I really needed to do two things at once and that's to try and deal with the Kim situation, or lack thereof to be accurate. But more immediate was Edith and what she wanted and what I had said to her in the bar, which was kind of fuzzy. I'm pretty sure I told her about knowing about Abby and Dewayne and that I was more than ok with it. But I think I went a little too far and got personal and said something about the kiss we had done about a few lifetimes ago, and there was some memory of her remembering it, and there was a memory of me wanting to fuck her right there in the bar, perhaps on the same table where Dewayne and Abby were going at it, but I doubt seriously I shared that image with Edith, but I couldn't be one hundred percent sure, which worried me. Fuck fuck fuck.
After the just in case shower, I tried to shut down the brain and get into some Zen, calm, serene state of mind. In reality, I found myself shaking, which I do on occasion, but not often fortunately, and I just wanted to crawl in my bed and pull the covers over my head. Moments like these make me long for the boring day Abby and I had on Sunday.
When I got to the park, Edith was waiting in her car which was bad. I checked the clock in the car since I don't wear a watch or have a cell phone with a clock in it. I don't wear a watch because I'm not into time all that much, and I don't have a cell phone because I don't want to be available all the time, not that anyone would call me anyway, truth be known. It had only been about fifty minutes since the call, so I knew Edith was anxious to lay it on me, and I knew what she was going to lay on me wasn't her body, alas.
We both said hello and I made some not so funny remark about her being a super athlete and walking must be boring and she responded with "well, walking might be boring but not with you," and I had a feeling that the poles had shifted and all that I had been dreading was wrong, one hundred fucking percent wrong, and now I was dreading what the little man was telling me, and I knew in my heart he was right, that Edith had fallen in love with me and this was our coming out walk.
Now don't get me wrong. Saying that someone had fallen in love with me is not something I say every week or even every month or year. In fact, I've only said it once and that was before I even met Abby, and it really wasn't me who said it. It was a lady way back in time. Way way fucking back and I don't even want to recount the details here because I didn't love her but we did have sex and she fell in love with me and told me in a letter that she loved me and it shocked the shit out of me and made me incredibly uncomfortable and I responded with a limp dick pussy ass letter telling her I thought she was confusing friendship with love or some such idiotic embarrassing dribble, and what I should have said is that I was flattered but I didn't love her, and then she would have had some finality, as cruel as it was.
The little man, listening to this mental conversation, as he always does, is telling me, right now, if you are thinking finality is better, then Lara first, and now Kim did you a huge favor, and I tell this little annoying idiot man to shut up, knowing he is right, and also knowing that he also heard that he is right since he knows all I know and then some.
So how in the hell did I leap from Edith's response about walking with me not being boring to the realization that she was madly in love with me? I don't have a fucking clue, but it was as clear as day. No doubt about it. I knew exactly how this conversation was going to play out. In fact I even knew my responses. It was amazing. A time warp. It was all there clear in my mind and I was experiencing the past with the lady who loved me and I didn't love her back, the present with Edith there, and the future as I was telling Edith everything I knew and felt. Every fucking thing, even though I knew that by telling her everything, she would love me more, and that that would be a very bad thing.
Then I remembered what I had read in the Seth Material, which you should read by the way, about alternate presents and alternate futures and even alternate pasts, and how you could create all three, and I thanked Seth, and I plotted out the alternate future for Edith and me, and that didn't involve love or even sex, for which I was incredibly relieved, at least about the love part.
Speaking of love, maybe you remember that I said that Lara had taught me, or maybe it's more accurate to say that I learned with Lara, that love is expansive and not limited. I learned that you could love two people at the same time, which shouldn't have been some great revelation in the first place. You can love your parents and all of your kids and your spouse at the same time. I think that we are just culturally indoctrinated to believe that you can't love two people romantically at the same time, and I'm here to tell you, point blank, with no reservations, with goddess as my witness, that you can. I fucking did. And it felt good and it didn't feel dirty or weird or anything approaching negative. And most of all it didn't feel selfish, which if you think about it, is incredibly important, because it meant that I didn't feel any sense of ownership of either woman. On the contrary, I felt that I was lucky to have them both, as lovers, in entirely different situations, and they were free to pursue other lovers.
All that being said, even though love is expansive, I think that I, at least, have limits. I'm not sure what those limits are yet because this is all so new to me. But if Abby, for example, wanted to eliminate our boring but comforting Sunday routine altogether to go and fuck other men or women on that day, and if she didn't want to create a new and comforting time together, I'd be upset. So caring for, and spending comforting time with, the primary partner is necessary, in my world. If Abby falls in love with another person, if she hasn't already, I'm ready to deal with that in a positive way. But if that love eclipses our love and supplants it, that's not ok. Sundays are ours.
