Oscar Weekend 2016

It was once again a wonderful Oscar time this past weekend, something I've looked forward to every year since 2011. That was the first year that Piper and I attended the 24-hour AMC Best Picture Showcase, which I've attended every year since. It's also the fourth year in a row I've hosted an Oscar viewing party, which has grown to become the biggest TSMC event every year.

This year my friend Rebecca attended the marathon with me; it was her first time at the event so I prepped her as best I could. This was the 10th anniversary of the event itself, but I was rather disappointed in the way it was presented. There were no trivia prizes or any kind of banter between movies, and the breakfast was poorly planned compared to years past. It's as if they lost all the great people who have run it before and all that institutional knowledge about doing the event has been replaced by cold efficiency (since they were extremely precise in their show schedule).

As usual, here's my recap of the eight nominated movies and my thoughts about them:

Brooklyn (10:30 am) - I'm lucky that I didn't watch any previews of this charming little movie because I realized later they give away too much about the story. This was, quite simply, one of the best pure love stories I've seen in a long time. The writing and performances were delightful and it was refreshingly free from melodrama and contrived tragedy. This is a movie that I'd like to have in my collection to watch over and again.

The Big Short (12:46 pm) - At the end of this movie, there's a postscript that counts the cost of the events depicted in the movie: trillions of dollars in value lost, millions left homeless and millions unemployed. I was one of those who lost their jobs because of the financial crisis. So the story of this global event was compelling stuff, driving home the scope of the disaster as seen through the eyes of those who saw it coming. As a movie, it kind of reminded me of Oliver Stone's Wall Street, but this was a real and much larger story.

Room (3:20 pm) - We walked in a little late for this movie because we took a break at TSMC so I was a little confused that there didn't seem to be an explanation for the first part of the movie. Of course, it is revealed over time. Brie Larson may have won her Oscar, but I think Jacob Tremblay should have gotten a Supporting Actor nomination. I got a little choked up when he asks for a haircut to help his mom, and when she gives the hair back to him. What a masterpiece of storytelling.

The Revenant (6:25 pm) - We once again walked in a little late on this one because we went across the street to Five Guys Burgers and Fries, bringing the food in with us. Thankfully, we aren't squeamish people when it comes to eating during a movie as gory as this one, plus we'd both seen it before I think. Upon second viewing, I was actually a little less impressed than the first, which was the opposite reaction I had to Mad Max. It is still obviously a gorgeous and meticulously crafted movie and I admire the fortitude it took to make it. But at its core, I feel that it lacks heart in that I don't care as much about the characters as I did with some of the other movies.

Spotlight (9:30 pm) - The surprise winner of the Best Picture Oscar, this movie is All the President's Men for a new generation. As a former journalist, I am in awe of the work portrayed by the Boston Globe reporters depicted in the film. I think my lone disappointment was that it didn't seem to play up the resistance from the community and the Catholic Church as much as I would have expected, but maybe that was the most authentic portrayal.

Mad Max: Fury Road (12 am) - My second viewing of this movie allowed me to acclimate myself to the relentless and high-octane action sequences that overwhelmed me when I watched it the first time with Lytle last summer. I was able to more fully appreciate the nuances of the characters and the story, plus marvel at the production elements that swept through Sunday night's awards. I've never seen any of the original Mad Max movies, but I've been an admirer of director George Miller since The Witches of Eastwick and the Babe movies. I can't wait to see what he does next.

Bridge of Spies (2:25 am) - This movie was like Catch Me If You Can crossed with JFK but with less pizzazz and hardly any humor. I certainly found it the least entertaining of all the movies in the marathon, although still a superior movie overall compared to the dreck that is found in theaters year-round. I mean, the story is basically a little courtroom action followed by a seemingly endless series of negotiation meetings. In other words, all men, all talk, very little action (except for a plane crash where we know the outcome).

The Martian (5:10 am) - This was a nice little sci-fi movie, heavy on the science, reminding me of Robert Zemekeis' Contact. I thought the humor was a little heavy-handed and the disco soundtrack seemed an odd choice. For a rescue mission, I thought it was a little lacking in emotion, but perhaps the book was better in that respect. I liked the twists and turns of the plot, but at the same time, I was constantly thinking the Star Wars line, "I've got a bad feeling about this." It's also hard to get emotionally invested in a movie when it's clear from the outset that there's one objective (to rescue the stranded astronaut) and there's really not much suspense whether that will ultimately happen or not.

I got home at about 7:30 am Sunday morning and started my beef shortribs cooking in the slow cooker before joining Puck in bed briefly before they woke up a couple hours later. I slept until about 3:30 pm and then Puck and I started getting ready for the party.

My co-host Liz came over at 7 with her Bridge of sPies (chicken pot pie), Crystal (Spot)Light, and Martian-mallow Krispie treats, made with brown butter and sea salt. I had two tubs of Mad Max: Fury (Rocky) Road ice cream in the freezer, plus plenty of Land-O-Lakes whipped cream.

I made my The Big Short(Rib) tacos, a Radish-mint (Revenant) salad, and Stuffed MushROOMs. Josh brought the Brooklyn Lager and Victoria brought a bottle of #OscarsSoWhite wine. We were all set for the big show!

This year I added a new prize category called the Surprise Prize, a $15 Regal Cinemas gift card for anyone who correctly picked a winner that no one else also picked - that went to Katie B for picking Bear Story in the Best Animated Short Film category. Liz and Puck also had surprise picks for Best Supporting Actor and Best Picture respectively, but Katie's pick was first.

I did pretty badly this year because I thought The Revenant would do better than it did, and I didn't anticipate that Mad Max would sweep the technical categories the way it did. Katie M was the grand prize winner of a $50 AMC Theaters gift card with 16 of 24 correct picks. Michelle was second with 15, and Victoria and Liz tied with 14 each - they all got consolation prizes of DVD movies.

Carolyn and I tied with 13 each. It's probably my worst Oscar ballot in many years, but I still had a great time. Movies are great, but enjoying them with friends is what makes a love of movies really special!

Sex toy party

Guess it has been more than a week since my last post - I must be slipping. Although, truth to tell, my life is pretty much confined to the weekends since during the week I don't have much time to do anything other than work and commute. Generally speaking that is, because I took last Thursday and Friday off. Not because I necessarily wanted to - since I'm a contract employee, when I take time off, I don't get paid for it. But the rest of the communications staff was down in Baton Rouge, LA for a big company meeting, leaving me with nothing to do.

Thursday I ran a bunch of errands that were piling up on me, like taking my dress from Ella's wedding to the dry cleaners, dropping off clothes for tailoring, getting Yoshi's brakes fixed and getting my allergy shots. Then Friday I drove out to Stony Brook on Long Island to visit Polina. I watched her band practice for a while, then we went to dinner with some of her friends.

After they dropped us off at her dorm, we hung out there for the rest of the evening on her top bunk bed, playing Scrabble on Facebook, videochatting with her friend Patrick, and having some long-overdue private time. Seriously, despite all the time we've had lately, we haven't actually been in a bed together since Aug. 10, the last Poly Cocktail Hour she attended ("Polys in the wild" - Aug. 11, 2009), so that alone was worth the four-hour round-trip.

