Back to the party and I was there wearing my clean un-ironed shirt and shorts, which by the way I wear 365 days a year except on leap years when it's 366 day, and this lady, came over to me, and it was obvious that she had had a few too many drinks, and she just kind of looked me over up and down, and then said "Just what kind of statement are you trying to make?." She actually said this twice, with a clear emphasis on statement, and a huge amount of overall disdain.
I kind of like her husband who was standing about ten feet away, and I think he might have been somewhat embarrassed by what she was doing, but maybe not, but since I thought he might be and since he's a decent guy, I didn't tell the bitch what I was thinking which was, "Lady, we're taking down mountains for coal to burn for electricity which ruins the atmosphere and we're cracking atoms which creates particles that can kill all living things for tens of thousands of years, and my not ironing is a small, granted very small, way of trying to help stop this madness. And if you look at the larger picture, there are so many more serious and egregious things happening in the world than a man walking around with an un-ironed shirt. So get a grip, take a chill pill, lighten up on the booze, and leave me the fuck alone."
Abby would not have been pleased if I said anything approaching that.
I know I keep digressing and digressing from the digression and I'm sorry but here is one final thought regarding ironing or not. And besides, just think of this saga as a metaphor on life, and not an end in itself. Like someone once said, "life is a journey, not a destination." And this saga being a journey, I'm not particularly concerned with the speed, so slowing it down with digressions is not a bad thing, in my mind at least.
At some point, some really famous Hollywood figure is going to start wearing obviously un-ironed clothes and then someone like Oprah is going to ask him or her why, and they will give her something like my spiel above, not giving me credit of course, and they will be respected for taking that stance, and then they will be copied by their millions of fans, and then everybody will stop ironing and that look will become fashionable.
At that point, I'll have to make a decision as to whether to step up and try and claim credit for starting this new fashion craze, perhaps even suing the star for stealing my idea in the first place. But, no one will believe me, alas.
Along those same lines, I remember when I was young and us hippies wore faded and ragged jeans because we didn't have money to replace them and now the ragged and faded look are all the rage and people pay megabucks for someone to fuck up their jeans before they even buy them. So being on the cutting edge of a fashion, as I have been, with faded and fucked up jeans and un-ironed shirts, has done me no good at all.
Home life is pretty normal right now and I like it that way. I like all except the sleeping thing. Fortunately, it's about to get better because it's late October and the leaves are falling, but more significantly, it's getting colder, and Abby, having gone to college in Vermont, loves to sleep with the window open. I call it a window, but it's really a sliding glass door, but it's the only thing that opens in the condo, besides the front door, and nobody really talks about opening a door at night.
Talking about sleeping with an open window conjures up romance and back to nature and all sorts of cool things, so that's why we say 'we sleep with the window open', even though, technically it's a door. And the good thing is that Abby who is loathe to get near me in bed, all of the summer and most of the spring and fall, just kind of snuggles up to me, obviously for the warmth only, but it's still nice. I wish we lived in Siberia.
The normal existence that I referred to above consists of us just doing our own thing in the morning, her swimming or running depending on the day, and me walking, every day, four to six am, two full hours, about six miles, never failing, even in the rain and sleet and snow.
We meet for breakfast but not really. When I get back from my daily six mile, two hour, every day walk, she is eating her breakfast, except on Tuesday and Thursday, when she swims and then goes from the pool to school, where she teaches. On the other days of the week, I come in after my two hour six mile walk and take a shower, put on one of my clean, un-ironed shirts and shorts and sit down for a light breakfast.
Chapter 37: Abby's Lust and an Apology
First the apology regarding the significantly long digression about the ironing. Sorry.
Now the good stuff about Abby's lust.
I gave you those mundane, boring details about our daily routines for a reason. To show you that we live a pretty normal, boring existence, which points out, or should point out, that even boring mundane existences can be the springboard for lusty sex filled encounters.
Not seeing my logic here? Well, here's how it plays out, in my mind at least. Abby has raised three kids, almost single handedly, as I admitted, grudgingly, earlier. Now she carries on a normal, productive life, teaching kids which is about as noble a profession as there is, and she still has time, and more importantly, the inclination, to have an affair. That's pretty awesome.
The other point here is that Abby cares enough about her lust to risk something.
I'm trying to be fair to her here. I think I always try to be fair to her, by the way.
But I'm also trying to be clear. And being clear, sometimes, sounds critical, which in fact it is. As I've said to her, probably too many times here, and definitely too many times in real life, that if she would just be a little, no, a lot, more critical of her thinking process regarding things as black or white, and see some shades of gray, then my life, her life, our lives, would be heaven on earth. That's an exaggeration, but it would still seem like heaven on earth compared to what we have now.
Here's my take on our respective libidos and how they interact, or not, and how that impacts our relationship and lives.
I'm certain that everyone thinks their libido is normal. Why shouldn't they. It's all they know from a personal perspective. And when two people get together with libidos that are about the same, it works well. And if they are far apart, i.e. the libidos, accommodation must be made if the relationship is going to last.
