Oh, I Know Something About The Ways Of Love...

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.
.....Oingo Boingo

A is home for a one night only appearance. I was happy she was leaving for camp, now I am happy she is home. She is working with an older group of girls this year so her time spent at camp will be slightly different.

For one thing, the older girls say goodbye in different ways than the younger girls.

Older girls know camp will happen again next year and so goodbye is not forever. Younger girls think this is it. The last goodbye.

It usually isn't.

But A is smart because she knows sometimes it is.

It is funny how memories cloud goodbyes. Some people see a time of joy while others see pain and still others see a combination.

This week has become a week of goodbyes. Red says it means something else is opening. I feel like I have tried, on many levels, to let life be. Maybe I have simply over-estimated my role or non-role.

But here we are...

Smarty asked what I wanted. I want to train. I went swimming tonight and tomorrow is a long bike ride day. She asked how I do it. I made a joke.

The truth? I am training my way through goodbyes. I hadn't realized it until I was in the pool tonight. I have spent the last year asking people to be who they are, and accepting.

And it was wonderfully enlightening.

Goodbyes. It is how I first got started as a runner. I needed to say goodbye to my mother after she died, then a marriage, now...the past year.

And now it is time for a more iron-centered focus. And an apartment search. And to go back to letting life just 'be'. And, like the younger and older girls at camp, I will just be reminded that there is often more to come. Next year.

And working through all those goodbyes. Like at camp each year. Goodnight, A. Goodnight, blog. See you tomorrow.

Let's Do The Time Warp Again...

I've been wanting to use that title for a long time now. I almost 'wasted' it back in June, but this morning it dawned on me that now is the time to do a little dance. Get a little jiggy. Shake my bootie, etc.

You see, I woke up and saw my Facebook page looking like a reunion of the best kind.

After all of my time blogging at 'that other place' I am finally done. And that means I lose out on 'seeing' so many of my friends because they are still there, right?

Wrong.

Thanks to a lovely woman who will remain nameless...the best thing just happened: We're all partying on Facebook like it's 1999. Or 2007. Whichever you liked better.

And my heart sang because I had missed so many of these amazing people.

So, right at the moment when summer looked to be getting more difficult because of my training schedule, a little fun came barreling into me and made me smile. Made me a bit nostalgic, too, but mostly, it made me happy.

So...Thanks, MarkyZ. Why? For bringing FB users from all over the world together and not charging us....even when the rumors out there tell us otherwise.

Next...you've asked about it a couple of times...how 'The One' got his pseudonym. And how it impacts 'the search to end all searches'.

'Cause Everyone's Heart Doesn't Beat The Same...

I just recently starting ramping up my triathlon training. I have been good about sticking to my schedule. Right now, I'm running about 25 miles a week; biking another 20 and doing daily strength training routines. Last night, I added swimming.

Or tried.

It seems that I have forgotten how to swim. Apparently, it's been enough years that my arms don't know what to do; my feet don't seem to want to kick; my heart rate never got down to a normal pattern during my laps and I have forgotten to breathe out while above water, not breathe in while I am under.

But I'm going back tonight. Yes, right after I do another round trip to drop off A at camp, and then a five mile run, I will be back in the pool for an hour. What will I accomplish? I am not sure yet. Perhaps it isn't always about accomplishments, but rather an effort. Sounds like a metaphor for my dating life this past year. It often feels like I have never gotten so much wrong all at once before, but maybe I am simply romanticizing some memory or another.

I went to see 'The Actor' over the weekend. He is in my favorite play right now and I made the trip down to cheer him on, and, on some level, to see what we felt after 10 months of not seeing each other.

Funny...ask anyone and they will say he adores me. He does. And I him. Total love. But sometimes, people live their lives doing what they want and they don't always remember there are other people in the universe.

Ask us why we stopped seeing each other and I will say that he did something that he knew would hurt me. He will say I held a grudge because of it. We would both be right.

On Saturday morning he told me the truth about his new girlfriend. She worships him. She believes he is perfect. His words, verbatim. And he doesn't like it. But he does accept it.

His issue with me? I don't. My feelings for him are based on knowing he is human. That's not the same. And I get it.

I left MD on Saturday and cried on the way home. Or at least until NJ. Why? Because this is me. The woman who loves people for their flaws and their perfections. How else can I be honest with anyone? I don't want a god. I want an equal.

'The Actor' is my friend, but on Saturday morning, even though I know he loves me...he made me remember why I was afraid to see him.  I was worried he would do or say what he knew would hurt the most, and I was afraid I wouldn't know how to feel.

Sadly, I felt just what I was supposed to, I guess.

