A community of lovers

Photo: Danny on the covered bridge, Sept. 12

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"To hope is to gamble. It's to bet on the future, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty is better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk."

~Hope in the Dark, by Rebecca Solnit, as quoted on MotherJones.com


"The significance polyamory places on honesty, negotiation, and respect is not always obvious to outside observers."

~Polyamory, at Wikipedia.


"Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family; but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything."

~Willa Cather, ganked from nashobabear

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It's a dangerous thing, to love. We need it in this dark world, need it as much as ever. While they're bombing villages, letting children starve in Darfur, paving over the rights of you and me, we need to love fervently.

When I was little, my family had a dog named Snoopy. She looked the part: half beagle, half rabbit hound, white with black spots. My uncle had rescued her from a hunting camp where she was being abused, and she came to slink around our house, always a nervous, weasling pup. Scared of lightning, she would flinch if you clapped hands or even looked at her the wrong way.

Courage isn't a lack of fear. It's the willingness to do what you love and believe in without apology, without submission to the rules.

Every Friday when Dad got home from work we would drive from Windsor, 45 minutes to our cottage on Lake Erie. And when we hit the gravel road at Poplar Bluff, Snoopy would go berserk, flying around the car like a spotted poltergeist, wailing and shrieking with joy. As we pulled into the driveway, we would try to calm and reprimand, take her enthusiasm in hand. But nothing we could do, nothing, would prevent her from streaking out the first opened door and heading for the marsh. There in the distance we would hear her for the next half hour, yapping and running in delighted pursuit of rabbits and pheasants. At last she would return, darkened and bedraggled from head to foot with marsh dirt, smelling like a cow's fart. Then she would give up her exuberance, slinking around the screen doors, tail between her legs, her long eyes a portrait of shame.

It's hard to be an optimist in these times. But history is a "crab scuttling sideways." A romp in the muck might be what it takes to change our society.

Not long before the choral festival in Montreal, someone posted a comment to the GALA email group about polyamory. With all the jubilation about the progress of same-sex marriage, could we also recognize and celebrate the place of polyamorous relationships in our community? Many replies came back, but the one I most remember was this: you couldn't perform a song about polyamorous love without making everyone laugh.

It's going on 15 months since I met Danny. I'll cross a line here, the longest relationship I have had. My marriage lasted longer, but it was based on rules not desire. It was empty. Ironically I was the one who felt unwanted. Since then I have loved and felt loved by men, but the ravages of a confused life never taught me how to hold on.

I have learned with Danny: it's not about holding on, it's letting go. Love is letting another person be himself, not asking him to conform to some ideal. And so I feel safe, whole and treasured as never before.

Psychologists are exploring the evolution of jealousy. Women are more inclined to be jealous of emotional bonds, men are more jealous of passionate sexual relationships. In loving a man who loves other men, I have learned about my own jealous nature. Learned that it takes courage to give, to let, to open my heart.

In a world where love is rare, it takes courage to enter a community of lovers. But in doing so, I feel an exuberance of love growing within me, where sex is less about taking what I need, more sharing something I have in abundance.

That first summer I came out, at Elora Quarry, two men threw rocks at me and the man with me. It had been our second date, nothing more than a swim across the pond, lying near one another at the top of the beach, not even touching. Something triggered their hatred, the sight of two people desiring one another in a forbidden way. They took their idea of the law of nature into violent hands. Those two rocks tossed from atop the cliff missed us by less than a metre. We could have died that day.

Jim was afraid. Thought we had done the wrong thing, just by being near one another. That's the most destructive attitude: hiding something that is good and beautiful because the world isn't ready for it. Submitting to the order of silence.

I want to be Snoopy in the marsh, pursuing my forbidden love exuberantly, knowing fear, but not submitting to it.

September nature journal

Newly posted on Suite101:

Bacchanal

With fresh images and text.