Here's where it gets tricky. Very tricky. This is going to sound like a very radical statement. At least it seems radical to me. To Abby it would sound insane, if I dared mention it to her, which we all know, will never happen.
I think that Abby and my libidos are about on par.
So what the fuck's the problem?
Well, here's how it plays out, in real life, in our bedroom, in our bed, every day and every night. This is our reality.
Abby doesn't think that lust is her right. Those fucking asshole perverted nuns. She thinks than men are more lustful than women. She knows that for a fact. You could give her mountains of credible evidence to the contrary, documented by experts in the field of human psychology, questioning thousands of people, over decades, and she would reject it. Abby never lets facts get in the way of her beliefs. Never.
She also knows that I have a higher libido than she does. It's obvious. I'm a man after all. And she knows that if she were to follow her lust and want to have sex more than or even approaching my level of desire, she would be guilty of something. She's not sure of what. But that's beside the point.
Enter Dewayne. Enter indeed. He shows up, pays attention to her, her lust rises to the surface, as it should, as it does in every breathing human being, she is overwhelmed by it, she succumbs, and then the shit thinking kicks in.
Fucking nuns.
Here's the shit thinking. In a nutshell.
She has done something wrong. She knows that. The nuns warned her. But, what she has done wrong is not clear. To her. At this point.
She is conflicted because she likes Dewayne. As a friend. As a fellow bike rider. As a fellow athlete. And she really liked the sex. Yes indeed.
So somebody has to be blamed. Because something was done wrong. That's clear. Black and white.
The wheels of her mind are spinning. This is not some sort of devious, lazy 'blame the dog for t
he broken vase' routine. This is truly deep thought. I'm not being sarcastic here. This is trying to make sense out of a situation that just doesn't make any sense. She enjoyed fucking Dewayne, that's a given. Lustiness leading to cheating is wrong. That's a given. Cheating is wrong. That's a maybe.
Enter George, figurative speaking, unfortunately. Abby, as all wives do, has some serious issues with him. I.e. me. The hoarding. The demands for more touching. Requests actually, in any objective person's view, but demands, none the less, to her, which trumps all else. So she's moving in the right direction, she knows instinctively. George is also not that great a communicator. And he leaves little crumbs in the kitchen.
She knows that people have affairs. She knows women have not been empowered for that long, historically, and that they need to fight for their rights. She knows that she is capable of living on her own, even though she chose to have a traditional family and raise kids. She likes the direction this internal discussion is going. She knows there would be life after George. Go girl, she thinks and almost says out loud.
Soon, the issue is not her affair, or her sucking and fucking and getting licked by Dewayne. It's about women's rights and abusive husbands. Hoarding is abusive she thinks. All those fucking crumbs.
So she's completed the process and she's tired of thinking but it was worth it and she's satisfied.
No, she's not going to divorce or leave George. That's silly. But she is going to continue to fight for her rights. She has to.
The notion that her lust and her libido are somehow repressed, except with Dewayne, would be just a George-made fantasy which she would dismiss in a micro second, if George had the balls to bring it up. And I don't.
Chapter 38: A breather
That was a struggle. Getting all that out about Abby and her libido being repressed and her inability to even consider it. I even had to go take a walk before I began it. A short one compared to the two hour six mile walk I do 365 days a year. And 366 days on leap years. The walk cleared my head and gave me some energy to get all that down.
But now it's all said and in the computer and we can move on.
Isn't it a wonder that only fifty percent of marriages end in divorce? Seems like it should approach one hundred percent with shit like this, the libido issue, in our case, looming over everything. Every night. Except November through February, when it's cold. And also, I forgot, in July when we are at the summer house.
So now that I've so cleverly diagnosed the problem, how do I/we move toward the solution?
A digression. I read once, I think it was in the book, 'Men Are From Mars and Women Are From Venus' that one of the main differences between men and women is how they address problems. Basically a man sees the problem, looks for a solution, finds the solution and implements it. Women, on the other hand, see a problem, look for a solution, find the solution but then they need to talk about it for a certain amount of time before implementing it, which may or may not be a better approach. The problem, of the problem, is that men and women don't know how the other gender thinks, and that creates a new problem.
End of digression. That was a short one.
Ok, so I know the problem and I already know the solution, i.e. open marriage, and now all I have to do is figure out a way of implementing it.
Well, not so fast. I have to also make sure that Abby knows there is a problem. That might not have a solution.
I've also got to make sure Kim doesn't do anything foolish like divorcing Dewayne, thus opening the door for Abby to reconsider her 'not leaving George' mandate. At least I think that is her mandate.
Chapter 39: Some Random Thoughts about Lust
I hope I'm not sounding like some lust filled dirty old man who thinks about nothing but sex all day and all night.