I probably would have stayed overnight in her dorm room except that Angel was having a Brown Bag Party at her house the next day, and I had invited Agnieszka to come with me, so I had to go back to New Jersey to pick her up anyway. Angel sells intimacy products (i.e. sex toys and novelties) through these Tupperware-style parties she throws, and at events like the Spice NYC party a couple weeks ago. Agnieszka and I drove out to Queens and had a fun time at the party, learning about different lubricants, stimulators, vibrators, and other somesuch. The thing I'll most remember is Agnieszka playing with a latex-like face used for fake blowjobs - she had me in stitches. I also won one of the games where the prize was a deck of Hustler playing cards that said "Barely Legal" on it - I wondered if Angel was making some comment about my girlfriend, but she denied it.

We came back to Agnieszka's place from the party, and chatted for a while to catch up. It's been quite a few months since our last outing ("Shanghai Mermaid" - May 31, 2009) so it was nice to talk with her about what's been happening. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I've known Agnieszka longer than any other friend in the northeast who is still currently in my life, and it's always nice to get her perspective on things.

On Monday, I had a second-round interview with a PR firm in the city, on Vanderbilt Avenue right next to Grand Central Station. I met with the president of the firm, and we seemed to hit it off well. He asked me what I did in my spare time, and in a burst of honesty that comes from being gainfully employed, I told him that I do volunteer work in the LGBT community. He smoothly indicated that he was fine with this by saying that he has a close friend who was the first openly gay board member of the New York Stock Exchange. So that is a plus if I decide to work for them - I wouldn't have to be evasive about Polina, who would surely visit the office at some point.

The real issue of course is whether I want to make a job change in this economy after only a month at my current job. The job I have in Princeton is in many ways my dream job - I get to do a lot of creative writing, I don't have to deal with a lot of people, it's low pressure and low stress, and in an interesting field at a very healthy company. The free lunches and free drinks are nice, and the people are great to work with. The downside is that it's not a full-time, permanent position (which is both good and bad) and the commute is wearing Yoshi and me out. So if I stay there, I will probably end up moving to south Jersey in March, and that's not really where I want to live.

I'm not supposed to think about this dilemma until it becomes one - that is, until I get a comparable job offer from the new firm, and that hasn't happened yet. But if it does, it will be one of those life-altering decisions that I'm not eager to make right now.

Poly parties

It's Wednesday at work, and I'm looking forward to going home and chilling out for the evening. It seems like it's been a non-stop whirlwind since I started working last week, and indeed it has.

As you recall from my last post, I started my new job on Thursday sleep-deprived because of a mix-up in communications where I didn't think I was going to start so I stayed out late in the city the night before at my poly women's meeting, only to find out that I was expected to come in at 8 a.m. And that's pretty much been par for the course as my body tries to adjust to a different sleep cycle that requires me to leave the apartment at 7 a.m. to beat traffic down to Princeton each morning.

And then of course last weekend I was camping for the wedding, which was lots of fun but not overly conducive to a restful sleep. Sunday evening was fairly restful as I got caught up on laundry and putting things away from the camping trip, but I still wound up going to bed late and waking up early Monday morning.

But enough griping since I don't want anyone to think I'm in any way unhappy about having a job or spending time with my lovely girlfriend. Monday evening I took off a little early after work to drive into the city for two different parties. First up was the monthly Poly Cocktail Hour at China 1 Restaurant, where I met up with my Open Love NY friends Buck, Donna, Lyndell, Simon, and Leon, and also was pleasantly surprised to see so many members of my women's poly group there as well - Sylwia, Barbara and Oxy showed up. I said hello to other regulars (Derek, Norman, and a few I haven't learned their names yet) and met some new people, but didn't really engage with any of them since there were so many of my friends there and I wanted to spend time with them. Oxy and I started talking about boobs and she let me touch her ample, all-natural bosom (she's an F cup) which I did ever so gently with the tip of my finger.



I only mention this because of what happened later in the evening at the second party, which was Diana and Kerry's MTV True Life viewing party. I took a cab down to Fulton Street near South Street Seaport where Diana's friend Hookah Mike rents a huge, six-bedroom loft that he shares with five roommates. The apartment has two large common areas in an open floor plan with 12-foot ceilings; one area includes the windows and the other connected to the kitchen and dining areas. This place was so big, they had room for a ping-pong table in between these two common areas, which each had its own projection TV and sofa/loveseat/coffee table. I say all this because I've never seen such a spacious apartment in the city and I was a little overwhelmed. I can't begin to imagine what a place like that must cost in monthly rent!



I only saw a few people there I knew - Birgitte (past president of Polyamorous NYC), Reid (co-founder of Cuddle Party), Hannah (a butch genderqueer I met a few months ago at Poly Cocktail Hour), Diana's boyfriend Ed and Kerry’s boyfriend Kyler - but most of the people seemed to be friends of Diana who had helped or participated in the MTV show, plus several of Diana's partners of course. The show started 30 minutes later than it was supposed to, which caused some confusion, but once it started, it was a non-stop rollercoaster of laughter, groans and general hysterics. Kerry, Diana and Ed, who starred in the show, didn't get to see it prior to airing, so they had the biggest reactions since they were on the screen most of the time.



My participation was reduced to a brief cameo, as I was in the background for a couple shots and got one close-up that lasted about half a second. None of my dialogue was used (which I’m a bit relieved about) so it's not likely anyone is going to notice me (although I was wearing a very sexy, low-cut turquoise silk top seen below with Erika, Birgitte's girlfriend).



During the show, I was sitting on the floor next to Hannah, who was sitting next to a Korean girl, who introduced herself to me as Nari. I immediately was sure we'd met before because she seemed very familiar - it turns out she is quite famous as an associate producer for the Travel Channel who appeared on Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations show when they went to Seoul, South Korea. I've seen that particular episode several times because I love Korean food, and it's also one of the funniest episodes of the show, with Nari's bubbly and youthful optimism in stark contrast to Tony's world-weary cynicism clashing at every turn. And I'm not the only one who liked the episode – you can read plenty of Nari's fan mail in the comments section of her recent post about Vancouver on the Travel Channel blog.

Since Nari works in television, she had a lot to say about how it looked like MTV took advantage of the three poly men from North Carolina who appeared on the show. We all agreed that Diana and Kerry (and Ed) did a great job presenting polyamory as a legitimate and workable (albeit complicated) lovestyle, requiring good communication, maturity and flexibility to be successful. Unfortunately, the flip side with the poly men showed the opposite is also true, that without those qualities, polyamory can result in major drama and heartache. It was also pointed out repeatedly that the NC men lacked any kind of poly support network or the experience of someone like Diana that might have helped them learn how to handle things better.

Of course I am reminded of my own experience with trying to start a poly family where the problem was a complete lack of buy-in to polyamory as a sustainable lovestyle by the other three-fourths of the family. My ex-girlfriend often lamented what she saw as my need to be part of a larger community to help deal with our poly situation, something she had no interest in doing. Predictably, people who find themselves in poly situations without adequate resources or experience find it a lot harder to make things work in the end.

Once the show wrapped up, people started to drift toward Hookah Mike's bedroom to talk about the show. I was talking to Nari and her fiance Sam and showing her some of my pictures on my camera. I asked Sam to take a picture of us, and he took several while Nari started getting really frisky with me. Sam sort of encouraged it while he was taking the photos too. After the photo shoot Sam wanted to go home, and said he would wait for Nari downstairs. Nari wanted to take me to a karaoke bar or do something else since the party seemed to be winding down, but I demurred, saying I had to get home and get some sleep as it was around midnight.



