Poly picnic in Bridgewater

I got a second-round interview for the customer relationship management company based in Israel. The hiring manager is the UK, so I have to get up early on Monday for that call. This job would be based in Jersey City, so this would be one job opportunity that would not require me to relocate just yet. We'll see what happens.

Today I went out to Bridgewater, NJ to Duke Island Park for a picnic with an older polyamorous crowd I don't get to see very often. My friend Adele, who comes to my women's poly group, is a central figure, so she invited me. Most of the others I met either at the Poly Leadership Summit back in March ("Poly Leadership Summit 2009" - March 3, 2009) or at the one Thursday night poly munch I attended back in February ("Limerancing through life" - Feb. 27, 2009). Adele was actually at that meeting in February, but we didn't know each other by sight back then.

The weather was pretty crappy but we had reserved a covered pavilion, so it was reasonably comfortable. I brought some tortilla chips and organic salsa, and baked some of my famous Ghirardelli triple-chocolate brownies, which were tremendously popular, along with Adele's peach and blueberry pie.



Here's a picture of Adele and our friend Bill - he was a volunteer at Poly Pride back in October ("Poly public relations" - Oct. 5, 2008) and also marched in the Pride Parade ("My first pride parade!" - June 29, 2009) yet somehow we've never actually been introduced, although Polina knows him. He's a former analyst in the intelligence industry, which is a fancy way of saying he used to be a spy.



Adele and her husband Lance also brought their six-year-old Haley and she was a delight to watch. She couldn't stop making comments about my height! She dragged Adele out from under shelter to splash around in the mud with another Michelle, who is in a triad with a fellow (Rob?) and a black woman named Stephanie (who recognized me from a PolyNYC meeting more than a year ago):



Here's a picture of me and Haley - she got really tired and grumpy at the end of the event, so she didn't feel much like smiling. She reminded me of Pearl at that age, who also used to get the same way. Or maybe it was her coming down from the sugar rush of eating three of my brownies. But I think I look cute in this picture, at least:



"Miss Polyamory" Beki Rosenthal called my friend Mark Van Pelt during the picnic, and I got to talk with her a little bit on his cell phone. I got to know both of them during the Leadership Summit since Beki was one of the online participants I handled during the event and Mark helped me with communications.

Polina also called me on my cell using Skype from Switzerland during the picnic, and we had a nice chat about chocolate fondue, foggy mountains, and video blogging. She comes back to New York tomorrow and goes straight to college from the airport. I'm very thankful she convinced me to start using Skype - it's been a wonderful tool to keep us connected while she's been on vacation. Plus I even had a chance to chat with her Dutch boyfriend Peter, who visited with them for a few days. But I'm certainly ready for her to be closer to home so we don't have to deal with the six-hour time difference when we talk.

All in all, it was a fun day, despite the wet weather. Tomorrow I'll go to Costco and buy some more brownie mix, since I've run out.

Karaoke virgin no more!

Guess it's time for an update before the next round of activity starts again tomorrow, since it's been a week since my last post.

Friday I drove into the city and met with Polina and her friend Reiko near Union Square. I met Reiko on New Year's Eve, but we didn't get to talk very much, so it was like our first meeting. However, she is planning to go with us to Great Adventure next week, so we'll have plenty of time to get to know each other. We chatted for a bit over frozen yogurt treats, then she went home while Polina and I went to Brooklyn to see the Adventure Quest play at a venue called The Brick.

The play basically started as a live-action version of an early text RPG (e.g. Zork) with actors playing the roles of the Hero (who reminded me of Dirk the Daring from Dragon's Lair), Guard, Peasant Girl, etc. But as the Hero goes from scene to scene, talking to people and getting the same answers over and over, and figuring out what he needs to do, it slowly turns into an existential parody where he questions why he has to kill everyone in order to achieve his goals. Plus he falls in love with the Peasant Girl instead of the Mayor's Daughter whom he's supposed to rescue. There's an omniscient female computer voice giving instructions which adds to the realism (i.e. "You can't do that") and a points counter projected on the background goes up every time he does something right. It was a very clever and funny play, and a must-see for computer game geeks.

