Nick

One of my friends asks some interesting and out-of-the-blue questions. They always make me stop and think. Another one of these came up recently and I decided to blog the answer.

Paraphrasing the question from Niki: What do you think about marriage? How about fidelity?

The Marriage Question.

To be honest I don’t really know for sure for my case. I think in popular culture and common discussion – particularly within a family, generally, though not exclusively from one’s elders, this debate so often originates from and is based upon the wrong points. And this “false start” is one of the many reasons so many marriages today end in divorce, and pretty quickly – though often not quickly enough.

As a single fellow, I get asked this a lot by my family, less so by my peers. My first response is simply this: I have had two relationships that lasted more than 1-3 months. The first was 6 months and the second was a little more than a year. Let me find somebody I even want to be with who also wants to be with me before beginning entertaining any thoughts about exactly what kind of life commitment or earthly bond I might swear with such a currently fictional person.

It has been suggested by some that I simply do not want to be in any form of committed or long term relationship. While I can’t rule that out, I don’t suspect that it is true. I do feel the drive to bond and share and nest with another. I look at the (admittedly few) examples of people in such relationships that I admire and I do think, man I would like to have some of that. But (here we call back to the “false start” statement from earlier) I don’t want it for its own sake. I only want it if it is something that develops naturally. For the naysayers, I am not saying that it must be simple and easy and never cause any difficulties. I am not that naive. But I have seen, and I imagine you have too, people who so badly want a certain result from a relationship, or want a particular kind of relationship, that they try to mash anyone they do date into a preformed scenario. This misconstruction of the issue is the thing that makes me dislike questions about when I will get married.

Fidelity:

Whether or not a relationship is “serious” or long-term, codified by specific oaths or sacraments, or just two people doing a thing – I am not into cheating. I don’t want to be a party to that on any side of the coin. It feels really terrible to have done to you, and it doesn’t feel any better to do it to someone else. As far as I am aware/can recall, I have only been a part of the cheating twice – one fairly innocent moment back in 11^th grade, and one much more complicated incident about ten years ago. It sucks.

This is one of the very few places you will ever see me reference Christian scripture as a reasonable source for inspiration in an intellectual pursuit. To paraphrase – Adultery (for our purposes – cheating) is what happens in your brain and heart regardless of other action. Despite the fact that there are distinctions to be made here, I do not feel that there is a slippery slope involved. It all seems pretty clear to me.

There is a difference between a simple and harmless fantasy, and a desire to physically and emotionally stray outside your relationship.

That’s the whole thing right there. “What about if your fantasies are causing problems in your relationship?” Well then it sounds to me like they aren’t harmless. It would seem that one or both parties involved have some other issues to work out, but the question of is it or isn’t it cheating seems to be answered – yes. I do think that especially today, people lose sight of the emotional aspect of cheating. This to me is why some (granted probably excessive) fantasies could be cheating. If you are giving away that emotional part of yourself to someone/thing other than your chosen partner, that is a violation of the commonly understood  agreement we enter into (explicitly or tacitly) when we enter a relationship. This simple formulation also deals with the non-traditional formations as well – open relationships, swingers, and such. Did you violate the terms of your agreement in deed or spirit?

Summation:

Given all that, at this point, I don’t really care very much about whether or not I get married. I would like to find someone to partner with and share my life with. I am not saying I would not get married, but that the question of whether or not I would take that step is just not a big factor in what I am searching for.

The pragmatist in me would want to look at the advantages/disadvantages from a tax/financial/insurance perspective. The agnostic with strong atheistic tendencies in me would not at all want to do it in a church or any form of religious ceremony. The personal autonomy lover with anarchistic leanings in me would not want to have a civil service either. I am sure all those guys could get on board and work something out should it ever come up. But I can tell you this – the odds of me wearing a ring are very very small. I don’t want to and won’t cheat on you mythical future girl – but I hate jewelry. I would consider an anniversary finger tattoo…

(I did not “meet” him until much later, but me and Xander Harris are Simpatico! Xander: I’m just gonna go home, lie down, and listen to country music. The music of pain.) Not that Idlewild South has insufficiently pain evoking music, but I am saving one blisteringly painful song from Idlewild South for another part of this story and, sometimes I feel like I still need more rawness and have to go to the band’s first album. I have a fantastic story about the origin of this song. Piton Allman Brothers Blues Museum. Cue the Music and Go! Whipping Post

What does all this mean? I am not sure I yet have a comprehensive answer to that question. Here are a few things I have figured out or started to figure out since beginning this particular process of reflection. The pattern of behavior evinced in this relationship repeated many times in my life. One easy one for me to pick up on that I even recognized in the moment was my relationship with Angie (who really should have gotten a cooler code-name, but i was sleepy and confused when i first wrote about her) and to a lesser extent, my relationship with Sparkly McButterpants (more on those in the “near” future). A harder lesson that I sincerely hope I am done learning is that there was a point at which I was no longer involved in a relationship with these women but with the fantasy versions of them that lived in my head. Romance is nice, so is fantasy and imagination. But following the threads of imagination to the extent that you become the only one left in the “relationship” is a bit too far.

