The “Open Marriage” Thing
One of many hurtful insults directed toward me was when one of the mothers of my children allegedly accused me of cheating on her. This is alleged because I got this information from one of her “friends” and it is not wise to trust this information. It took me awhile to figure out how this accusation could come about but then reflection brings two possibilities: (one) when I called home late at night from my office at my desk in front of my computer she assumed I was lying all of those times and (two) I thought it would be cute that my female headhunter could speak to us over the speakerphone in the home office. I thought I was being open and inclusive. It turns out that what I meant by “open” was sadly misunderstood.
My ex woman just let her information-poor imagination run wild—just with these tiny events. She never talked to me directly about this. She thought it would be “smart” to perform a pre-emptive strike against me just in case I might be cheating. You don’t want to be made a fool of in front of your girl “friends”—right ladies? Of course, experienced couples know that it was so easy to objectify me and distance herself from me because she was never that close in the first place. This is why I do not feel like a victim in this whole thing. It is my fault—my macho arrogance—that let such a stranger into my life. This is why I can write many, many words about the perils of ‘chasing girls’…
I remember distinctly handing out one of my long-ass lectures about cheating and “open marriage” to this ex woman of mine. Of course, like many readers of this Blog post, she probably assumed I was tangled in a combination of self-centered ignorance, idealism and talking points that seem to make no “logical sense”—and, of course, since I probably smiled at the wrong time—she probably thought I was just playing with her so nothing I say should be taken seriously. The reader here is free to assume that only one person in my two-person conversations represents ‘the voice of reason’—and that person is not me. You go ahead and do that. I’ve collected enough data on you “reasonable” people not to be very sub-prime-mortgage impressed.
Then those ‘meddling kids’ over at Liberator Magazine came out with this right-on-time post: “On Open Marriage: Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis.” These great young people were inspired by the book With Ossie and Ruby: In This Life Together. This bit from the post, a quote from Ruby Dee, jumped out at me:
I call my self lucky in terms of marrying a man who had a great sensitivity and intelligence and who realized that the equations were lopsided. It’s Ossie that taught me about women’s equality. He said—Ruby you’ve got a brain… Love, I think, is one of the most difficult equations that humanity is faced with… Love thy neighbor as thyself. Well, whoever wrote that don’t know some of these neighbors God put down here, huh? I have this spiritual argument with myself. But I think we’re put down here to explore, to understand, and to practice love. Whatever it is that is called love—that has kept us together, and we almost know what that is after 50 years—we almost know what love is. Ossie wanting an open marriage was part of our 52 years… That period there—I don’t know—I guess all couples go through some period of disenchantment or believing that the grass is greener.
I will never dare to speak for all of the reasons why the grass gets greener for supposedly monogamous couples. Two youthful reasons jump out at me as to why this grass smoking happens—the first of them is mired in childish superficial materialism: the ‘male body type inexperience’ and the second comes from classic ‘female vulnerability due to male negligence.’
This may seem “sick” to some heterosexual women but males objectify females. From a “natural order” point of view, this activity is essential to select for youth and beauty because the woman has been ‘selected’ to bear children. When the ‘selected’ woman is not committed to bearing children, then objectifying her to “judge” her by physical appearance is vulgar and unnecessary (“sick”). So I remember—me and my homies—classifying women into certain body types. I can count less than ten of these ‘types’ for my personal collection. By the time I reached 35 years old, I ‘hit’ (or eliminated) almost all of these ‘types’… This pursuit was a revelation of illusions to me instead of a collection of trophies.
Now there are no more ‘types’ of women bodies for my exploration. What can happen to some young men who get married young is that they can get preoccupied with the feeling that they “missed” something by marrying so young—these guys (big babies) start to feel sorry for themselves for being “limited” by monogamy. I am almost certain that Ruby Dee was presented with this package by a young, dumb-ass Ossie Davis—the “open marriage” deal.
The big promise the couple made was to be “private” and “discreet” about their affairs. The way one of my uncles old enough to have lived through the swinging 1970s put it like, “What she does is her business—just don’t bring that shit in my face!” In fact, I am almost certain I told my ex woman this punch line during my long-ass, unmemorable lecture. Now I can see how this historically-accurate joke can be misinterpreted. When I say, don’t bring that shit in my face—I mean don’t have the shit in the first place.
The problem with “open relationships,” in this post-apocalyptic world far from the intimate, life-long communalism of traditional Africa, is that the probability that the swinging shit will be in your face is too high. In fact, what I tried to get one young lady (who is not the mother of one of my three children) to understand is that her multiple boyfriends are, in my eyes, incompetent men. I do not want to share my life with this swinging woman and the direct and indirect effects of her tricycle-riding, punk-ass dudes. Leaks occur in the mufukkin CIA—how can some chick that can barely hold down a job be superior to appointed officials in command of multi-billion-dollar budgets?
The real reason why many contemporary “open relationships” work is because of drugs. I’m not joking and you are probably not laughing. Do the arithmetic: count how many of your “friends” smoke weed. Look at your female population. How many of the weed-smoking ladies buy their grass direct from dealers? When you find that they get their weed from “friends” then scan these friends and find out how many are dudes. Eventually you, dude (or dudette), may discover one dirty little secret in the “how to get girls” self-help industry: girls who like to smoke weed must have some kind of relationship with you when it becomes clear they can get high because of you. It is not always that cut and dry (because weed is different from heroin and some “lucky” girls have a brother or a cousin slanging) but to me (since I do not smoke weed—nor any of the mothers of my last two children) it is that cut and dry. You can have her dude (or dudette).
I have decided not to rid myself of the ideal illuminating what it means to ‘have’ a woman. What does it really mean to ‘have’ a woman? When you know that “part” of the reason why “your” woman is around is because of some money you can make (or some weed you can smoke)—or some childhood memories you can make her forget about—then you really do not ‘have’ that woman. She may stand up in front of audience and declare her allegiance to you but dude… dude… let’s listen to Ruby Dee:
Fifty two years being married, there’s been a lot of overcoming! … There’s been a lot of struggle there. But marriage is everyday. You think you love somebody, but love is an aspiration. Marriage is more than putting up with each other. It’s a growing up together, coming into maturity and seniorhood together. It’s been a journey, a profound learning experience about each other, about men, about women.
It is truly one of the highest honors a human being can receive to be chosen as a part of a person’s plan for mutual self improvement. Again, I cannot go around like a pouting victim when the ego is side-stepped and I do the arithmetic, counting all of the sexy women I know (and my homies know) who actually are powerful enough to take charge of helping themselves for the sake of healing and vitality. The Black women of these are extremely, extremely rare and precious. So the ultimate fantasy for me is to be consciously, formally and explicitly chosen to be a part of such a vibrant woman’s life.
In the mean time, “we” all can “keep it real” by stealing, scraping and scavenging to cobble together a bullshit humanity and barbarian community in an age of 21st century technology. Hey, that rhymes… but I’m serious.