We met up with two new people at the play - Rob, a guy Polina and I met at the last Poly Cocktail Hour ("Deep fried pickles" - July 14, 2009) and Kevin, a bloke she met on the bus back from Otakon in Baltimore. After the play, we went to a diner for a bite to eat, then trekked back to Manhattan to find a karaoke bar in Korea Town, an area around 32nd Street and Broadway. Believe it or not, it was my very first time in a karaoke bar - since I grew up with karaoke machines in the house, there was never any reason to go out for that kind of entertainment.

So here is me singing Linkin Park's "In the End" - I sang Chester Bennington's part, and Polina rapped Mike Shinoda's lines, so we did it as a duet. We also sang "Attack" by 30 Seconds to Mars together, but that was a hard song to sing!



There was a lot of multilingual singing, as Rob is fluent in Japanese, and Kevin in Chinese. Polina also sang a few songs in Japanese. However, none of us were familiar with Korean, which made working the Korean remote control somewhat of a challenge. Kevin and Polina sang "Tribute" by Tenacious D together, Rob sang "Don't Look Back in Anger" by Oasis and "Beautiful Ones" by Suede (among others - he's a really good singer). Kevin and I sang "Sweet Home Alabama" together, and we all sang "Phantom of the Opera" together, with Polina and I singing Christine's part and Kevin and Rob singing the Phantom's part.

One cool thing that we realized near the end of the night was that the four of us were each from a different decade in age: Polina in her teens, Kevin in his 20s, Rob in his 30s, and me in my 40s (biologically speaking). I have to think that's a pretty rare thing, and further proof that age is just a number, not a limit at least when it comes to having fun. From left to right, here's Polina, Rob and Kevin:



After a couple hours of singing, we parted ways and Polina and I headed back to her place for the night. The next morning we had Shabbat breakfast with Penny's parents before her grandparents, older sister Sofia and her husband Robert came over for a visit. Sofia and I spent a couple hours going through Penny's closet and critiquing her wardrobe before I left for home for Saturday night dinner with my family. After dinner we watched "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull."

Deep fried pickles

Just a quickie update because I have to get to bed for my big birthday celebration with my family tomorrow.

In preparation for my job interviews on Thursday, I went into the city Monday for a hair coloring, and got some rather bold red highlights done. I just wanted something a little more dramatic than the boring - albeit natural - color I've been wearing the past six months or so.

Afterwards I went to China 1 Restaurant for the monthly Poly Cocktail Hour, where I saw my friends Buck, Kyle, Lyndell, Simon and others I knew. Barbara and her partner Joe came for the first time since I've been coming, so it was nice seeing them. Polina showed up about an hour after me, and we met several new people, including a couple of dancers/choreographers named Anthony and Kristen, who are exploring the possibilities of opening up their long-term relationship. This meeting also marked the first public meeting of Open Love NY (which I unfortunately missed because my hair appointment ran long).

Polina and I left at 11:30 p.m. since she was coming home with me to do some shopping the next day. And just like last time ("Firefly marathon" - June 10, 2009) we seemed to attract an undue amount of attention on the train ride home. First there was a U.S. Army staff sergeant visiting home from his post in Italy telling us war stories from his time with the 82nd Airborne Division - he was on his third or fourth tour of duty and getting ready to go to Afghanistan. Once he got off at Newark, another man took his place in the seat across from us and continued telling us stories about Operation Desert Storm. We'd pretty much had enough at that point and started playing a game on Polina's iPod Touch so he'd take the hint to leave us alone.


The next morning, after a bit of a rough start upon waking, we headed out to do some shopping. As I did with Tara when we were actively dating, I offered to get Polina some things to make her overnight stays with me easier and more comfortable - a toothbrush, change of clothes, pajamas and toiletries, so we got those at Target. Then we went to Paramus to look for some boots that Penny has been trying to find for her anime-con costume this weekend in Baltimore. We found them at Nordstroms Rack, my favorite place for bargain shoe-shopping, and also found her a pair of jeans at the Marshalls in the same shopping center. Her old jeans were definitely ready for the recycling bin.