I was reminded of the day my ex-husband told me that it wasn't that he didn't love me, it was that his mistress made him feel like a king.  I did not.  He told me he was torn between us.  I asked if he loved her and he said he wasn't sure.  So I told him to be with her.  To treat her well.  To be honest.  Why? I guess it is because I don't ever want to force a choice and have someone regret their decision. I have a lot of stories like this. One day, I won't have to say this to someone. I am sure of this.

But anyway, back to now. Even with someone you love, sometimes you just have to step back and be prepared to be a friend when, and if, they need you.

Even if you end up being the odd person out.  Or especially when.

I guess I am a far better friend than a lover. That's not such a tragedy, you know?

So tonight, I'm off to swim. I expect to be in the pool every night for the next four weeks. Why? Because I am all heart, even when I am very little skill.

Oh, wow, this does sound like a metaphor for my love life.

And that's not such a bad thing, either.

(image from funny-potato.com)

Maybe You Will Always Be...Just A Little Bit Out Of Reach...

Usually, at this time of year, I am returning from my trip to Chicago. I love the city during "Taste of Chicago" because it was there that I truly knew what it meant to be falling in love with "The One".

This year...I went to DC for a day and saw "The Actor", but more on that later.

Now, I want to talk about what was happening around this time last year.

I had just seen 'The One' for a few days and we talked about all that had gone wrong and all that had gone right. I told him that when I left Chicago, I would be doing it as a single person. That I thought we should take time to think about what we wanted or needed, but that the only place I really wanted to be was with him. I also mentioned that I was still having the trust issues of him having left me in Austin and I needed time to work on this.

Meanwhile, back at home, both 'The Prince' and 'The Actor' were checking in on me. I think they knew how hard it was for me to be in Chicago.

While I was driving back to New York, my cell phone started going off like crazy. None of the texts were really to me, but rather, about 'The Prince'. Our hostess from Maryland was trying to figure out how she could find time alone with him in DC at our next blogger bash and people kept asking me how to answer. To be honest, I wasn't sure. No one realized that he and I had agreed to share a room with 'The Actor' and one other blogger, and I didn't want to be the one telling everyone so I just said: It will work out. I honestly believed it would be just fine.

And there it started...weeks of learning that regardless of if we called it a blogger bash or a swinger's party or a rodeo in the outback, people made plans to be with people and then hid the plans. People cried and they manipulated and they told strange stories to get others to do what they wanted.

One gentleman asked if I would be his birthday present...

Yeah...exactly. And that's all good, except, knock on wood, I didn't go to these parties to hook up. Ask Smarty, I was always upset because I was trying to get out of them. They weren't fun for me. They were work. And frustrations. And lots of other things. But I am a firm believer that no one else had to know about this, at least not the guests.

So, here we were, in the weeks leading up the DC Blogger Bash and all I wanted was to be far away from it. Now there is a weekend I wish I could un-do and never do again.

But, wait, that's a story for later. For the time being, 'The Actor' and I were having a blast doing the silliest of things like museums and making popcorn and sharing stories about our mis-spent youth. Ahh, what a start to summer it was...Oh, and I was quite sure ‘The Prince’ was in love, or something like it, with our hostess, and that she felt the same.

And there is the story you won’t hear in the Grease-edition.

A Year In A Blogger's Life...Part 1.

Just the other day, Smarty wrote a post about the night that we met.

I can't believe it has been over a year. And what a year it has been. I am so torn. Undo all of last year? Do it all over again exactly as it happened? Change some things and not others? Who the fuck knows at this point?

But last June that was all just a future memory. You see, I was off to Maryland to meet Red and Smarty and I couldn't have been more excited. Well, let me not exaggerate. I didn't want to go to Maryland. Not really. I had a bad feeling about the party. I wasn't sure why, except that having been on AFF for so long, I think I was pretty good about reading online 'people' there and I didn't want to meet our hostess, 'The Princess'. From her blog, which I only read because 'The Prince' said I should check it out, I thought that we had little in common and even less of a reason to meet than my friend Smarty thought.

Plus, I know I can be quite definite about people I spend time with, especially when I have to pay for things like hotels, etc., but hey, I was about to meet my girls! I remember calling 'The Actor' and after having said 'no' to him for almost a year, I said 'yes'.

And that's how we ended up going to 'The Hostess's' party together, but not really. You see, he had warned me that he would be busy playing party host that night so I shouldn't be too upset if we hardly saw each other. I laughed because clearly this guy didn't know me.

Then I called 'The Prince' and said...wanna? The truth is that he and our hostess had something going on that I couldn't explain. I'd seen some of the emails and texts and posts about each other and I sort of thought it was comical, or even not really real, until I saw it in person.

Before even arriving in Maryland, I learned that our hostess had lied to her husband about who our fair Prince was. That led to a nice chain of events, which is why so many of us don't speak anymore.