She was very persistent however, so I settled for chatting with her while she smoked a cigarette while we sat on the window ledge. If anyone has seen the episode with Nari on the Travel Channel, let me tell you: she is every bit as energetic and perky in person as she was on the show. We both look much younger than we actually are - she’s 27 but looks like she’s 17 and still gets carded for cigarettes. Her first guess at my age was 28 and it took her about five guesses to get high enough. I found out that she was getting married to Sam this Friday, and I asked if she was poly. She said no, but that she and Sam were very open and poly-friendly.

We talked about our exes and she told me about her first girlfriend in college. She didn't say she was bisexual, but she did say that while she loves cock, she also loves big boobs and can't wait to get pregnant so that her boobs will grow bigger (she's almost totally flat-chested). I asked her if she would like to feel mine, and she dove in with gusto, putting a two-handed grab on my chest that would make any NFL wide receiver green with envy.

I think it was right about then that Sam walked in, complaining that he had been waiting for half an hour because he'd been locked out downstairs. They got into a bit of a fight, and I tried to explain that I wasn't trying to keep Nari from leaving or doing anything inappropriate, at least given that we were at a party with mostly sex-positive, polyamorous people. Sam practically dragged her away, but not before Nari planted a goodbye kiss on me. After they left, I and two other people who had watched this scene unfold sat looking stunned at each other, wondering what it was all about. They certainly did not seem like they belonged at that party, nor should be getting married in four days. Shortly after, I said goodbye to everyone and left myself, passing the couple once more on the street on the way to get Yoshi from the garage.

Tuesday night after work I stopped by Il Trapezio Cafe in Nutley, NJ to attend a book reading by my client, author and academic Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio, who has just published Gaia and the New Politics of Love: Notes for a Poly Planet. Several of my friends also attended - Buck and Donna, Murray and Sandy, and Adele from my women's group, who works a few blocks away at the public library. We had a nice lively discussion, and Serena signed a book and gave it to me. I've been working for her for the past three months, but I have to end our working relationship now because I simply don't have the time anymore. But hopefully the seeds we've sown in the media will bear some fruit in the coming months that will contribute to the success of her book.



So now I'm all caught up on the weird and fun stuff that's been happening lately, I'm looking forward to a couple of quiet nights at home, watching movies and catching up on sleep before the weekend. Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) begins on Friday at sundown and ends Sunday at nightfall (which I guess is full dark), so I'm going to visit Polina at Stony Brook to watch her marching band Saturday night, and then celebrating with her family on Sunday.

Postscript: A shout goes out to my best friend Lori, who just accepted a marriage proposal today from her boyfriend of 2 and a half years, Erik. The date is set for May on the anniversary of their first meeting. Congratulations!

First day at work

Just got back from my first day at work, an 11-hour one at that, so I'm pretty beat. But there's so much going on, I have to write a few lines just to keep up with my fast-moving life.

Tuesday night I went to Madison, NJ about 30 minutes away to hang out with my friend Kerry. She's been feeling a little apprehensive about the upcoming MTV premiere of True Life titled "I'm Polyamorous" in which she and her now-ex girlfriend Diana will be featured and wanted some advice. I'll probably also appear in a cameo from the party at the Slipper Room way back in May ("Birthdays, MTV and Polina" - May 6, 2009) but not for more than a few seconds, I'm sure. If you want to catch it, the show premieres this Monday at 10 p.m. ET ("TNG poly documentary coming to MTV" - Polyamory in the News).

The worst of it was that I had a job interview the next morning with a PR firm in Hackensack, so even though I felt like crap I managed to drag myself out of bed and get to the interview, a few minutes late because I got lost due to poor directions. The interview was fine, but it will be a few weeks at least before I hear anything. I also got emails that morning saying that I wasn't going to start my job on Thursday as expected, so I figured I'd at least be able to sleep late the next day, as I had plenty left to do on Wednesday.

After the interview I went into the city for a haircut with Edison, and he did his usual thorough job. I had a few hours to kill before the Women's Poly Meeting, so I walked around the Lower East Side and had dinner at Whole Foods before my friends all showed up. We had a new woman named Sheila who had responded to my PolyNYC personal ad, and we've been emailing back and forth a bit, which is how she knew about the meeting. Afterwards, I took my friend and group co-founder Sylwia back to Weehawken before heading home.

When I got home at midnight, I found emails that contradicted the previous ones, and asked me to come in to my new job at 8 am! Yikes! So instead of sleeping in, I got about 4 hours of sleep and showed up a half-hour early (since I didn't know what traffic would be like). The first day was very good - got all set up on a computer with two screens in a quiet corner of the HR department. I found out that they serve free lunch every day, which is wonderful, and they also have free sodas and snacks for employees. They even have an indoor half-court basketball hoop and locker rooms for working out. It's a 90 minute drive down there without traffic, and god only knows how long during rush hour. At this point, I'm inclined to go early and stay late just to rack up paychecks and avoid sitting in traffic. My paycheck today is almost double my weekly unemployment check!

That is all for now - I'm off to bed.

Great Adventure Shindig

Penny and I threw a fun party together celebrating my fifth birthday at Six Flags Great Adventure. Various people came and went for different parts of the party, and hopefully a good time was had by all.

We started at my apartment Monday afternoon when Penny brought her longtime friend Dakotah (whom I met last New Year's) and a new friend Kyle (whom she met at Otakon last month - he lives in Pennsylvania and is visiting her for the week) on a bus from Port Authority Bus Terminal. Shortly after, Ryan arrived in his own car - he lives about 20 minutes away from me in New Jersey. Polina met him at Otakon too; he's a polyamorous man in a relationship with a monogamous-minded girlfriend (who called him about three times that evening), and also quite experienced in the local BDSM scene.

Once everybody arrived, we took a quick swim in the pool before going to Costco to buy some pizza, salad and ice cream for dinner, and Penny bought a 1TB external hard drive for her new MacBook Pro. After dinner we spread out to watch a movie on the cuddle space I created by putting a raised air mattress in front of my couch and loveseat, like so:



After the movie Ryan left, and the four of us remaining showed each other music and video clips on the Internet as we got ready to retire for the evening. After putting our guests to sleep in the living room, Penny and I stayed up a while and chatted in bed, finally going to sleep around 3 a.m. I was the first to awake at 8:15 a.m. and made omlettes, turkey bacon and toasted jalapeno parmesan bagels for the girls while Kyle had cereal.

We got to Six Flags Great Adventure just before noon and met with Penny and Dakotah's longtime friend Matt (nicknamed "Panda"), who took public transport directly to the park from his home in Brooklyn. Since we bought and printed our tickets at home, we went straight into the park, bypassing the horrendous ticket lines. Seriously, I don't know why anyone would come to Great Adventure without a ticket already in hand.

Of course, no visit to a Six Flags park would be complete without a picture with a famous cartoon character - how appropriate that we got this one with the most famous lover in the Warner Brothers stable of characters:



Our first rollercoaster was the Superman ride, which suspends you facedown in a flying position as it loops and rolls. Then we went to its neighbor, the Great American Rollercoaster. At this point we were getting really hot from waiting in lines, so we decided to go to the log flume ride to cool off. We were briefly tempted to try the "Guess Your Age/Weight" booth, but decided in my case it would be cheating.

After getting soaked on the log flume (Panda hit us with a water cannon at the end of the ride) we lined up for the Bizarro coaster, a revamped version of a rollercoaster originally called Medusa. They added flamethrowers and mist sprayers to represent Bizarro's flame breath and ice vision powers, but it's essentially the same coaster we've all ridden before.