I have started to recognize that while I did have repeats on the butter-side-down end of this dynamic, it also affected how I behaved in relationships when I was the one dreamt of and pursued. I disappeared on many girls. The few times that I either did not or was unable to fade away, I told lies. I believed that I was doing the right thing in telling odd lies to justify my exit from a relationship. Now I am not so sure. It seems to me that getting dumped sucks, period. A break-up talk is not a rational exercise. Your words are not going to be heard and absorbed in a thoughtful manner no matter what you have to say, so why not lead with the truth and hopefully the person will be able to examine that later instead of coming to a rational point and recognizing, “I still have no idea what happened there?!”

But then again, there really are very few reasons that people break up. For me, in almost every case, it was a simple equation – you loved me more than I loved you, you wanted more from me than I was willing to give, and despite the feelings you have or think you have about me and us, I can see that it is better for each of us to shut this down and allow us to not get trapped in a thing that isn’t working and enable us to move on to other opportunities.

As time passed after the Kim scenario, the more I thought about it, and the more I was put into the “Kim” role in relationships, I started to recognize that it is not an easy thing to do. That previous paragraph sounds great and while I hope I will never need it, maybe I am now mature enough and hopefully someone I might date would be mature enough to handle a conversation like that. But that is an impossible sell as a teenager or even a lovelorn 20 something.

I believe in truth and telling the truth, but I do think there are times when there is a distinct difference between truth and full disclosure. You want to be honest with people, but you don’t need to be hurtful with the truth. “We want different things. We are not headed in the same direction. I don’t love you anymore.” These are all hard enough to say and deal with, there is no need to throw in “I hate your Mom.”

Given these past few paragraphs, I am still a bit on the fence about truth versus lies/avoidance in these scenarios. When I look back at my big three lost loves, Kim, Angie and Sparkly McButterpants, the answers are obvious. They either did not love me, or did not have the same level or intensity of feeling to such an extent that they got to the “this is never gonna happen/work out” point and bailed. Hopefully I won’t need to know or use that answer anymore.

In the meantime, as that question slow cooks on the back burner, I will try to focus on the things I have learned and continue to work on becoming more of who I want to be, avoiding the extremes of the fantasies and trying to stay connected to the real. Learn to become more focused and brutal in analyzing my needs, wants, and desires in order to better communicate those to others. Learn to listen more to the needs, wants, and desires of the actual real human woman in the relationship rather than communing with the fantasy version in my head.

That is it for now folks. There are at least two more segments of this tale – Angie and Sparkly McButterpants. I have had most of the Angie portion written since the end of November, but writing that led me to recognize that I could not start the reveal of this story with the last main leading lady. I had to go back to the beginning. In addition to wanting to learn more about myself through the writing process, entertain and hopefully spark you readers to some of your own reflective thoughts, I wanted this to be entertaining enough that Sparkly Mcbutterpants might follow Kim’s generous lead and allow me to reveal her true identity!! We don’t talk frequently, but we are still in touch…

Here we have a song that I did in fact listen to often during this period that also fits the story. Cue the Music and Go! Prove My Love

From November 1990 to some time after March 1991 I was on the roller coaster. I was hopelessly in love with Kim. Looking back, I seem like a cartoon character play acting at love, but man I was sincere and really felt that strongly and followed my heart with reckless abandon.

Kim did break up with the boyfriend, but did not start dating me. We continued to have some long talks and I began spending more time at her house with her and her family – or sometimes just her family. We watched TV and had long talks among the 5 of us. Her sister thrashed me in checkers and I think we played some other board type games but I can’t recall. I really bonded with her mom and we spent loads of time talking about all sorts of things – not just Kim. In what proved to be the start of a potentially creepy tradition, I started leaving Kim little gifts with no notes. Often this was a strawberry Fribble on the hood or roof of her car or front doorstep. I was not averse to the occasional flower either. And there were also the letters.

While I did become good friends with her family, she started to grow more distant from me and she dated a few other guys during this time. I thought about her constantly. I wrote about her near constantly. I named my journal Kim. It was not pretty. But I could not stop. I knew we were meant for each other. I was starting to be able to understand a little bit about what made life so hard for her and I knew I could help.

It is difficult to recall other details when I am in the fog of remembering Kim, but I know me at that time and I would imagine that I “dated” some other girls. I remember two very clearly and that will need to be dealt with later. For now, all I can say is, “I am so sorry and it was totally not you!”