Then we went to a wig store so she could buy some conditioner/detangler for the wig in her costume. Afterwards, we had lunch at the nearby Hooters, the first time I'd been to one since I left Houston. I've been missing their super-spicy chicken wings, regardless of who is doing the serving. Naturally, we were the only two women in the place on a weekday afternoon. We also tried the deep-fried pickles, which I thought were pretty tasty:





After lunch I drove Penny into the city and dropped her off at work, and came home to visit Tara. We had a nice chat, and then in the evening I went out to the free movies and saw Public Enemies. I liked Johnny Depp's performance, but the movie seemed to lack focus and was a little difficult to follow for me. Not Michael Mann's best work, unfortunately.

Film screening

I had a nice time out last night with Polina and Afiya for a screening of Polina's short film, "Learning to Lead" at this year's class of A Different Take, an annual summer program that sponsors LGBTQ youths to make films about their lives and experiences. Polina participated in last year's class, and her film was shown at the MIX 21 Festival last October, where we went for our first date.

I was a bit early getting to Bluestockings, the queer bookstore where we were to meet. While waiting, I met and chatted with some people from Austin who were reading Julia Serrano's book Whipping Girl. Once Polina and Afiya showed up, we went to nearby Katz's Deli for a bite to eat. Katz's is the famous deli on Houston Street (pronounced HOW-stun) where the orgasm scene from When Harry Met Sally was filmed - in fact, we sat one table away from the exact place where Meg Ryan demonstrated her acting chops (it's marked by a hanging sign). Here's a picture of my pastrami and chopped liver on rye, something I saw Anthony Bourdain order on his show, "No Reservations" on the Travel Channel:



After eating, we strolled over to Le Petit Versailles, a public garden in the East Village maintained by neighborhood volunteers. Polina got reacquainted with her former teachers and colleagues, and we started the screening as soon it got dark enough.



Polina had also invited Marc, a guy she met while in Argentina, and his boyfriend Xavi, who were visiting New York together, and they showed up midway through the program, just in time to see her film. Marc and Xavi are both journalists who live in Barcelona, Spain, and are traveling the world, working on research for a book and other projects.

After the screening, some audience Q&A and socializing, we decided to find a place to get a bite to eat. Polina invited me to stay over at her house so I wouldn't have to bail on the group in order to catch the last train back home. We made our way to St. Marks Street and found a Japanese restaurant where we had a late snack and chatted until about 1:30 a.m.



After walking Afiya and the guys to their respective trains, Polina and I headed to Staten Island, and got home about 3:30 a.m. She showed me her shiny new MacBook Pro and some YouTube videos on her new iPod Touch before we turned the lights out. In the morning, we had Shabbat breakfast with her parents and grandmother and played around with the MacBook some more until I started to make my way home.

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.

Baby kitten rescue

I've been packing a lot of activity in the past few days, and I expect this to continue until at least May 20, culminating with the monthly meeting of Polyamorous NYC when Katelynn is scheduled to appear. In addition to activities in the city, there's also new movies in theaters every week, plus Rockets playoff games, and spending as much time as possible with both Tara and Polina while I'm hunting for a job because once I land one, I'm not going to have nearly as much free time. I want to make the most of it while it lasts.

Saturday night was family night at Tara's house, and Bug made a nice dinner of pasta and zucchini and a salad. Then we watched a very long movie that is a favorite of Bug's and mine, but one that Tara and Bee haven't seen: Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven. The extended Director's Cut runs 3 hours and 13 minutes, but it's worth it over the theatrical version. It actually made a nice follow-up to last week's viewing of The Last Temptation of Christ in the sense that both movies deal with the religious themes, but in very different ways.