Even though I didn't say it in advance, that was a digression about love, and the only reason I brought it up was because I didn't and I can't love Edith, although I think I could love Kim, for reasons that I can't clearly define even to myself, and I needed to find the right path to take with Edith, that didn't involve love.
I knew enough about her and her past, to know that we would not work together well in a love format. We definitely could have some awesome sex, with lots of mutual O's and sweaty and delicious nights, but the afterglow, for lack of a better word, would just not be there. I'm certain of that, and it's not a negative reflection on either one of us.
In one of my many email love letters to Lara, I told her that it dawned on me that I really didn't think I could fuck her if she didn't love the earth, which may seem like a strange thing to say, but it was in the midst of our great love affair, and I fell in love with the whole person, not just the body.
And I know, for sure, that I'm not being consistent about love and fucking and probably a lot of other things. I know that I say I want to fuck Kim and I don't even know her and what her environmental policy is, and then I make what might seem like a crackpot statement that I wouldn't have fucked Lara if she wasn't an environmentalist. I realize how crazy this all sounds, but I am just kind of throwing thoughts and emotions out there as they come to me and as I perceive they were in the past, and I'm fairly certain there is a certain consistency in the seeming inconsistencies. The hoped for gestalt.
And not to belabor this line of reasoning, but when I say I want to fuck Kim, that's the dick talking more so than the soul, and as we moved in that direction, which appears to not be the case, then maybe the emotions would kick in and they would trump the dick.
Chapter 74: The Walk and Talk
Since I've convinced myself that I have to create an alternate to the 'Edith falls in love with me, and I can't reciprocate' future, I think the best course is to tell her point blank that I love Abby, I like the idea of an open marriage, but I'm not ready to open up my side just yet, which is mostly true. Perhaps that will soften the blow when she tells me she loves me and I just can't love or fuck her. Well, I can't love her.
Life has a way of humbling all of us at times. In my case, most of the time, and in some of those cases, the humbling is a welcome relief. That was definitely the case, when I listened to Edith, expecting her declarat
ions of love, and heard instead that she thought I was fucking crazy, and that it wasn't fair to Abby for me to make her fuck other men for my pleasure.
Obviously the woman in her had triumphed over reason and our friendship, at least I thought it was friendship but was now doubting it big time, and she was on the warpath, in ways I could not have imagined just an hour ago, and she wanted to make it clear that she was going to expose me to the tight knit group as the asshole that I was, if I didn't back off and just let Abby have the friends she wanted, even if they were males.
I knew I was fucked. I knew that opening up to her in the bar, with alcohol clouding my focus, was a bad idea. This lady was unpredictable. I suddenly felt sorry for her estranged husband. The cheater. Maybe he had to cheat. Maybe she locked her legs to him long ago. And I truly didn't get the bit about first me being an asshole for making Abby fuck Dewayne, and then not letting let her have male friends. That just didn't make any fucking sense at all.
I was amazed at myself and how quickly my attitude toward another human being could change in so short a time. I filed that away for further analysis, but something in me was saying that Edith hadn't changed in an hour, but my perception of her had changed, and that was definitely something I needed to work on.
Chapter 75: Sinking Fast
I'm not sure how I got to this point. My dear wife Abby is fucking another man, and now I'm being accused of making her fuck the idiot for my pleasure? Am I going insane here? And not only that, but the idiot's wife, who was, just a few days ago, giving me very graphic signals that she was going to do the big number with me, has suddenly dumped me. Damn moon is definitely in my bad phase.
It's of no use, I tell myself, to try and convince Edith of the error of her ways because she's a scorned woman and they can be very hostile to men, which really is unfair, because only their husband and not all men fucked them over, but in my limited experience, they usually don't make that tiny distinction. She's also much smarter than I am, and any arguments that I might make, she would crush, along with my ego, so no way am I going to argue with her.
I'm left with trying to figure out why Kim dumped me so quickly. Not that we really had a relationship in the traditional sense. But come on, we talked about licking the kitty. Almost. How much more intimate can you get without actually licking it?
I emailed back to Kim regarding her 'We can't see each other again' email. I say "ok I accept that and I don't want to interfere in your life, but can you tell me why?"
I was just going to respond with 'ok' but that was lame and created no continuity and expectation of a response from her, which I desperately wanted. Then I thought about telling her how much I wanted her, but that seemed too melodramatic and maybe even clinging or, god forbid, desperate, which I've learned, is the absolute best way to send a woman away from you at warp speed.
I also considered trying to tell her succinctly, as this was email, about my thoughts about open marriage and the advantages of openness and honesty versus cheating, and on and on, but then I remembered how Edith turned my openness back on me and used it to potentially crucify me in front of the tight knit group, and I dropped that idea very quickly. In the final analysis, I was content with my original response, but the point was moot because I had already sent the email.