We took the sky tram to the other side of the park and rode Skull Mountain, a small indoor coaster, then to Congo River water ride to get thoroughly drenched (Panda received his due karmic justice by getting the most soaked). We took a break for lunch, and had some fun taking pictures of unusually shaped curly fries:



The line for Nitro was too long and slow, so we had to skip that one, which is a shame because it was my second favorite coaster in the park (Kingda Ka is my favorite, and it wasn't running that day) so Polina, Kyle and I went to ride Batman and a new indoor coaster called The Dark Knight while Panda and Dakotah wandered around together.

As the evening started to wind up, we played a few games to try and win prizes. I almost won a large prize shooting a basketball, but left the shot just a few inches short. Polina came in second on a Whack-A-Mole contest, so no prize there:



Eventually we all played a water gun shooting gallery together, and Kyle won a stuffed M&M man in gangsta wear:



As I mentioned in past posts, originally our friends Reiko and Kerry were going to come, but both had to cancel at the last minute. I had intended to come home after dropping Polina and Kyle back at her house in Staten Island so they could have some private time together, but Yoshi started developing a bad engine vibration while I was dropping off Dakotah and Panda in Brooklyn, so just to be safe and not get stranded in the middle of the night, I stayed over at Polina's house. Her mom made us some dinner of pan-roasted chicken and spinach pancakes with some fresh cucumbers and tomatoes from their garden. We all went upstairs to share the air mattress, and I was pretty exhausted from the day, so I pretty much dozed off while Penny and Kyle stayed up to watch Eddie Izzard videos on YouTube. In the morning Penny and I woke up together and let Kyle sleep in while I left for home. Yoshi is running roughly, but made it home okay. He has an appointment on Friday to get checked out.

When I got to my apartment, I saw an injured kitten on the side of the road in front of my apartment building. I parked Yoshi in the garage and got a box and pillowcase and walked out to retrieve it. It was still alive, but breathing rapidly and had blood coming from its mouth. I brought it to the city animal shelter, and they directed me to an animal hospital, but I couldn't find it. I called my family and Bee helped me find a hospital with a doctor on duty. I brought it in and the doctor told me the kitty had sustained severe cranial trauma and had a broken jaw. Based on its eye reaction and breathing pattern, he said it wouldn't survive more than a day or two, even with intensive treatment, so he recommended euthanasia. I left the hospital crying for this poor baby kitten, but knowing that at the very least, I helped to lessen its suffering.

As with everything else in life, sometimes we win, sometimes we lose, but the point is to try and not to give up until we know there is no hope left. It was not the way I would have liked to end my birthday shindig, but sometimes we can't control what is put in our path. All we can do is control our own actions and handle things the best we can.

Midsummer update

First of all, I want to wish everyone a blessed Midsummer, which was on Sunday when I was in Staten Island. Pagans celebrate the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year, when the sun is at its highest point before it begins to slide into the dark half of the year.

It's been a fairly eventful few days, but I'll be brief about it because a lot of it is rather personal. Thursday night I drove into the city and picked up Polina from work to meet Lori at the Baruch Performing Arts Center to see Vampire Lesbians of Sodom. We arrived a bit late, and the play was only an hour long, but it was an amusing and surprisingly conventional drama, despite the flamboyant title.

Friday I got a call from my friends Mandy and Anna from Ohio and they were in town looking for work. Things have been very difficult for them in the past few years, and they had been living out of their car for the past three or four days as they traveled here from Columbus. I went to meet them at a nearby gas station, filled up their tank and brought them back to my apartment and got them cleaned up. We talked about their plans to live and find work in New York, and I called my poly friends Barbara and Sylwia (who both work for social services organizations) for advice. We called some shelters, but the fact they are a lesbian couple and they had a pet rabbit with them made it impossible to them to find a place where they could be together. In the end, I bought them a car charger for their depowered cell phone, gave them enough gas money to make it back to Ohio, and sent them home so they could drop the rabbit off at Mandy's grandmother's house before making another try at a later date.

Friday night I went to my family's house for our weekly dinner, and we had a donut party with Dunkin Donuts while watching Richard Attenborough's masterpiece, Gandhi, which was nominated for 11 Oscars and won eight, including Best Picture in 1983.

Saturday Polina, Katie and Afiya came over to finish our Firefly/Serenity marathon and have dinner with me. We made a salad with tomatoes, green olives, mushrooms, artichoke hearts, bell peppers and croutons, tossed with Italian dressing. I made spaghetti with a meat, mushroom, onion and fresh tomato sauce, and a simpler version of my stuffed mushrooms as a side dish. During the movie, we had tea and brownies for dessert. Afterwards, we dropped Afiya off at her home in Jersey City, while Katie and I spent the night with Polina in Staten Island.

Sunday morning we had breakfast with Polina's parents and grandmother, and the three of us took a walk around the neighborhood before the clouds opened up with rain. We waited until the rain stopped around 4 p.m., then dropped Katie at the ferry terminal so she could go home to Brooklyn. After dinner with her family, Polina and I talked, cuddled, listened to music and surfed the net until about midnight when I finally left for home. We found a new term for our relationship - amitié amoureuse - which in French means "in-love friendship," and I found a cute poem describing it:

Une amitié amoureuse
between my cat and me
while she sits on my lap and purrs
denotes a love that's free
of competition with the rest
of others whom we may desire,
for neither wishes to contest
the right that each has to aspire
to other lovers in liaisons,
though amoureuse our friendship knows
that every heart has got its raisons,
as every garden has its rose.

Firefly marathon

I spent a very nice 36 hours with Polina over the last couple of days, starting with our second Poly Cocktail Hour at China1 Restaurant Monday night. I was there early for an Open Love NY meeting at 6 p.m., which was very productive since only one person couldn't make it. Polina arrived around 8:30 p.m. wearing a blue tank top and blue eyeshadow in honor of the newly UN-declared World Oceans Day.

We did our usual meet-and-greet of people we've met previously and new faces in the crowd. I ran into a guy I dated last year that I haven't seen since October. Polina's ex-boyfriend Patrick also attended - we met each other last November when I took her out for her birthday ("Museum weekend" - November 10, 2008). Plus Diana's girlfriend Kerry (not spelled "Carrie", as previously reported) of pending MTV fame ("Birthdays, MTV and Polina" - May 6, 2009) made an appearance and chatted with me for a bit.

Since Polina and I were hosting a Firefly viewing party at my apartment the next day, we left together at 11:30 p.m. to catch the last train back to New Jersey. On the train we met a guy named Byron who is a comics artist, writer and reporter, and thought polyamory was "wicked," as in cool, not as in sinful. For some reason it seems to me that when Penny and I are together, even if we're not doing anything demonstrative, we seem to attract more attention than we do separately. I'm not sure why that is.

So Penny spent the night at my place for the first time, and only the second time we've shared a bed ("Cooking party" - January 24, 2009). We were much more comfortable with each other this time around, and fortunately she does not find my bed too soft to sleep on in comparison to her very firm, post-industrial bed. The downside was that my building superintendent chose that morning to knock on my door at nine o'clock in the morning to replace my air filters and change my smoke detector battery.

After a breakfast of eggs and turkey bacon (since she obviously doesn't eat pork) we went out to pick up Penny's friends Katie from the bus station, and Laura (whom I met at the aforementioned birthday last November) met up with us there. We took them back to the apartment and started them on the first episode of Firefly, which neither of them had seen before. About halfway through, Penny and I went to fetch Afiya from the bus station and returned before the episode was finished. We plowed through about five more episodes before taking a break for dinner - Penny and I made pan-fried vegetable dumplings, bok choy and onion with black bean garlic sauce, and a spicy chicken curry with potatoes over rice.