Sunday we got up early on Mother's Day so we could all see Star Trek together before Bee and Bug went home to visit birth families. We are all over the moon about this movie, being lifelong Trek fans. The script was one of the best I've ever seen, full of nods and winks and spot-on characterizations for the devoted fans. The action was taut and visually exciting, and they did a tremendous job in creating a new reality without trashing what came before. It actually made me cry in the first 10 minutes of the film - possibly the best science fiction movie to come out of Hollywood since Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith.

After the movie, Tara and I went for lunch at the Riverview Cafe in Elmwood Park and we talked about our birth families and growing up, as I typically do on family-oriented holidays when my estrangement from my birth family becomes more evident. These are some of the few times I opt to take myself out of the moment and think about the past or the future. I choose not to do this often, nor do I wallow when I'm doing it. Tara seems to feel closer to me when I'm showing my vulnerability and reminding her of how I was back when we were still living 1,700 miles apart. But for my part, I choose not to look backward very often because I don't want to miss out on a moment of the life I have now.

After lunch we came back to my apartment and played tennis, only the second time we've done this. I gave Tara my newer racquet to use, and that evened the playing field tremendously, because I used to be a pretty gosh darn good player. We had a nice workout, and then I dropped her off and watched my Rockets game and my DVD of Max Payne, which I checked out from the library.

Monday I went to visit Polina in Staten Island and help her with an abandoned baby kitten her mom found on their doorstep on Sunday. The animal was only hours old, with the umbilical cord still attached, and Polina and her mom had been taking turns all night feeding it and keeping it warm. Polina found a shelter that could take the baby kitty in for foster care, so we went together to the facility to drop the kitty off. Here's some pictures of her holding it:





And here's the shelter worker who took the kitty, so you can see better how small it is:



Afterwards, we went out to lunch and came home to visit with her mom for a bit. Her mom showed me a old copy of Ruyard Kipling's Just So Stories, written in English with a Russian forward, so I could read "The Cat That Walked By Himself" as a way of explaining why Penny's dad was so adamantly against keeping the kitten.

Later in the evening, Penny and I took the bus to the Staten Island Ferry into Manhattan for the Poly Cocktail Hour at China1, which I had attended for the first time last month while she was in Argentina ("Busy start of the week" - April 14, 2009). We got there quite late, around 8:30 p.m. and unfortunately missed our friends Simon and Kyle, but saw Leon and Antonia from Open Love NY, and I ran into Tanisha, a women from my Poly Women's group (which meets tomorrow), Paloma (who is leaving for Europe this Friday) and some other people I've run into before. The poly community in New York (and everywhere else, I'd assume) is pretty small, so eventually you start seeing people over and over.

Between the two of us, Penny and I met just about everybody in the room, and it was loads of fun going around, introducing and being introduced to new people. There were many people there for the first time; in fact, it was Polina's first time at this particular event as well. I think we both had such a good time that we'll probably try to make it a regular outing, our schedules permitting. We were, in fact, two of the three last people to leave the restaurant at about 12:30 a.m. We got a quick bite at a 24-hour Turkish restaurant, and then took a bus back to the ferry. This was my first time riding the Staten Island Ferry, so I took some pictures to commemorate. This is the sign on the Manhattan side at 1:30 in the morning - you can see Penny's silhouette standing under the T and E in "Staten":





The next morning we made some breakfast together and I helped her wash dishes and clean up the kitchen before we went upstairs to swap some music on her computer.



When I got home around 4 p.m. I followed up on some potential job leads, but still nothing definite to report at the moment. I picked up Tara so we could go see X-Men Origins: Wolverine at the free movie theater, but unfortunately, the 7:30 p.m. show was already sold out, so we had to wait for the 9 p.m. show. The upside is that we did get to see the Deadpool Easter Egg after the end credits, although I was a little disappointed with its brevity. However, my estimation of the movie itself is higher upon second viewing than the original reaction I had last Sunday.

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.