Let's take a trip through my day. Today for example. After my two hour six mile walk I went to the gym. I hate to admit it, but today's walk, and then again next Tuesday is/will be, only one hour and thirty five minutes. That means that two days a week I am twenty five minutes short of what I am so proud of, i.e. my two hour six mile walk. I'm only proud of this because Abby is so damn athletic and in such good shape, having done two half ironmen and tons of shorter triathlons, and looks about twenty years younger than her biological age, i.e. forty eight. So I'm proud that at least I keep myself in decent shape with my daily two hour six mile walk.
Anyway, back to the twenty five minute shortfall. I am not cheating because I shoot a hundred free throws after lifting weights for ten minutes, and that takes twenty five minutes, and since I miss a lot of the free throws and the ball goes careening all over the place and I have to run to get it, I count those twenty five minutes as walking time because the net average of standing and shooting and then running after the ball certainly balances out to the same as walking, I think. I'm compelled to count things like this. It's not healthy, I know, but I can't stop it.
Back to the day. Back to the lust.
As I was walking into the gym at about 5:40 am, my favorite little co-ed was right in front of me, which was very fortunate indeed for me, because she is tall and thin and has one of the finest butts on the face of the earth and she always wears some really skimpy shorts, no doubt for my, and other men's and maybe women's pleasure. She has two pairs of shorts that have writing on them and one says 'pink' and one says 'rip it', both of which, I think, are pretty awesome slogans to be displayed on her beautiful ass.
So I look, briefly. I lust. I imagine how she might taste. And then I go and lift weights, knowing, for absolute certain, she would no more fuck me than she would fuck a priest.
Ok, that's about all the lust I have from then until I come home at night, have cocktail hour with Abby, looking at her lustfully while she sips her beer, not wanting her to know I am lusting after her because of reasons I have so painfully and honestly laid out, and then I go to bed and wait for her to snuggle, wishing it was later in the year.
No wait. I wrote the above yesterday and then went home and went out on the small deck of our condo, fifth floor, top floor, of the high rise, at least it's a high rise in this small college town. I was in my chair, waiting for Abby to return from her walk so we could have cocktail hour, which is really cocktail quarter hour these days, not that we don't like to spend time together, but when she has finished her beer, she's ready for dinner. And there I was sitting, looking down, and then I remembered my evening lust, before Abby sits down, and actually after she sits down too, and that lust is directed toward the lovely young coeds who walk and run downtown, in incredibly skimpy and sexy outfits, that time of the day.
Now I ask you. Honestly. Am I just a miserable old horny man? Or am I dealing with my natural lust in the best way that I can?
Here's my take on my lust and lust in general.
Lust is good. Lust is natural. Lust can't be turned off. You can attempt to turn it off, but it will backfire. Look at Jimmy Swaggert. Look at Jim Baaker.
What you should do with it, in my opinion, is just observe it. Treat it like a friend. When it comes, be thankful. Be thankful you are a human. Follow it as far as you can without interfering with other people or your own life.
Look at it this way. If you are lusting after someone and then go follow them home and peep in their window, or worse, you are not only fucked up, you are risking your freedom, and you are perverting natural lust. But if you simply go with the lust as far as acknowledging your feelings and then letting it go, that's a winner.
I guess it's time to let you know the answer to the Buddhist paradox, not that I was withholding it, but I just forgot about it and since it's immediately relevant to this discussion, here it is.
Remember the paradox, i.e. earthly pleasures, such as lust, are hard wired into the very core of what makes us human, and are necessary for the perpetuation of the species. But, according to the Buddhists, the pursuit of them is what causes human misery, and giving up the desires is the only path to nirvana, which seems to be a pretty awesome place or state of mind,
so they say, and I tend to believe Buddhists.
Ok back now to the lovely lady with pink sprawled out across her perfect ass, well actually sprawled across the tiny shorts she wears on that perfect ass. I lust for her when I see her. It's brief. It's natural. It's harmless. But, here is a very important distinction, and the answer to the paradox.
Suppose, one fine day, she walks up to me, as unlikely as that might seem, and asks me to go have coffee with her, and after I almost have the big one, i.e. a massive heart attack, and after I stammer out a yes, and after we have coffee, and after she makes it clear she wants to fuck me, and after I fuck her, and while I'm lying there, with her, both of us naked, of course, and I'm admiring, from a very close distance I might add, her perfect ass, then I have that aha moment and realize that the answer to the paradox is so fucking simple that I can't believe it took the super brain twenty plus years, or, as I said before, it took me twenty plus years to hear the answer to the problem that the super brain solved in a micro second.
Sorry, again, for that long sentence. Must be the coffee I had this morning.
The answer, succinctly, if I'm capable of succinctness, is that it's not the lust that is the problem. Not at all. The lust is good and natural. The problem arises, and the misery follows, in the pursuit of the lust.
Huge distinction here. Massive, gigantic, enormous, humongous distinction between lust and pursuit of lust. They are not even in the same universe, i.e. lust and pursuit of lust.
It's totally ok to lust after Miss pink. It's also totally ok to fuck her, in that unlikely event as described above. It's just not ok, in any sense, in any way, in any manner, to pursue that lust.
I'm George, mwm, 52 Page 10