I was in one of those moods to sit and wait for a response, so I did, for about half an hour, and when it didn't come back, my mind flashed back to those desperate days after Lara disappeared and my increasingly frantic, and, yes I admit it, finally desperate emails to her. Thinking about that gave me a major headache and so I decided to take a walk.
Chapter 76: Kim Responds
I got back from my walk and had an email from Kim but I didn't read it immediately. I was thinking how nice it would have been to have had a final email from Lara explaining why she had to disappear, and then I could have had some closure. Of course, it may have been a really nasty email telling me that I was a total asshole, but, and I haven't said this before, the last email from Lara was at about ten PM and she was having dinner with her parents, and she had already had eleven orgasms, yes eleven, that day, and was trying to break her record of fourteen, and they were all while thinking of us together. Does that sound like someone who is about to pull the plug on a relationship, which she did right then and there with that last email?
I finally screwed up the courage to read Kim's email and it said, "George, there is something I have to tell you and you're probably not going to like it in one sense but you will like it in another."
Well not only did that leave me hanging, it left me hanging as to how long I'd be hanging. So I sent back, "so do you want to tell me here by email or in person or on the phone?"
No answer for two days.
Shit.
Another Lara.
Maybe I should just forget women. Or all women except Abby, and maybe even forget about having any meaningful relationship with her except for the spooning. And the coffee on Sunday mornings.
Finally, after two agonizing days, I got a call from Kim and she wanted to take a walk. Wait a minute. Another one of those walks? Is it possible that Edith and Kim are in contact and they somehow know that I'm vulnerable on walks, even though I don't think that I am?
Alright, what the fuck do I have to lose except my self-respect, which is long gone anyway.
I agree and we meet and I am treated to probably the most interesting and disturbing, both at the same time, dialogue I have ever heard in my adult life, at least regarding relationships, mine in particular.
Time for an aside. A digression. About relationships and the world in general and gratitude. I try very hard to be grateful every day. And these days, it doesn't take much effort. Not that my life is all that wonderful. But in perspective, it really is. Wonderful that is.
I guess I not only see the glass as half full, I see water as a wonderful invention that gives life to all people on the planet and all of us people are brothers and sisters, and why the fuck do we try and kill each other? So you have someone, i.e. me, who is grateful for life and the mountains and lakes and rivers, but not content to sit back and stay quiet when other people fuck up my world. "That's a lot of shit to see in a glass of water" Abby would say, I'm guessing, if she ever heard that.
So the point of the digression is this. So Edith hates me. So Lara dumped me. So Kim not only dumped me, but she's about to lay some very heavy shit on me. So what the fuck? I'm alive. I get to spoon with Abby. In the winter. I've got both chocolate and coffee ice cream in the freezer. I get to grill on the weekends. How could life get any better? Anything that Kim lays on me is going to roll right off my back because of my philosophy of life. I am a Zen master. Bring it on, bitch.
Chapter 77: Or so I Thought
It occurs to me, now, way too late, that there is a substantial difference in developing a philosophy of life from reading a few books from the masters, and in spending your life in a monastery, actually practicing that philosophy. Maybe akin to the difference in thinking about training for a triathlon and actually training and doing one. I hate using that analogy because of Dewayne, but it fits and it's right there in my brain, so what the hell.
Kim and I go for the walk at the same place where Edith cut off my balls, and since Edith already did it once, maybe it will be less painful this time.
Kim seems intense and worried at the same time, and that makes me tense and worried and a whole lot more.
Kim says she has something to admit and that sounds like a bad start.
She hesitates but then just kind of blurts it all out, "Dewayne and Abby weren't having an affair."
Ok, so the words came out of her mouth, they caused vibrations in the air, they travelled a few feet, they hit my ear drums, they vibrated into my brain, my brain understood very clearly what they meant, and then everything stopped. Stopped making sense. For me.
Suppose someone came up to you and said, the sun just went to nova, i.e. the motherfucker exploded, and you have a short tim
e left to live because the super hot blast, a million billion fucking degrees worth of blast, will tear you into imperceptible particles, if particle is the right word, and that will be in exactly eight minutes. How do you respond to that?
Do you sit there and start thinking about the credibility of the person giving you the information? That could be wasted time. Or do you start to think about if you really have eight minutes or will the super hot blast start to heat up the air in front of it and so on and so on, and the eight minute rule is really wrong. And if it's wrong, do you have six minutes. Or five. Or do you start to think about if your consciousness will survive the blast, and if so, what's it going to feel like without a physical body? Or maybe you just sit down on the closest park bench, assuming you are in a park and there are benches and they have space available, and think that this is just going to be a new experience and you're going to just try and get into that experience with all of your senses. Until all those senses get fried to a crisp, the little man reminds you.
That's kind of what and how I was thinking, not quite but close enough, when Kim told me that every waking thought and emotion that I had had in the past several months was based on erroneous information.
I'm George, mwm, 52 Page 20