Birthdays, MTV and Polina

This is going to be the longest post ever written in this blog, with lots of pictures, and important stuff about Polina, so settle in if you're interested in reading. I'm going to tackle things chronologically because a lot's happened in the past 72 hours and I don't want to miss anything.

Saturday morning I picked up Bug and Tara and we went to our local comic book store for Free Comic Book Day. It was the first time since I've moved here that we didn't go to Midtown Comics in Times Square for this event. Midtown does a great job, but it's a bit of a hassle because the line starts forming an hour before the store opens, and by the time we typically get there, it's about 50 people long and it's still at least 30 minutes before opening. Plus we have to find parking and pay for bridge toll, etc., etc. It's been fun in the past, but it's just not worth it for free comic books. Besides, we want to support our local stores that we shop at more frequently.

Saturday night I was invited to my friend Leon's birthday party at River, a bar in Hell's Kitchen where he and his friend Paloma were guest-bartending for the night. It was also my first time taking the bus in from my apartment to Port Authority Bus Terminal, since the trains in my area don't run on weekends. There's a transit center about 500 feet from my apartment across the highway, so it's super-convenient to park Yoshi there, hop on a bus for $6 (cheaper than paying the $8 bridge toll) and go directly to Port Authority.

Leon is one of my friends involved in creating Open Love NY (a group of people which I geekily refer to as "the Separatists" in a Star Wars reference) and one of the nicest guys I know. When I walked in I gave him a hug and he introduced Paloma, who recognized me from a past Polyamorous NYC meeting, although I didn't remember her. I suppose I do tend to stick out in a crowd, being a tall Asian girl in a group of medium-sized, mostly white people (although Leon is six-foot-six). Leon expertly made me a blueberry cosmopolitan and I settled into a barstool next to two young women named Casey and Michelle (yes, same spelling - I checked). My friend Simon came in shortly after and sat down next to me on the other side.

Simon and I spent most of the evening chatting with Casey and Michelle, and we seemed to hit it off well, although they are not polyamorous and it was fun watching Casey's face as Simon was explaining polyamory to her. Casey and I are in similar lines of work, and we both lost our jobs in December. She looks a lot like Ferris Bueller's girlfriend Sloane Peterson in the 1986 movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off. She and Michelle are long-time friends, having grown up together since Catholic elementary school. So when it was getting late, the three of us left at the same time (Simon stayed behind) and they kindly offered me a lift back to New Jersey so I wouldn't have to take the bus home. After dropping me off at Yoshi, they turned around and drove back to Queens. It was a very generous gesture, and I hope we'll see each other again at some point just to hang out and talk more.

Sunday morning I picked up my family and we went to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which I thought was a pretty good movie, although a little slow in some parts between action sequences. Also, I wish we were either given more intel on new characters, or that established characters from the comic were used more. Also, some of plot had a few Sentinel-sized holes, but what the hey, it's a comic book movie. But lastly, I found out the meaning of my friend Joanna's cryptic comment about the character Deadpool - there are two different Easter eggs tacked on after the closing credits, and we saw the one about Wolverine in Japan. See this article for details, but watch out for spoilers if you haven't seen the movie.

Monday night was my friend Diana's MTV party at my old burlesque studio The Slipper Room, where Agnieszka and I took six weeks of burlesque dance classes. As I've mentioned in this blog before ("Diana Adams on TV" - March 4, 2009) Diana is an activist for the sex-positive community in New York and she is currently working with the award-winning docuseries MTV True Life for an episode titled "I'm Polyamorous." The show spotlights Diana's life with her long-time boyfriend and current girlfriend Kerry, who is 21 and exploring bisexuality for the first time, and follows their lives as they experience what it's like to be young and polyamorous today. MTV's camera crew was at the party filming the performances and setting up conversation scenes for the show, which premieres in August.

