Small children excepted, we are always afraid of the idiot, the person who blows our cover, revealing the hypocrisy or our own narcissism or the slights of hand in our enterprises. Ironically, the best or worst idiots are narcissists. Like Dostoyevsky. Call me an idiot.

Men in monogamous relationships should know it’s their right to have whatever extra-marital intercourse they run into and they’re at fault if they regularly fail to do so. There are no excuses. Everyone is personally responsible for their sexuality. There, I said it. Heresy.

If you set aside the issue of integrity, not even the most jealously self-righteous of unfaithful wives can complain about her husband’s peripatetic sexuality, since the image of a husband who is desirable to other women reflects well on a woman. The same thing is said about men whose wives sleep around. The cuckold is lucky. Meanwhile, the appearance of sexual incapacity, even though a husband honors his vows, if he fails to take advantage of an opportunity for consensual, safe sex, reflects poorly on the spouse,  slut or saint.

This is the reality of sex in  relationships after shedding all the rhetoric. Don’t worry if you aren’t or haven’t been tempted. This information is only useful when you are or after you have been. The only problem with it is psychological and then only from cognitive dissonance and you can easily resolve it by changing your agreements with your spouse or drinking when she decides to disclose her own perambulations and voilá, open communications.

Giving rise to polyamory. If you’ve got nothing more pressing to occupy your time. Poly agreements are not necessarily the same as matrimonial commitments. They can be. It’s relevant since children are nurtured by bonded relationships and benefit when those relationships are with their real parents. Foster and adoption is still all good. It’s just different for the children. How this plays out depends on the commitment of the foster or adoptive parent but there is an important aspect to the genetic ties.

I haven’t heard anything cogent about this in the rhetoric of the poly community. I’ve seen more shifting of partners than I anticipated, possibly a consequence of favoring emotional detachment, and talk is always about juicer content. Promoting polyamory legitimatizes common practice but it also promotes all sex-related enterprise.

Everyone needs to make a living. But belief in monogamy is a lot like Santa Claus. Kids are paid with gifts to accept a patently absurd idea. It costs husbands who cheat, if they aren’t careful, it costs half of everything they own and more. But unlike with Santa Claus, there are many who don’t and can’t conceive of being unfaithful. On principle. And they’re so sexually frustrated that they’ve made porno a multi billion dollar industry. And it’s sad that it’s about their sexuality and not a rolly polly man in a red suit stuck in the chimney. Oh well, it’s not our problem.

More sex positive talk can’t be harmful but I don’t know what to do about Islam or Bandon, Oregon. There’s a conflict.

Celebrating V-Day 2015

It’s 2:53 a.m. It’s a hot night and a coyote outside is having an orgasm. Body parts I didn’t know I had are hurting. I went in over my head again.

A sex councilor named Kat showed me a few pelvic exercises and I went to an Ecstatic Dance Friday night to try it with music. I found a Capoeira Samba there instead. A female body in a red feather bikini, followed by five others convinced me to stay. A woman in the band sold me a $25 ticket for the annual San Diego Brazil Carnival the following evening, V – Day.

After coffee the next morning, I called the club. A guy with a Portuguese accent told me to let people at the door know if I want to be in the samba contest for a free trip to Rio. It was like Jesus spoke to me.

I drove down the hill to the costume store where a woman that looks like my aunt, the one with a dirty secret, hands me an indigo sequin shirt. I find a headdress with a silver and gold sequine cap, beads hanging down. Black and white feathers form a big circle above my head like the sun.

Only feathered thing I could find for below the waist was a short black skirt trimmed with a purple boa. A wide leather sash went around my waist, with gold chains hanging in front that swing in and out with my hips. Black Bally jazz shoes, and purple faux pearl beads on my ankles. I’m ready to samba.

Other contestants are twelve mostly luscious females in elegant feathers, glitter makeup. Waiting in the wings, my limbic system was over-stimulated. In the context these ladies created, my strange outfit seems strangely reasonable. The women are stars of samba schools. The event manager gives me a chance to gracefully back out; says I didn’t pre-register for the contest. After the experience at Poly Palooza, I wasn’t about to be stopped by technicalities. I’m doing this. I dance or I get $75 for the costume rental.

She put me at the end of the bill so I can watch each dancer perform, see how they work with the bateria (or not) and the audience. They had an asset I lacked, their bodies. I needed a plan. For two seconds after my name was called, I wonder what the f—k I’m doing. The insistent rhythm of tamborims, caixa and surdos clarifies it.

Finding myself climbing the stairs to the stage, let ’em wait for it; picking up the rhythm, slowly moving across the stage facing the bateria, with my back to the audience, rotating my hips in the tight spiral Kat showed me, left, then right, making eye contact with each percussionist, brief eyeball to eyeball conversations with each one, there’s an accelerating crescendo as they synch up and my spiral gets wider, exaggerated. A break then a down beat and I’m thinking what the hell,  jump turn and face the audience as if we’d rehearsed. It worked.

Audience got it and we had f–ing crazy fun. At times, I admit, I wondered if I was going to die up there. I had open heart surgery in ’97. What a way to go! Decided to keep my heart rate down by settling into a crescent hip to hip movement, low energy. The the caixas come out again, take control. I’m off the floor, flying. The crowd goes wild. The girls come onstage and we rocked for a few minutes, when I noticed Acacia, a dancer from Oakland.

 

After the intro, we’re off stage. Several women in the audience ask me for pictures and autographs. Everyone is dancing, samba schools performing, Capoeira guys flying around like hippy gymasts and now contestants are called back onstage. I’m expecting an award speech. Instead, one by one dancers drift offstage leaving me and Acacia.

Photo courtesy of Acacia Hurricane Samba

We danced together maybe 10 minutes, audience screaming, copping moves like Gene and Ginger. Acacia’s compact, fiery, energetic, “I got that, what you doin’ with this?” She dances to tamborims, while I ride the shakera then switch or pair up, accelerating tempo while giving dirty dancing a new name. I’m back to the crescent, slow the heart down, breathe, bateria gives me some space. Acacia takes my attention again. I pick up and we hit it together on the beat.

Afterwards some contestants congratulate me. More photo ops. A dance hall hero in V heaven on V-day! Thank you, Jesus!

I’m going to Samba school.