After dinner we got all the way to "Ariel" on Disc 3 of the 4-disc set before calling it quits. We took some pictures to document what we hope might turn into a recurring event, but I especially like this one I accidentally snapped of Penny when she was handing me the camera:



After dropping Laura off in North Haledon, about 10 minutes from my place, we took Afiya and Katie back to Penny's house in Staten Island, where we all crashed for the night. Penny and Katie got up early to go into the city for various things, while I waited for Afiya to shower before dropping her off at the ferry terminal and heading home. We tentatively plan to complete the Firefly marathon on June 20, including a screening of the movie Serenity.

Tomorrow I have my first job interview in quite a long while, so I'd better get to bed. More news as it happens later.

Birthdays, MOMA and The Moth

My June social calendar is starting out pretty much the same as May, and it's Pride month to boot, which means marching in the Manhattan parade on June 28. So here we go with more frequent blog updates on my fun-filled life in work exile.

Sunday night my family took me out to see Pixar's Up in digital 3-D, and it was everything we've come to expect from Pixar. Lots of fun, and a few weepy parts too. Plus another fun short film involving cute cloud people and storks.

Monday night I went into the city to have an early dinner with my friends Angel and Kyle at Cafetasia, a Thai bistro near Washington Square Park. Angel is an independent consultant for Brown Bag Party which is like throwing Tupperware parties, except they sell sex toys, lubricants and accessories.



Afterward, I took the subway to Brooklyn to meet up with Anika for an evening of storytelling at an event called The Moth. It's a regular event where everyday people volunteer to take the stage and share a personal experience with the audience for five minutes. Judges rate the stories according to different criteria and the winners go on to later events with other winners to be immortalized on CDs and podcasts.

Tuesday I went to a couple of sporting goods stores to look for a new tennis racquet because I returned the last one ("Public speaking" - May 20, 2009) after trying it out and finding I didn't like it. The new one is a Head Ti.S10 which is a discontinued design that I'd used once when I borrowed a Ti.S6 from Pearl's dad years ago. In researching the racquet, I found out that this Ti series license was purchased from Head by Sports Authority so they could manufacture them for sale in their stores - they are "legal fakes" in a sense. I also found a discussion thread that compared this racquet favorably to my old Hammer 2.6.

In the evening Tara and I played on a half-size mini-court owned by our township and the racquet did indeed play very much like my old racquet, but better because it's lighter and easier to maneuver due to a more advanced titanium/graphite construction. I can't wait to get it out on a real court and see how it feels on ground strokes instead of just volleys.

Wednesday I met Polina and her friend Katie at the Manhattan side of the Staten Island Ferry to have an outing. I'd met Katie at Polina's New Year's Eve party, so it was the second time we've seen each other. We decided to visit MOMA, since there were so many cool exhibits I wanted to show them from my last visit with Tara ("MOMA visit" - May 21, 2009). We had our breakfast/lunch at my favorite bagel place, Ess-a-Bagel near my old office, and walked over to the museum at the rain started to fall. Thankfully, Katie brought a small umbrella which she and I shared, while Polina cavorted in the rain (since she doesn't care as much about getting wet since her hair is so short now, I suppose).

Surprisingly, I ran into Storm's companion Jonathan in one of the exhibits, who recognized me despite me not wearing my glasses. I met him at the MTV party a month ago ("Birthdays, MTV and Polina" - May 6, 2009), and we'll probably see each other again on Friday, when they are scheduled to perform at Sidewalk Cafe.




From the museum we took the subway down to Bluestockings, an alternative bookstore, fair trade cafe and activist center for some coffee. There I met another woman I recognized from the MTV party, the unnamed woman sitting between Tash and Sarah in the group of young polys. I went up and introduced myself and showed her the picture on my camera. I'm rather amazed that in a city as large and populated as New York, I ran into two random people in a single day that I met at that MTV party.

From Bluestockings we walked a couple blocks to Happy Ending Lounge where Kyle was having his 46th birthday celebration at Pleasure Salon, a monthly sex-positive schmooze party held there. I brought our friends Kyle, Buck, Simon and Lyndell out to meet Polina and Katie, since Polina hasn't seen them since before she left for Argentina. The party had a superhero theme and Kyle is in costume with a cape, in case you were wondering.





After the brief reunion, Polina took off to Battery Park City for a family event, Katie went home to Brooklyn and I joined my friends for Kyle's party for a couple hours before heading home.

Shanghai Mermaid

Tonight I joined my friend Agnieszka and her friend Zach, who is visiting from Austin, Texas, for some late-night fun in the city. They got dressed up in some 1940s-inspired clothes, while I wore a faux-corset top and a blue satin sequined skirt that I bought years ago in Houston and haven't worn until now. I was going to wear it to my friend Joanna's wedding last year, but since I got stopped by a freak blizzard in Ohio I never found another excuse to wear it ("Blizzards and waterfalls" - March 10, 2008)




We started out at our old burlesque studio the Slipper Room where there was a student showcase event, when new graduates of the school take the stage along with some veterans to put on a show. We managed to grab front row seats and ran into a couple of our former classmates performing there. This is Rosie, in a beautiful sequined gown and feather boa:



This is Nikita (who also lives on Staten Island) and had an absolutely drop-dead gorgeous beaded costume, complete with tail feathers that came off a few at a time:



One of my poly friends, Linda, who has been to my women's group and was at Poly Pride last October, performed in a group dance with members of her poly family to the tune of "It's Raining Men," and it was nice reconnecting with her as well. When I told her I'd taken classes at the New York School of Burlesque, she wanted me to join their group in their next performance, but I demurred. I'm way too shy to take off my clothes onstage!

I also met and chatted with a striking young woman named Elle who is from Sweden, and has performed burlesque overseas, but will make her U.S. debut on June 17, the same night as the next Polyamorous NYC meeting. Hopefully I will get to catch her performance in a couple of weeks. Linda was kind enough to take this picture of us - her skin is so pale, she looks like a vampire next to me!



In the middle of the second set, we left the Slipper Room and went down to Rector Street to attend Shanghai Mermaid, a floating party of sorts (meaning it moves from place to place) that my friend Stephanie invited us to - we met her earlier this month at the City Winery ("Burlesque show at City Winery" - May 9, 2009). We met her inside and chatted for a bit before checking out the second and third floors to see what was happening.



The best part about the party were some of the extraordinary costumes - like this one from one of the performers dancing above the bar - how big do hat boxes come anyway?



The not-so-good part was the lack of air conditioning and the overcrowding around the performance area on the second floor, where a speakeasy band was playing. The third floor had a projector playing the 1931 Greta Garbo movie Mata Hari but little else. Although there were some interesting and friendly people there, there wasn't a lot of entertainment. Stephanie confirmed that this iteration of Shanghai Mermaid was not nearly as good as the one she attended in January, but it was nice seeing Stephanie and meeting some of her friends.

Tomorrow it's back to my quiet life with my family, with dinner and card games at my place, then to see Pixar's Up at the movie theater in the evening.

One fine day

Friday morning I had my monthly allergy shots and then drove to Staten Island to visit Polina, who has been sick with a nasty ear and throat infection for the past five days. The small upside is that she has been receiving more visitors since she's been sick, which she usually enjoys.

Her friend Afiya (who was at the PolyNYC meeting on Wednesday) stayed over Thursday night, so she was still there on Friday when I arrived. The three of us had lunch together and then watched the premiere episode of Firefly since Afiya has never seen Joss Whedon's show. Someday we'll have a Firefly marathon and get to watch Serenity together.