At this point, I'll start talking about Polina. As I was getting ready to leave my apartment for the party, she called me up out of the blue. I say that because I had left her a voice message last Sunday (4/26) which she never returned, although we swapped a couple off-line chat messages on the computer last week. So in the short time we had to talk before I had to leave, I explained to her that not returning phone calls was unacceptable if we were going to even be friends, let alone anything more than that. She apologized and promised not to do it again, and we planned to meet at the party later in the evening, as she was on the performers lineup to do a reading of some of her poetry.

When I got to the club, the entertainment started with a performance by Tash and Sarah, two members of The Gyronauts, a troupe of hula-hoop performers. Sarah performed solo at the Poly Pride rally last year, and I was very impressed with her skills, especially since I can't hoop to save my life.



I later learned from my friend Buck that Polina had arrived at the club before I got there, but couldn't get in because she's under the legal drinking age, even though she's a performer. So she went to visit a friend in the city instead, and on the phone we made plans to see each other Tuesday at her home in Staten Island.

Since The Slipper Room is a burlesque theater there were a few burlesque acts, both male ("boylesque") and female, and by far the best one was by a performer named Anita Cookie (say that fast), who did a clever routine with a tweed trenchcoat to the tune of Engelbert Humperdinck's "A Man Without Love." As someone who trained in burlesque, I can tell she put a lot of effort into creating her routine and I was very impressed. Since this is a PG-13 blog, I didn't take a picture while she was performing (she stripped down to pasties and a g-string) but I loved the tattoo on her shoulder, which she let me photograph after coming offstage:



I ran into so many people in the poly community at the party, it was very exciting having so many of my friends and acquaintances in one place at the same time (unfortunately minus Polina). Besides Buck and Diana, Leon, Paloma, Lyndell, Justen (from Polyamorous NYC), Birgitte and her girlfriend Erika all showed up. Erika and I worked closely together back in March ("Poly Leadership Summit 2009" - March 3, 2009) and Birgitte and I worked together on the New York Times article and the Poly Pride Rally in Central Park last year ("Poly public relations" - October 5, 2008). I also ran into Storm, a young poly woman who came to one of my New Women's Polyamory support group meetings. Plus there were one or two other people who recognized me from the Leadership Summit.




For the MTV portion of the night, the camera crew set up two group conversations with people who agreed to appear and speak on camera. In the first group, Buck, Justen, Lyndell and myself represented a group of experienced polyamorists giving advice to Kerry, while Diana looked on. In the second group, they rounded up a bunch of younger poly-friendly and poly-curious people to talk with Kerry as peers about their experiences with polyamory. In this photo, the back of Birgitte's head is directly in front of the camera, Diana and Kerry are sitting to her right, then continuing around the table is a guy I don't know, then Tash, then a girl I don't know, then Sarah, and her girlfriend Caitlin.



It was an incredibly fun night, and the only real drama was at the end, when I lost track of time and almost missed the last train back to New Jersey. Leon was a lifesaver in hustling me, Storm, her boyfriend, another woman and himself into a shared cab and getting us to Penn Station in less than 12 minutes. I made it to the train with less than 15 seconds to spare.



Tuesday morning I drove out to Penny's house and we cooked some pasta together for lunch and she gave me a souvenir from her trip, a pendant made from an Argentine one peso coin with the outline of the church tower carved out. She didn't know that I have a passing interest in numismatics and notaphily, but that made it an especially appropriate gift for me. She also gave me a copy of the graphic novel The Professor's Daughter, which she picked up from a comics writers convention on Saturday, and I gave her an extra copy of the free Wolverine Saga comic that I had also given to Tara last week. She showed me her photos and videos from the trip, and then we took a walk down to the beach in front of her house. We talked for a long time about our relationship, which I felt was on the cusp of becoming more serious three months ago when she left for her trip.

As I've outlined in my theory on unconditional love, I don't put expectations on what a relationship is going to be. Polina and I try to practice what is known as "radical honesty," or being as direct as possible about our feelings without worrying about hurting each other, because we both know we have no intention of doing so. During our walk, I made myself clear about how her inattentiveness at times was hurtful to me (e.g., not returning phone calls), and she made herself clear that she did not want our relationship to change, either to be more serious or more casual. We agreed that we're going to try and keep our relationship somewhere between friends and lovers, without any additional expectations or commitments from anybody. At least for now, this is the relationship that works for both of us, and we've communicated our needs to each other. Whether and how we are both able to fulfill those needs will determine where we go from here.

