspicion, this poisonous jealousy that has been growing within me doesn't believe him. It sends memories that I shouldn't have rocketing to the foreground of my consciousness: an unfamiliar woman's name flashing on his phone screen, his smile when he reads her messages, the fact that I don't exist in their relationship because she doesn't know about me. It feels wrong, deceptive. I'm jealous of his ability to exist without insecurity permeating everything the way it does for me. I am constantly fighting it, fighting to keep my worst fears from controlling me and that self-destructive whisper telling me soon the man I love will be completely indifferent to my presence in his life because there will be so many more important and special people for him to love.
Suddenly Alex is talking and he's telling Tom that I'm attracted to him and I am sitting there completely dumbfounded and then Alex invites Tom upstairs into our bed with us. I am terrified, I'm not terribly interested in this, but when am I going to have this opportunity again? I would be a fool to turn this down, wouldn't I? This seems outrageous, I feel like we should've sat around and had a properly thought out conversation about boundaries but soon all of us are naked and I am feeling empowered and sexual and revert to acting on instincts. It's not until afterward when Tom says "Good threesome, everyone," and we're high-fiving that I realize Alex is visibly upset.
Later he accuses me of crossing a boundary that I had mentioned once before several months ago in a hypothetical conversation about boundaries, before we had even agreed to seriously consider non-monogamy. This seems flimsy to me, but his hurt manages to turn this liberating memory into one of transgression and betrayal. He makes me accountable for the way he feels the way I was never able to make him accountable for the way I felt. I'm angry, I have so much anger but I've suppressed it so far down that I don't even know that I feel angry underneath the layers of self-doubt and hurt and insecurity.
I am grateful when he leaves, even though I know that I will miss him. Before he goes he tells me to take things slowly with Mike. Take it slow, like he did with me? Be patient, like all of the patience he exercised this past winter while he was miserable unless he was high, and then deciding that it was our monogamous relationship that was causing his unhappiness? My bitterness is palpable. I have never felt this petty, this out of touch with myself.
I comply to his terms, even though his definition of slow seems to be immediately jumping into bed with his best friend without any kind of discussion or planning. I selfishly use this to my advantage, failing to ask that he elucidate on the matter. My mind is always on that car ride, Mike's hands squeezing my hips, my hair in his face. I so badly want to be alone with him.
My opportunity comes the following evening, Mike asks me if I want to come over for some wine drinking. We sit across from each other in his living room and the electricity between us is staggering, it crackles around us like the air before a lightning storm. Every time one of our limbs come into contact it transfers into my body and I feel drunk with it, drunk with wine and chemistry and this beautiful tantalizing energy that jolts through me whenever we touch.
Later, we're alone and looking at the stars, talking idly while our fingers intertwine. We talk about the car ride, about the time we traded shirts at a dance party and the curious chemistry we both feel for each other. I'm grateful for the darkness so he can't see me blushing furiously. When we finally kiss I am filled with a longing I wasn't fully aware I possessed until that moment, and it becomes the only thing that matters. He holds me close and I need more, this moment of decision, like boldly stepping onto thin ice and watching the delicate network of cracks making their fissures across a pond. The cracks in my relationship, my unhappiness, my loneliness. I could shatter them now if I wanted, and I do, because I want him so badly. As we rip each other's clothes off I'm setting events into motion that can't possibly be reversed, but it isn't even registering into my consciousness. All I care about is this moment, this feeling of desire and being desired, this gratification of acting on lust. I am acting on pure, selfish need, and I have never done anything like it before. I feel powerful, I feel wanted, I feel beautiful.