Ganesha: Remover of Obstacles

I've been mopping the apartment and getting used to the idea that I'm in a relationship.  On our last full night together at Burning Man, Pinko and I were sitting inside the fire circle talking with a bright, curious young woman and her drunken father.  At first, she assumed that I was Pinko's wife.  When we explained that I had come out from New York and we were having our first date on the playa, she asked if we were in a long distance relationship, Pinko and I looked at each other and he said, "I guess we are now."

Photo by Oscillation Overthruster, taken the day before we were talking with that girl.

Pinko and me are sitting in the "throne" on the left, sort of hovering above the crowd.  

You have to look closely to see us, and we're still hard to see so I put a rectangle around us.

I guess we are, too.  Even Gigi said so when we were on the phone earlier this afternoon.  I suppose it's not such a surprise that I'm involved with somebody - the surprise is that it seems to be working out well in terms of simple camaraderie and recreation.  I still say that interacting with Notta Goodman provided an opportunity for an ethnographic study of Self and Ego vis a vis a special relationship - as defined by Hallmark and other merchants who profit from Valentines' Day - but interacting with an emotionally closed, self-important douchebag is not the same as a Relationship particularly since I had a conscious therapeutic agenda.  I had the same agenda with The Narcissist, and discussed it fully with my shrink, since I was still in therapy at the time.  I was working through my own shit in order to come to terms with ancient history that interfered with my ability to relate as wholeheartedly with a man as I do with my friends.

The thing is that once a relationship gets sexual, all kinds of feelings get stirred up and it's often impossible to relate to the individual involved like a normal person.  I'll go out on a limb, here, and speculate that reaction comes from looking to another person to make you happy and to validate your right to exist on the planet.  Other people can't do that.  It's also important to remember that when I got involved with both The Narcissist and Notta Goodman, I had just had surgery on my shoulder and was taking narcotic painkillers which can make me impulsive.   The good news is that during all this time on my own, I've recognized my own value and am pretty much always happy in my own little world.  The larger world may be fucked up, but here in my happy little world, things are generally A-Okay.

They're still A-Okay.  It's just that now that I've realized that I'm actually in a relationship, of some kind, with a man I not only admire and respect but have fun with and find intellectually and physically stimulating, I'm stunned.  I must have thought it was impossible - which is why I stopped thinking about relationships all together some months ago and decided to focus simply on the First Man in the New Apartment.  The idea of a relationship was too much pressure.

This isn't pressure at all.  It's easy.

It's never been easy to be with a man before which may be why I have been half expecting that Pinko wouldn't actually come to New York at all.  Then this morning, he started floating dates for his arrival, and it became clear that he actually intends to be the First Man in the New Apartment even though he knows it's significant to me and could lead to greater attachment.  In the past, the knowledge that I thought something was significant would send a man charging toward the exit.  To be fair, those men were all in the middle of divorces and didn't want to get serious. I didn't want to get serious either - but there's a difference between significant and serious.  Significant can be short-term, but it's honest, intimate and real.  Sometimes a single day is significant your whole life long.  You can be in a serious relationship with someone, with a commitment and all that, but never have a single day that's honest, intimate and real.  With Pinko, things are honest, intimate and real.

I'm like:  Holy Shit

So I've been mopping.  I think I mopped the apartment once over the winter.  

To make matters even easier, it turns out that Velvet has determined that he studies better and gets better grades when he stays at Buzz Kill's.  I think he prefers to stay at Buzz Kill's because he and Cupcake have the place to themselves all the time since Buzz Kill is off somewhere with his girl friend.  I've been wondering about sleeping with a man in front of Velvet since I've never done it and the whole  thing feels kind of awkward - but it would be even more awkward to require Pinko to sleep on the couch if Velvet were home.  And now Velvet is going to be over at Buzz Kill's almost the whole time so there can be a man in my bedroom without my mother calling me a Floozy.

It's like anything that could have been an obstacle smoothly and quietly lifts out of the way.  That young woman who was supposed to be sleeping in his RV, whose playa name is Seldom Seen, made a spectacle of herself within an hour of my arrival in Black Rock City by passing out in a neighboring camp.  The neighbors were annoyed enough to send an emissary to our camp to ask somebody to remove our MOOP (that's Burning Man vernacular for Matter Out of Place.  Leave No Trace requires vigilant MOOPing to restore the environment.  One thing you never, ever want to be called is MOOP).  Since Seldom Seen was in our camp in the first place on account of she was staying with Pinko - they all looked at Pinko from the dinner table and told him it was his responsibility to go get her and her bike.

He resisted, but couldn't get out of it gracefully.  Turned out that Seldom Seen was so blotto and dehydrated that she required an IV in the infirmary, and Pinko was so pissed that he made her set up her little tent as soon as she recuperated enough to start looking for another beer.  So from my perspective, that situation neatly resolved itself before I had even unpacked.

I feel like Ganesha is looking out for us.