But on that night, I was out with a bunch of bloggers who had never done a 'blogger bash' before. Having done a ton of them, I was totally prepared to do very little. Oh, sure, I played kissing games, and drank, and collected business cards from the couples at the party, but for the most part, I watched.

I watched "Brother Dom", as Smarty calls him, and his wife try to decide what they were doing; I watched Red, the smartest of the bunch, sit in her chair on the lawn and watch the nuttiness. I watched 'The Prince' and 'Brother Dom's' wife come out of a room, clearly having hooked up, then I gasped as Mrs. Dom kissed me on the lips and said 'thanks' for the time with good old Prince. Uh, you’re welcome?

Then, later that night, as 'The Actor' and I stood in the kitchen together talking, 'The Prince' walked up to me, kissed me and told me that he and our hostess had gone 'swinging' as it were. Smarty says she doesn’t get why this happened (uh, because we’re dealing with swingers?) because Prince was my boyfriend. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Congrats! The story can end here, right? Everyone is happy. Our Hostess is about to become very popular; Prince got what he wanted; I liked the Actor more than I had expected to and Smarty and Red were real life girls now and we could plan our world-wide takeover.

Nope, sillies. Nope. You see, by the middle of the night, Hostess’s husband was not in a good mood; her best friend was still upset over a fight they had before all of the guests arrived; The Actor was passed out on Scotch; Brother Dom was in a room, in tears, with me trying to cheer him up; Smarty’s husband had met someone who seemed to like him way, way, too much for later comfort and I was exhausted from driving through the entire state of MD, twice, lol.

Oh...and then the morning came. Our Hostess overheard someone say that Prince Charming had actually come with me, not with Red. Gasp! Now I have to listen to her tell our breakfast table, over and over again, how he knocked her nose ring out; then I got to hear her husband tell me how she lied to him about Prince's real deal. She had told her husband he was Red's date. Hubby was smart enough to know there was a lie, just not what to do about it. So I apologized because none of us wanted anything other than a fun weekend. He said I was being silly. I decided I liked him and wanted to be friends forever.

Oh...and while all was well in the world...Brother Dom was looking at bruises on his wife and allowing a new story to brew: That we had an angry black man in our circle who left marks on his wife. He later decided to admit that wasn't what happened, but not before he wrote a post about it accusing the Prince of some un-charming behavior. Recently, our Hostess said I demanded that the post be removed. Wrong-o. I asked Brother what really happened and he told me. Then he and Prince talked and Brother removed the post on his own. However, I think the re-telling of an angry, viscious Bubbles demanding blog retribution sounded better.

Princess has recently decided that none of the stories that counter her unicorns and bunnies fantasy are true. But they are. And they get worse. And I sometimes get mad at Smarty because she wants to tell these stories.

They all, every single one of them, made me cry. Want to know why? Because I spent my year in love with 'The One'. That's why. I only wanted to be with him. But I was in a perpetual time out and so I went off to parties to learn more about people. And I grew close to so many of them. They became my friends, people I love and respect and will/have/would go to the ends of the earth for, probably way too often.

And what I learned, repeatedly, is that we are exactly what we think we are, no more and no less. Even when we pretend to be something else.

Last year, I watched a wife in an open marriage lie to her husband, constantly. I watched a couple swing, then not, then swing again. I watched Prince engage women I was like: WHAT? I listened to the Actor through all of his bad days and good.

I made friends. I lost friends. I went places I wanted to go and to some places I hated even thinking of traveling to and I learned an awful lot.

For every 'fantastic' story, there is someone thinking...yeah, this isn't so fantastic, is it?

But wait...we didn't all implode until about six weeks later. That's when the real hurt and anger started. I guess I have to wait for Smarty to start writing about August before I can chime in. Hurry Smarty. Hurry.

Riff, baby, if you’re out there, wait until she tells you about DC, or STL, or Vegas…or, or, or...

You Want What Lovers Have...

It feels like so many years ago that 'The One' and I were making plans to meet.

A friend of mine from AFF, 'Smurfette', was throwing a birthday party in Rhode Island. I was just understanding that my marriage was over and she invited me to get me of New York for a weekend. It seems that my time on AFF has been filled with girlfriends finding things for me to do to get over a broken heart.

Sidenote: I dare say I am not good at being in love. New blog topic for another day.

When 'Smurfette' asked me to join her and her swinger friends I didn't hesitate. Not because I was a swinger, but because I was going to ask 'The One' if he would fly to New York from Chicago and then drive to Rhode Island with me.

I asked. He didn't hesitate with his yes. And my life was changed forever.