Afiya was to meet some friends in Manhattan to go see the new Terminator movie, so we drove her to the Staten Island Ferry terminal and returned home. Penny's mom came home while Penny and I were taking turns reading aloud from the book 1066 and all that: A memorable history of England, comprising all the parts you can remember including one hundred and three good things, five bad kings and two genuine dates.

After a trip to the doctor's office, we came home to light candles and bless bread and wine for Shabbat, the first time I've participated in this Jewish ritual. It was lovely, and inspirational for a spiritual novice such as myself. Penny was pretty wiped out from the doctor's visit, so we all turned in early for the night.

The next morning we blessed the bread and wine again at breakfast and Penny's mom and I administered medicine for Penny's ears, which consisted of stuffing her ears with gauze using a pair of long tweezers and applying medicine drops to them, a painful process for her. We did some computer stuff, played cards and cuddled for a bit until it was time for me to go to Central Park to join my lesbian Meetup group.

I drove across the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge through Brooklyn then into the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel into Manhattan. I parked at the Metropolitan Museum and walked across the park to meet Anika (whom I met last weekend) at the 72nd Street entrance. We found the group and met some of the other people there. My friend Angel showed up - I had just seen her two days ago at the PolyNYC meeting, of course.

Anika and I played some card games with some other people, one called Set and the other called Quiddler, which is like a combination of Scrabble and gin rummy. Set was freakin' hard, but fascinating nonetheless. It was just a little frustrating because Anika is so good at it. There was also a volleyball net so I played a couple games of five-on-five - won one, lost one.

In the early evening I went to my family's house for our first barbecue of the year. Bug made salads and baked beans, and Tara and I had hot dogs while Bee and Bug had soy burgers. We saw two young female deer stroll by and run back and forth across the field adjacent to the golf course in their backyard - that was exciting to see. We watched birds and squirrels, ate, laughed and chatted until nearly dark before coming inside to watch Spaceballs, which I'd never seen before. It's a Mel Brooks spoof on sci-fi movies, specifically Star Wars, in case you didn't know. Tomorrow morning we're all going to see Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.

Today was one of my best days - I spent some quiet time with Polina, some active time with my new friends Anika and Angel, and some quality family time with Tara, Bee and Bug. It's not often that so many of the disparate parts of my life contribute events that are enjoyable, significant and memorable, all in a single day. It makes me very happy about my life and the people in it.

A tour of Manhattan

I had an incredible run of luck at cards on Saturday night with my family, probably never to be matched again. I ended the game with $7,030 in chips, out of a possible $7,200 in play, meaning I had almost 98 percent of the total value on the table. Hopefully that kind of luck will rub off on other aspects of my life.

Sunday I went into the city for a walking tour of lower Manhattan with a new Meetup group of adventure-minded girls. We met at the corner of 14th Street and 8th Avenue (near the LGBT Center) and walked west to the Hudson River, then turned south and followed the shoreline through Battery Park City and the Financial District to South Street Seaport.

My favorite part was seeing the Irish Hunger Memorial, which is a public art exhibit recreating a small patch of Ireland in the middle of a public square:



Here's a picture of our group of about 20 women at the top of the Memorial:



We went through the Winter Garden shops at the World Financial Center, where we had an overview of the Ground Zero site:



During the walk I got to know several people, but the one I had the most to talk with about was a young lady named Anika. It's not often I meet someone so congruent with my tastes in books and movies. She's a fan of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, Alan Moore's Watchmen and V for Vendetta, Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Amelie, Terry Gilliam's trilogy, Baz Lurmann's Red Curtain Trilogy, Merchant Ivory films and surprisingly, the Twilight Saga. She's a flight attendant for Jet Blue, so she's in and out of the city all the time from her home in Salt Lake City. Hopefully we will cross paths again soon.

Here's a photo of us at the Winter Garden with Ground Zero behind us - she's a hugger, obviously:



Sunday night my family went out to see Angels & Demons, which was very good. I think I was the only one who didn't see the plot twist coming. Unfortunately, Bee, who caught Bug's cold from last week, became really sick during the movie and had us worried. Along that line, Polina has also taken ill with a high fever - Tara and I have managed to stay healthy so far. Hopefully everyone will get better soon and stay that way.

Stuffed mushrooms

Wednesday afternoon my friend Lori called me and we arranged to meet before my Poly Women's Group to catch up. It was a beautiful day, so I walked from Port Authority on 42nd and 8th Avenue to the Citigroup Center at 54th and 3rd, which took about 45 minutes with a couple stops along the way. Lori and I chatted for about 90 minutes and she showed me her new sunglasses:



My friend Barbara showed up and we started our meeting, whereupon Lori left to go visit her mom in Queens. After I got home I went to my family's house so we could watch last week's Saturday Night Live, hosted by Justin Timberlake. It was hands down the funniest episode of the year, and we especially liked the New Jersey jokes from Fred Armisen's impersonation of New York Gov. David Paterson.

This morning Tara came over to play tennis before the rain started, so we had a nice workout early in the day. Then I went to run some errands, which included a trip to CD World where I bought Taken, Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and Die Another Day, one of the handful of James Bond movies I don't currently own.

This evening I made stuffed mushrooms for dinner, which is something I learned from my South Beach dieting days. It's a pretty simple low-carb vegetarian dish, but just requires a lot of chopping.

Stuffed Mushrooms

10-12 large mushrooms
1/2 cup chopped white onion
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1/3 cup chopped green olives (or try chopped sun-dried tomatoes for a variation)
1/3 cup tomato pasta sauce
2 tablespoons oregano leaves
Shredded fresh Parmeggiano-Reggiano cheese
Hot sauce/salt and pepper to taste

1. Wash the mushrooms and remove the stems. Finely chop the stems into small pieces. Dry the caps and place on cookie sheet. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Saute the onions, garlic and stems in olive oil in a saucepan until tender. Add pasta sauce, green olives and spices and let simmer for a few minutes. Remove from heat and let cool.

3. Fill the bottom of each mushroom cap with about a teaspoon of grated cheese (depending on the size of the cap), then using a fork, evenly distribute the stuffing among all the caps. Top with a sprinking of more cheese.

4. Bake until cheese topping starts to melt (about 15-20 minutes) and serve. Inside filling will be very hot, so eat with care.

Burlesque show at City Winery

I had a fantastic time at City Winery last night with my friend Agnieszka, where we went to see a burlesque show. The venue is a combination restaurant, working winery and performance space, all in the middle of SoHo in Manhattan.

In case some of you are not familiar with the art of burlesque, it is different from performing in a strip club. Burlesque is all about putting on a show that celebrates the art of the tease. Put another way, a stripper takes off her clothes in response to the desire of the customer to see her nude body. A burlesque dancer takes off her clothes in a carefully choreographed routine meant to entertain a crowd by either being sexy, funny, dramatic, acrobatic, or any combination of those qualities. The energy in a burlesque show is all about having fun and being entertained in an artful way, with none of the commercial nature of a strip club atmosphere.

Right then, on to the details of the evening. The stage of City Winery is beautiful, and the room is expansive, and has hosted such well-known acts as Michelle Shocked, The Proclaimers, Philip Glass and Patti Smith, and Rufus Wainwright and David Byrne, who did a concert in March to raise awareness for energy conservation so they did a fully acoustic set lit by candlelight and without any electricity whatsoever - even the air conditioning was turned off.