As I said in my theory post, love is rarely a game played on equal terms, and we both understand that my feelings for her are probably stronger than hers are for me, although she enjoys my company very much, and we are physically affectionate, but platonic. Perhaps we can be described as "physically affectionate friends." She describes her feelings as loving me, but just not being in love with me. To her, being in love is that crazy, almost frantic, change-your-life impulse where you would do almost anything for the other person. Her view reminds me of the following quote from Daniel Pinchbeck's book, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl:

"Robert Johnson notes that the English language reflects our emotional paucity. Ancient Persian and Sanskrit possessed more than eighty words for love, denoting different qualities and valences of communal and erotic feeling. Whether we want to proclaim our affection for Krispy Kreme doughnuts or our significant other, we are stuck with just the single word, obliterating differences and qualities."

For my part, since I'm always trying to live in the present, I never considered the idea that we would be long-term partners nor have I ever made any decision about our relationship based on anything other than how I feel about her moment to moment. Certainly some might question why I would want to continue spending time with someone who doesn't love me as much as I love them. There are several reasons:

1. First and foremost, she's a lot of fun to be with, and as I've said before, I'm attracted to the specific wavelength of energy she puts out, and that hasn't changed. We learn a lot from each other and we both enjoy being physically affectionate. That's not something I find often from anybody, so it's a rare gift I'm not willing to throw away.

2. Since we're polyamorous, we are both supportive of long-term, romantically committed, multi-partner relationships, meaning that if either or both of us wanted to pursue a relationship with someone else, we would each be supportive of the other. Our relationship is such that we can talk openly about being attracted to other people, and we know this is not a reflection on our attraction for each other. Since there's no "goal" to our relationship, it's possible that we could remain physically affectionate friends indefinitely, even as other more serious relationships come and go in our lives.

3. After my experience with Agnieszka Prime, I'm really not afraid of being hurt by a partner again. I've been through the worst, and I know how to keep it from happening again. Plus, Polina has always been open and honest about her feelings for me, so there's little chance of having unfulfilled expectations with her. So if I were to abandon our friendship, it would be me acting out of fear, and I don't want to do that. If I did, it would be like saying that I learned nothing from my experience with AP. And as I wrote before, if I go through life trying to avoid getting hurt, I'm going to miss a lot of chances to be happy.

And that's the sum of it, I suppose. I don't believe in throwing the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to relationships - it doesn't have to be all or nothing. Tara and I talk about this all the time - you put one foot in front of the other, take it one day at a time, be good to one another, and all we can do is see where the path takes you. We can't control or predict what's going to happen in the future, so it doesn't make sense to base decisions in the present on a guess about it. All we can do is try to be happy in the moment, and at this moment, my life is happier with Penny in it.

After our long walk, we drove into the city to meet up with her parents and grandparents at the Cinema Village to see a movie called Perestroika. Since Penny's family is Ukrainian and Jewish, this was a very personal film for them, and I enjoyed it a lot myself. I'd describe it as Woody Allen directing a movie based on a book by Milan Kundera. Afterwards I took Penny home while the rest of her family went to Brooklyn to drop off the grandparents before meeting up with us in Staten Island. We had a late supper of her mom's famous cabbage borscht (my first, I believe) and our leftover pasta from lunch.

Penny and I went upstairs and poked around on her Facebook page and other things online until it got so late that I just decided to accept her offer to stay in the guest room so I wouldn't have to drive home in the pouring rain at night. We stayed up past 3 a.m. in her room talking more about her trip to Argentina before I finally retired to the guest bed. I woke up early, got dressed and kissed Penny goodbye, leaving her to catch some extra zzz's while I drove home. It was a very good visit, in so many ways.