I would apologize to my friends for the endless hours they had to listen to me talk about this for YEARS, but that would be disingenuous. For my friends this was training camp because I did not get any better at this relationship thing for a long time. I am probably still just as hapless and inept, but it is harder to recognize because I have had so few, they are so far apart, and with one exception, so brief.

In unstoppable form, I persisted. I did not relent and I made some progress. The Merchant of Venice production in the early Spring definitely helped. We had much more shared stage time as Antonio and Shylock than we had during Les Mis. I still remember the performance in the Folger Shakespeare Theatre. I remember the Trial scene. I was on my knees when she opened my shirt with the knife raised. She pulled hard and buttons flew from the fabric. When she thrust down at my chest – while she did pull back, it looked and felt real and we were in the zone. I can definitely imagine what might have happened if we had been alone at that moment.

We started to talk about what it would be like to start “dating”. We spent a little time fantasizing about what life could be like together, and then one day, we did it. We cast off the labels and restrictions of mere “friendship” and decided to start “dating”. It was a school night and she did not really feel like getting into mischief in any case, so our first and only date was simple. I went to her house and we watched tv in the living room holding hands. I imagine her folks and her sister were there, but I don’t think I stopped feeling awesome and staring at Kim long enough to notice. We said goodnight on her front porch after an hour or two and I went home on a magic road. Thousands of tiny fairies carried my car through the air and every traffic signal was green.

Cue Next Track and Go. Don’t Keep Me Wonderin’

And folks, I kid you not, she did not speak to me again for a really really long time. In my somewhat foolish romantic heart, I believe that she actually never spoke to me again at all. It is possible that it is the writer inside making my honest pain seem or sound even more epic and tragic than it already is, but I don’t think so. I think that was the last time until the advent of the Facebooks.

Probably more important for the larger issues I am trying to work on is that I have believed that she never spoke to me again for lo these past 22 years. We certainly were never close or friends again. Some of the broken-hearted creepy behavior continued and escalated. I left more random gifts. I called quite a bit. I stopped by the house often. She was home but would not come out of her room or talk with me. I stayed and talked with her mom who was very sympathetic and comforting, but encouraged me to try to find a way to move on.

My friends were ready to kill me. I roadied whenever possible for my friend Woody’s band, Whirlwind. He told me about a new song that they wrote for me called “What You Don’t Know” and that it was about Kim. I listened to those lyrics and was moved. Maybe 21 years later, this past summer when I visited with Woody, he told me that he wrote that song about a girl in his life and that telling me that it was about Kim was a diversionary tactic. I completely understand. I didn’t want to hang out with me and listen to all that stuff any more either, I just didn’t have a choice.

Second Intermission

I was not actually cool enough to be deep into the Stones at 15, but it is remarkably difficult to find songs that fit the halcyon days of this relationship. Most of my archive suits and comes from the aftermath. But Mick always knows what I am thinking so the Stones get the nod. Cue the Music and Go! Let’s Spend The Night Together

Kim and I became friends and then closer friends during this production. Already I was hooked on her. Man did she light up a room. I don’t think it was just me either – I think many people responded similarly. She made me feel special, important, valuable, valued, and a little bit sexy. I did not exactly have ego or confidence issues, but external validation of your own greatness is always empowering. I have had way more relationships that were severely lacking in validation and Kim and I were not even dating.

As we neared the end of preparation and the performance grew closer, I started talking with Kim about how complicated and overwhelming and confusing it was to be killing myself at all – and so often. Was there a way to stay true to your character, to stay in character, but hold some small part of you separate and away from the motivations and emotions that lead one to suicide? I was not and have never been suicidal. Even in my darkest times I can always find something worth living for; dogs, the next season of Buffy or Friday Night Lights, the next release of a favorite author – I’m easy. However, I am a ninth degree black-belt ninja at nesting in pain. All that said, committing suicide onstage repeatedly was an extremely difficult situation to be in.

She had some very valuable insight about the craft of acting and the difference between character and self. After the show wrapped, we had some similar long talks about the other death, the death of the part of yourself that you gave to the character to allow them to become real. With the performance over, so too ended that little piece of you. This was a problem that Kim had not really solved for herself either, though she had been through it many times. It was fantastic to have someone to talk with about it who understood, who respected my sincerity of feeling and did not look on such things as attention grabbing or ego inflating.

Don’t let these descriptions of serious heady talk give you the wrong idea. She was unbelievably gorgeous and I wanted…well if you followed the musical link above Mick Jagger has said that pretty well already. I can’t speak for ALL theaters or everyone involved in my high school theatre department, but I can safely say that for a lot of us, the theatre was charged with passion, romance, and sex. My favorite thing was having people try to make fun of me for being in theatre. “Drama fag,” they might say. “I spend most of my free time in the dark with about 50 girls, what do you do?”