Before the show actually started, there was a go-go dancer warming up the crowd, and we were seated in an elevated section of the room, where I took this picture that will give you an idea of what the stage looks like:



We weren't very happy with our seats, so I grabbed the hostess and got her to move us to a table down in front of center stage. We also saw one of our old burlesque classmates, Rosie, sitting near the stage as well, and said hello. The second act was a well-known performer named Ruby Valentine, who did an elegant and memorable dance in a costume made of silver mylar. Incidentally, none of the videos in this post have nudity, but I still wouldn't play them at work!



After several more acts, there was an intermission, during which a belly dancer named Maiia performed, and I thought she was one of the best acts of all. She started out with some large mylar wings like Ruby's:



Then she took the wings off and did a more traditional dance using her veils as props:



Finally, she brought a six-foot long Burmese python out of a basket and danced with it:



The snake appeared again later on the shoulder of one of the male performers, Jonny Porkpie, and seemed to take a liking to the Stage Kitten, Sizzle Dizzle, since it seems to be licking her chin:



Finally, Anita Cookie (whom I met on Monday at the MTV party) and GiGi La Femme did a funny duet singing "Thank Heaven for Little Girls," putting their own GLBT spin on the Maurice Chevalier classic:



After the performance was over, one of the dancers, Sapphire Jones, came out with the traditional fez hat to collect tips, but unfortunately Anita Cookie didn't come out so I could've said hi to her again.



While we were watching the show, a woman came up to us and complimented Agnieszka's hat. One of Agnieszka's hobbies is reproducing classic pin-up scenes with self-portraits, so she has an extensive wardrobe of vintage clothing. The woman, Stephanie, came back at the end of the show with her boyfriend and we talked about burlesque and our experience with lessons, and we took pictures of each other so she would have a photo of Agnieszka's hat. Her email address is taken from a line from the Beatles' song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" since she's a Beatlemaniac, and led to us singing the song at 1:30 in the morning in a mostly empty subway station.

Here's a photo of me and Agnieszka (and her vintage hat) on the subway on the way home. I'm looking at the reflection of my digital camera in the train window opposite us so I can frame the shot properly - I just forgot to look back at the camera when I pressed the shutter.

We now return to our regular programming...

I'm really excited right now about a new job opportunity! After my eventful times earlier in the week, it's been a nice chill-out period the last couple of days to catch my breath before the next round of social events starts up.

Tonight, Agnieszka and I are going to SoHo to see a burlesque show (Anita Cookie is scheduled to perform), then Sunday is the new Star Trek movie with my family and time with Tara in the afternoon. Monday is the Poly Cocktail Hour, Wednesday is my women's poly support group, and Friday is Erika's birthday party.

Today, I woke up and watched a couple of episodes of Angel, "Double or Nothing" and "The Price" before getting up and firing up the computer to do some job searching. I submitted my resume to a couple of places, including a recruiter looking for an internal communications specialist for a confidential Fortune 500 company. About two hours after I sent that one, she called me and said when the company saw my resume they told her she had to get me on the phone - pronto.

I know I'm being modest, but frankly, it's kind of a shock. In this economy, I don't expect companies to be so eager to hire anyone, including me. But apparently, my experience with Cardtronics in my former life was especially attractive to this particular company. That's a good thing, because I loved working for Cardtronics, and I still point out their ATMs to my family whenever I see them. It's one of the few tangible things I can point to in everyday life that is a result of my work - I helped design the decorative wrapper and graphics on some Cardtronics ATMs.

Anyway, I filled out a form for the recruiter, and she's going to schedule an interview for me next week, probably on Monday, Wednesday or Friday, since I'll be in the city for the aforementioned social events anyway. The company is located at the World Trade Center, so that's a pretty convenient commute, just a little farther on the E line than I used to do, but downtown instead of uptown. So I'm crossing my fingers that this will turn out to be the end of my time off, although I will certainly miss being on extended vacation.

The downside is that I was thinking about visiting my friends who live points west of here, like Christine and Monica (who both live near Pittsburgh), Joanna and Mandy (who live in Central Ohio) and Colleen (who lives in Indianapolis) and just sleeping on people's couches or my air mattress to save on expenses.

I've also been seriously thinking about going back down to Houston and visiting my friends in the community down there, plus maybe visiting Linda and Meredith. I don't have any desire to see my parents, but I suppose I would let them know I was coming just to extend an olive branch. What I really miss is the food in Houston - when I play the "last meal" game, most of my dishes come from Houston restaurants ("4 things" - Aug. 30, 2007). If I get this job, I probably won't have the time to do that for a while. We'll have to see what transpires.

Facebook

Everywhere I look, people are asking me to join Facebook, and so far, I've resisted. I'm not sure how much longer I can hold out. Because next thing you know I'll be Twittering and who knows what else down the road. Why can't people just pick up a phone and reach out to talk to each other?

One of the reasons I started blogging in 2005 was that my circle of friends was expanding and it was a way for me to let people know what I was doing without my having to write separate emails to everyone. In a way it has worked, in the sense that there are some people who follow my life that I have little contact with otherwise. Once in a while they will drop me a comment or email, but we not involved with each other's day-to-day lives. The exception is my friend Linda, with whom I exchange long and candid letters every week or so, but then, we have both always been writers at heart.

That's why this idea of constantly letting people know what's happening in your life through electronic updates doesn't really appeal to me. I'd rather get the story in person when we meet, even if it's infrequently. Perhaps my relationship with Tara has also spoiled me, since she's the only person who I talk to on the phone every day. It's hard for me now to imagine having a meaningful relationship with someone without hearing their voice every day.

I suppose that to some of my younger, hipper readers this sounds terribly old-fashioned. But the truth is that social media technology doesn't serve the purpose if it doesn't bring people closer together. And for me, the only way that happens is real-time communication, on the phone or in person. And hugs, lots of hugs.

Fire play

Lots of things to talk about, starting with the verdict in the Zapata murder trial - the defendant was found guilty of first-degree murder and that it was a hate crime. It's one of the first times that a hate-crimes law was applied to the death of a transgender person. I'm just glad the deception argument (or what I call "The Crying Game defense") was unsuccessful.

Here's a photo of me talking with my bisexual women's group at Sylvia's Restaurant last Sunday, that was just posted on our group Web site:




Last night we had our first official planning meeting of Open Love NY at my friend Kyle's apartment, the first time I'd been there. I'm always astonished at the quirks of New York living spaces, not the least of which is how little you get for your money in the city. Kyle and I pay about the same amount in rent, but his entire apartment (which he shares with a roommate) is probably less than a third the square footage as mine, and without air conditioning, parking, washer/dryer, window views or a lot of the amenities I take for granted. But the weird thing is that his sink and shower are inside his front door, but the private toilet is in a separate space with its own door a few steps down the hallway, so he has to use a key to get into his own toilet.

We met for about two-and-a-half hours before Kyle had to go to work, and then Simon, Buck, Lyndell and I walked 10 blocks to a club called Dtox where a friend of ours was throwing a party for open-minded people of all stripes. Her name is Mina, and I met her the same night I met Simon and Lyndell, at the Supermassive Cuddle Party in 2007. Although we have only seen each other infrequently since then at PolyNYC meetings, she belongs to a pretty small group of individuals (seven and counting, six in my adult life) who have kissed me on the lips with romantic intent. If it seems like a lot, then you need to get out more.

