I especially like the line about bars opening at the first sign of snow.

As far as that ‘click,’ yep. Happens only rarely, but it does happen.

That said, I would never have the patience to teach…

Yeah, I’m likin’ the Friday poems, too. Slowly, slowly, I’m starting to pay attention again.

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

***
I like your Friday poems.

I also know a fair number of het and hom couples where each person wants only to be with the other. Monogamy is possible, for those who want it.

But not everyone wants this—which is fine, as long as they admit this to themselves and their partners. The trouble begins when they do neither.

As for the Europeans, I don’t know that they are more grown up (Berlusconi, anyone?). More to the point, I don’t know that the ‘men cheat’ notion isn’t simply a patriarchal holdover from the times when women had damned few options in life. Today, do women accept this, or are they resigned, because they (still) think there are few options (i.e., there’s little social or legal support for women who toss cheating husbands)? Furthermore, are the women afforded the same non-monogamous opportunities as men? Are they punished by divorce or custody laws or asymmetrically-judgmental social norms if they step out?

I agree, C., that the Andy-Gibb-ish ‘I just want to be your everything’ haze surrounding the allegedly ideal relationship is just so much hothouse juvenalia. But the pressure to BE a girlfriend/partner/wife is just so goddamned great that even those of us who should know better end up become infected with the ‘be perfect’ worm.

We’ve talked before that one of the nice things about being in New York is that you can be single, and know other single people, and have that state of being be normal. Doesn’t mean the infection isn’t worming its way through us, however, such that we use our satisfaction w/singleness as way to avoid disinfecting ourselves.

Or at least, it doesn’t mean the infection isn’t worming its way through me. . . .

Meh, what do I know? I’m just a neanderthal who only thinks with his genitalia.