When we met at LaGuardia airport I was still a bit in shock that we were doing this. However, the next three hours flew by while we laughed and told stories as though we had known each other forever. Maybe, in some way, we have. Or had. Whatever.

When we got to our hotel we ordered in and watched ESPN. In another time, on another site, we wrote about this night. Two perspectives but the same outcome. I woke up and could finally say that this was no crush, no joke, nothing but the real thing.

We took our new relationship to a swinger party that weekend and we didn't swing. I danced and drank and he observed and watched over me. A year later I learned what our attendance at that party had done.

You see, I was some random girl from NYC in a red silk strapless dress and silver stilettos and he was a random boy from Chicago in black. But apparently, when we kissed, or danced, or sat together just being, another woman, in another couple, asked her husband why he didn't look at her the way 'The One' looked at me. And their marriage was broken forever.

Years of her swinging, and his allowing it, had brought them to this...a stage of resentment. When the husband told me this during their divorce I didn't know what to say. His answer: We had done nothing but share a moment with a fantastic couple who thought swinging could save their marriage. Instead, two random people showed them that what they really wanted was to just be able to look at someone with passion and love.

Does swinging 'work'? That depends. But I do argue with my friends that it has a shelf-life and that at the end of the day, people want to be loved by someone they consider their partner. Complete love. You know, grow old love. Maybe not everyone. But lots more people than will admit this to themselves or others.

Swimming, Biking and Running Through...

Through what?

It isn't pain. And it isn't grief. Ever wake up and just feel a difference but you aren't sure what it is? It isn't necessarily a bad difference, just something that makes you stop for a minute.

Wait, I should bring you up to speed. You see, last night I had dinner with four friends. Mercedes *recently named in Smarty's blog*, Doc, Smarty and TallPrince, not to be confused with 'The Prince'.

We went to a diner and I thought we had a blast. Actually, Prince said he thought so, too. So did Doc. Mercedes just loved getting together with us, especially 'the girls' because she says we don't do it nearly enough. She's probably right. Smarty wasn't so high on the event. Or, perhaps because I was looking forward to seeing everyone, I didn't really process what she meant when she said it was both 'boring' and that she was done with 'this stuff'. I think she said 'stuff'. She may have said 'shit'.

What 'stuff' I wanted to know...the stuff of bloggers getting together. That's what she meant.

But, wait, aren't we all friends? I know Mercedes (and I really want to call her 'Pouncey' here so I think I will) and I are Smarty's friends. We've spent time at each other's homes; taken trips together; cried, laughed, cursed about life together. Hell, we've had lots of wine together. And Coke. So we are friends.

But what about TallPrince and Doc. Are they are friends? Well, I consider them to be my friends. We talk all the time, we've spent time laughing, trying to dance, eating, cheering on sports teams and now, in the case of TallPrince, listened to me worry about my upcoming triathlons. So, they are my friends. But are they Pouncey’s friends? Smarty’s friends? No, they aren’t. And last night, even though I met each of these guys because of Smarty and Pouncey in one way or another, I was reminded that not everyone is a ‘person’ to everyone else. Sometimes, you never lose your blog persona. You’re just two blog people getting together.

Are bloggers, by definition, too quick to use words like 'friendships' and 'relationships' because we think we know other people because of their words?

Yes.

I tried to explain to Smarty yesterday that these 'great' stories we may have are dangerous. For those people who haven't been through some of these situations, they sound magical. Sexual freedom, hot mess behavior and the like? Awesome! But there is a downside. Sexual frustration, hurt feelings, STDs, you want me to go on? Right, I don't want to either.

But, hey, when you live a life outside of this stuff, you start to think it's fantastic.

The truth is that while the stories may need to be told, every single one of them needs a word of warning: 'Children, do not try this without supervision.' We are still talking about people at the end of the day. Real people with real problems or successes. And while I can’t verbalize it correctly, the story of ‘celebrity’ bloggers on sex-sites means little to the outside world. But there…Wow. It’s the universe’s center point. Will I write about this shit?

Sure, I'll write about it. I'll write about the feelings I have about poly vs monogamy; lying vs truth, fast vs fiction.

But I'll also write about training for the longest race distance I've ever tried. And how scared I am. But how I am now in love with Diana Nyad and I think she's inspiring me to say 'fuck it, it's possible'. Oh, she asked for quotes for her new blog. Maybe she'd like that one?

As for us, the people who write blogs. Who are we? Depending on where we write we are either noticed or not, popular or not, wanted or not.

But we are also just people.

I might be Bubbles, traveling party super hero looking for love...or I could be Bubbles, 1000 lb wonder dude in my mom's basement.

You can decided for yourself, I guess. Or, you can fill in the blanks.

Hell, that's what a lot of people on AFF did for each other. Why should Blogger be different?