Anyway, Mina was performing what she calls fire play on volunteers at the back of the bar, where a padded bench was situated in the middle of a small dance floor. This involved the subjects (Lyndell took a turn) disrobing from the waist up and laying facedown on the bench. Mina would then take two rods about the size of chopsticks with gauze wrapped at each end, soaked in alcohol and light them on fire. She would tap the person's back with the flaming tips, transferring some of the burning alcohol to the skin, where it would burn for a fraction of a second before Mina put it out with her hand. Then she would go one step further and draw curves with a non-flaming alcohol swab, then light it, creating arcs of flame for an instant at a time before snuffing them out. She also used an alcohol sprayer with a flame in front of it to spray flame at the skin, but it never caught fire (although it seems like it could if the person was hairy). I was talking to Lyndell while she was doing this last bit and the flame spray got really close to my face, but Mina was very careful.

It's the first time I'd seen fire play, so I was asking a lot of questions about it - was it performance art or some kind of fetish play? Mina says it's just fun, and other people commented that it's also a display of trust for the bottom (the person it's being performed on). For me, it was just a fascinating example of the diversity of human play that I've never been exposed to before.

Speaking of play, since the weather is so nice today, maybe Tara and I will go out and have a nice, ordinary game of tennis.

Busy start of the week

After a month of mostly inactivity, it has been and is going to be a busy week. Monday I went into the city for a Poly Happy Hour that takes place the second Monday of each month. I've never been to one because up until recently, Monday nights have been date nights for me and Tara, since it's also Buffy's yoga night.

The happy hour is held at China 1 Antique Restaurant and Lounge and it's one of the weirder places I've been. When you walk in, it just looks like a small, intimate Chinese restaurant, but with only about three tables and the rest of it bar seating. But when you descend down the narrow staircase in the back, it leads to a maze-like, subterranean space that kind of reminds me of the dungeon in The Silence of the Lambs. The air is heavily perfumed with incense, and the lighting is very dim, except in one brightly lit corner with seating and pillows arranged around a small coffee table. All along the walls are intimate booths where people can have more privacy, most of them with decorative grates attached to the wall that are used for bondage activities (I saw one girl handcuffed to the wall with her hands above her head). Apparently there are a couple of kink parties hosted there each month as well.

The downstairs consists of two large rooms, each about three times the size of the small room upstairs. One room has a DJ station and a fish tank with Chinese goldfish in the middle of the room. One of the booths in that room doesn't have a table, only a high couch or what looks like a small bed for people to cuddle. Apparently my friend Lyndell was snogging somebody in there earlier in the evening, but I heard about it from Kyle. All around the perimeter of the room are padded benches and pillows, and more dark booths.

I met some of my poly friends there in order to start the process of formalizing our new group, called Open Love NY, and discuss the terms of splitting off from Polyamorous NYC. We sat in the brightly lit corner and had our meeting as more people came and started to mingle. Once we settled everything, we brought some new people over and I met several of my friends' friends. Lyndell left with me around 10 pm to head to a karaoke party uptown, and we ran into one of her friends from her theater days on the 14th Street bus. Lyndell got off at Union Square, and I chatted with her friend all the way to Penn Station. He's a gay black man who works by day as a law librarian and at night is part of a troupe of actors doing William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. He has a marvelous speaking voice.

Tonight we went out to celebrate Bee's birthday at Colucci's Ristorante where local personality Uncle Floyd performs each Tuesday night. Part musician, part off-color comedian, he and his friends in the audience put on a show that had all of us in stitches. It's a very old-timey act full of bad jokes and one-liners, but done with so much style and pizzazz that you can't help but laugh.

Tomorrow I have my first real job interview since that last one in Hackensack - this one in the city a block north of Agent K (which is code for my old firm). That means I have to slosh around in the wet weather with my suit and heels on, carrying my portfolio - ugh. Then I'll stay in the city and help out at the PolyNYC meeting at 8 pm. I think with the lack of volunteers now, I've been promoted from chair arranger to door greeter and money taker. I hope I can handle the increased responsibility...

Sleepover with Lori

Yesterday I had a sleepover at Lori's apartment in Staten Island - she lives with her boyfriend in a high-rise about five miles from Polina's place. Her boyfriend is in Israel for a week so she's been feeling a bit lonely and I thought I might cheer her up.

I picked her up from a train station in New Jersey where she was coming from visiting some friends down in Central Jersey and we drove over the bridge to SI. They have a very nice apartment, but small compared to mine, especially for two people. We went out to the grocery store to buy some vegetables and eggs for our cooking adventures - Lori has a fledgling catering business so I was helping her prepare her meals for the week.

In her tiny kitchen we managed not to bump into each other too much while preparing a vegetarian menu of coconut and red lentil soup, red pepper and fire-roasted tomato chili with beans, green lentil and egg curry, baby sweet peas and shredded cabbage with toasted spices, and pasta with mushroom sauce. It took us less than two hours, even though we burned the spices on the cabbage dish and had to start over once - felt very Iron Chef-like. She said having me as the sous chef cut her cooking time in half, and I was welcome to come back anytime to help. We packed the food for the catering customers and then ate the extra portions for dinner, which was delicious. Appropriately after dinner, we watched Iron Chef America on the Food Network.

Lori was exhausted after her weekend of visiting friends and cooking, so we took turns showering and I gave her a back and shoulder massage before we turned in for the night. As usual in a new bed, I didn't sleep all that well, especially since we turned out the lights before midnight and I'm used to sleeping at around 3 a.m., but she had to get up at 7 a.m. this morning to go to work. Also, when you're used to sleeping on a $3,000 Simmons mattress, it's pretty hard to get used to anything else for one night, although I find the beds at Marriott Residence Inns to be quite comfy.

This morning I drove Lori to the bus stop and came home at around 8:30 a.m., not quite knowing what to do with myself. I ate breakfast, watched some TV off my DVR, and got a call from a recruiter asking me to come into the city on Wednesday for a writing test for a PR agency one block north of my old office on Third Avenue. I took the opportunity to make an appointment for a haircut and coloring at my salon for later in the day. Then I retired to my big, familiar bed and took a two-hour nap in the middle of the day.

How it feels to be sawed in half

In the category of stuff that only I would care about, I came across this video on my dear friend Pearl's blog. As longtime readers know, I've known Pearl since before she was born ("Pearl the pop star" - Sept. 11, 2008) and today she is an aspiring pop singer in Taiwan under her professional name Ivy. This video is an appearance she made recently on a Taiwanese talk show where a magician does the old "saw the lady in half" trick on her, after first making her sign a disclaimer of sorts with a thumbprint. Then she does this little sexy dance getting into the box, which made me laugh, since most of my memories of her are from when she was a child and pre-adolescent girl.

The whole scene to me is rather surreal, like the Japanese talk show that Bill Murray finds himself on in the movie Lost in Translation. I'm looking at this 25-year-old woman that I've known for so long and had a profound impact on my life, and she's become a celebrity in a foreign country. Life is so weird sometimes.

Diana Adams on TV

I wanted to share this clip of Diana Adams on Current TV, which you can also find on her Web site Web site. Diana is a poly/kink/GLBT sexual rights activist lawyer who has helped many people in alternative communities with divorces and child custody cases, something I know about as well. She's one of the most "out" poly people I know, having volunteered for the New York Times story I worked on back in October.

Even though we've been in Polyamorous NYC together for more than a year, Diana and I are only just getting to know each other on a personal level. We both are passionate about generating more positive media coverage of polyamory, and I expect at some point we will work together closely to do that.

But mostly I want to share this clip of her story because I think it's a wonderful example of how polyamory can work, and a glimpse into how much fun it can be. True, it's not for everyone, but it is possible to be happy in situations that some people might find impossible.

http://current.com/items/89808888/sexual_civil_rights_lawyer.htm