Kim and I were not remotely immune to these feelings. At the time of this production, she was dating someone else, but the passion and tension between us was thick and generally thickest in the theatre. We each got so jazzed from performing and in very similar ways that the taboo and flat out wrongness of indulging what we were feeling made it even more intense – Blissful Anticipation.

We did finally kiss one night. I can’t pinpoint the date without re-reading my old journals, but I would bet that it was one performance night, the 15^th, 16^th or 17^th of November, 1990. It was in my driveway and it seemed to last forever in the best way possible. It had everything. It started with wild abandon, teeth knocking, lip sucking, recently freed caged-animal frenzy. But it did mellow and become far more sensual and dare I say it, luxuriant. Somehow it eventually ended. I lived lifetimes in that kiss. I can still go back to that moment in my mind and revel in that kiss. It was not my first kiss by far, but it was certainly the best I had ever had and not too many since have been its equal, or even in its neighborhood. There was only one down-side. I had been involved in an incident of oath breaking, of cheating on someone. I was not always the best guy in the world, particularly to the ladies, but cheating is not on my menu and I felt and still feel bad that while it was not my oath broken, I was for that moment, “the other guy”. Sorry dude.

First Intermission

I felt like this album was the story of my life for so many years. Truthfully, I still kinda do, but it does start with a happy tune! Cue the Music and Go! Revival

I got interested in theatre at the end of my freshman year of high school at the tender age of 14 in 1989. Two of my friends from school and church, Camper and Laura, were into theatre and began talking with me about it and encouraged me to attend the last show of the year, Mame, and I knew I wanted to be a part of that.

My mom is a professional classical pianist, the head of keyboard studies at her university. My dad is a very good classical guitarist and was a preacher before i was born. I spent a lot of time in churches growing up, and even more time under the piano while my mom practiced. I grew up in churches. We also went on loads of camping trips with my dad’s guitar and sang around the fire at night. I loved choir and still love to sing. I never really had faith like the rest of my family and seriously questioned what was being said in sermons when I was 11. That is when I began my quest to learn about other religions, starting with buddhism.

But the music always filled me. I was a church choir member from as early as I can remember until I left high school. I learned to read music in third grade. I auditioned for and received solos and leading roles in church musicals over the years. I was in a few touring choirs.  Having my first personal introduction to theatre via a musical was a great vehicle for me.

The next year I auditioned for the Fall play, the first of the year, and got a bit part but had a few lines. I stayed in theatre and got deeper into the department. Camper and I both love to build and we became alternating set construction crew chiefs. I kept auditioning and got better and better roles.

My second year in theatre, my junior year – 1990, 15 years old – a few things changed. I got a leading role as a character actor in the Fall play – our non-musical Tim Kelly adaptation of Les Miserables. We had some new blood in the acting pool, a transfer student, a senior, Kim. She was fantastic.

I was Inspector Javert and she was Mrs Thenardier, the Innkeeper’s wife. I don’t know a ton about Les Mis and don’t suppose you do either. A plot summary is irrelevant to this tale. What is important about this plot is that Javert kills himself. He commits suicide by throwing himself off a bridge into a river. Even in the Tim Kelly adaptation – this happens onstage.

I am not trying to toot my own horn here, but I got really into the craft of acting. I was naturally hard wired to understand and enjoy becoming someone else. I won an award for Excellence in Acting and Character Development from the Folger Shakespeare Theatre in 1991. That was for my performance as Antonio in The Merchant of Venice opposite Kim as Shylock. Kim also won an award for Excellence in Acting for that performance. Through auditions, I earned a spot in an exclusive and prestigious summer acting workshop in 1991. I placed 4^th in a Virginia state-wide acting collegiate scholarship competition in 1992.

From the start, I was very interested in and explored character development. I tried to learn how to truly become my character, and to some extent, it worked. Personally, I have terrible posture and slouch constantly. But Javert was a ramrod straight kind of fellow and so did I become when portraying him. That worked to such an extent that I had to have the help of others to recognize it and figure out how to unlearn that posture when playing subsequent characters.

That is only one very small example and the most outwardly visible of how I initially took my characters inside of me and then let them run the show. Why do I belabor all these small details and what does that have to do with Kim? Remember when I said above that Javert killed himself onstage? I tried to emphasize how much I put into my character development and how much they put into me so that you may possibly have a glimpse into what that might have been like for a 15 year-old boy.

In early rehearsals it was no big deal. Once Camper, the Crew, and I finished building the set and dragged the track and field’s high-jump mat into the theatre, it became real for me. Camper and I built this set as a series of ascending platforms connected by narrow walkways. I jumped to my death off the highest platform. I killed myself in every rehearsal thereafter, which was troubling, but less so than in the performances. In all but the final rehearsals, the lights are up, there are people running around and other people giving you notes. But for three nights in a row – Show Time – it was real. I killed myself – three nights in a row.

Stay Tuned