Fob & Foxy Plus 3

I don't think I've ever watched an entire episode of Jon & Kate Plus 8, but I find myself fascinated, along with the rest of America, with the recent(ish) announcement of their separation. In the first place, my heart goes out to both of them and to their kids, because I have an idea of what that's like (from both the parents' and childrens' perspectives). Secondly, it's got me thinking about when Foxy and I made a similar announcement (though to a much smaller audience) a couple years ago. I've also been thinking about our separation because over on A Motley Vision they've been discussing "Abraham's Purgatory," a short story of mine that is so strongly linked to that period of my life.

I'm not sure I have much to say beyond that, except that it's been on my mind, and I'm happy to still be married to FoxyJ, and I'm happy that she and I can own that decision as ours alone and not something anyone else told us to do. I also hope the best for Jon and Kate and their family, whether that means their separation becomes permanent or that they get back together or whatever, and I hope that when you talk abou them--if you care to--that you remember they're real people and deserve real compassion.

Time Heals All Wounds and Scrubs All Unpleasant Memories

Yesterday as I got ready to leave for a campout.

FoxyJ: This will be one of the few times we've spent a night apart since we got married.

This afternoon after I got home.

FoxyJ: Oh. Duh. Remember how we were separated for three months a couple years ago?

Birthday Reflections and Self-Evident Truths

Today was Little Dude's second birthday. We had a nice little family party with balloons, presents, veggie burgers, and a very cool bus-shaped birthday cake that FoxyJ made.

One year ago we celebrated LD's first birthday with yummy food and cupcakes and a few friends. Besides the additional company, the big difference last year was that, even though I helped out with the barbecue, I was technically a guest. Foxy and I had been separated for a couple months at that point, with plans to divorce. For LD's birthday, though, we played the role of happy family, not to fool our friends who were very aware of our current situation, but because the role came rather naturally to us, all things considered.

I have a very distinct memory of sitting on the floor during the party, watching the kids play while Foxy chatted with the adults. I looked around and thought, "This is my home. This is where I'm happy." As far as I can recall, that was the first time since moving out that I really questioned whether being divorced is what I really wanted. I had questioned to the point of obsession whether it was the right decision, but until then I was fairly convinced that it was what I wanted, speaking strictly of selfish motivations.

Wary of making a rash decision I'd regret later, I didn't act right away on that thought. I let it sit for a few weeks and in the meantime paid close attention to how I felt when I was with FoxyJ--we had an arrangement during the separation where we were having family dinners together at least twice a week, and then there were the drop-off and pick-up times on the weekend as well. I was far from miserable in my newfound bachelorhood, enjoying above all the time alone it gave me, but I was surprised to find that I felt even happier when I was with Foxy and the kids. I found that, all questions of morality and religion and responsibility aside, I actually liked the life I'd had and chosen to leave behind.

The next question to answer was whether Foxy was happier with me or without me, and after a bit of trial time she decided she could live without me just fine, but if she had a choice she'd rather not. It's nice when things work out that way.

It's strange now to think about how different things were a year ago. Objectively I recognize that less than a year after reuniting it's premature to make any sweeping conclusions about the longterm success of our marriage, but speaking subjectively and in the moment it's hard to imagine anything other than the us that exists now, to imagine that it was ever in question or that it ever could be. I'm a complete person alone but I'm completer with Foxy and the two of us together with our two children feels to me like a self-evident truth that stands at the center of the universe.

Perhaps this is why I've talked about our marriage here quite a bit less in the last year than I did before that. In the past my talking publicly about our reasons for getting and staying married has led some people to believe that I was opening the topic for public debate. How can I debate truths that are self-evident to me? Thankfully, when it comes to matters that affect only our family, I don't have to. So long as the same truths are self-evident to me and Foxy, we're good.

At any rate, I'm happy to have spent today with my son, my daughter, and with a woman who makes creative cakes, who folds origami boat invitations for our daughter's upcoming going-away party, who writes thoughtful posts on the seemingly miraculous birth of our son and how that fits into a world where similar miracles are denied to others, who answers just about every random trivia question I throw at her (and knows what she's talking about 95% of the time), who gets annoyed with people who ask how I feel about being a "Mr. Mom" but is empathetic enough to understand the cultural norms behind such sexist terminology and judge not the people but the norms, who cooks mostly vegetarian because the meat industry is destroying the environment, who regularly exposes me to cool foreign and classic films that I might never have heard of if not for her, who has now qualified twice to be in Jeopardy!'s contestant pool, and most of all who continues to love me despite my personal shortcomings, my eccentric obsessions and time-consuming hobbies, my inability to express emotions in a healthy way, and my passive-aggressive tendencies. I look forward to celebrating LD's twelfth and eighteenth and forty-ninth birthdays by her side.

Weekly Confession #2

Forgive me, Blogger, for I have sinned. I married my wife for all the wrong reasons. Well, no, that's an overstatement. Several of the reasons for which I married my wife were not good ones. Rather than tell the whole story again, I'll copy and paste the narrative as I frame it in "Getting Out":

So I came home from my mission less sure that marriage and family were in my future. I’m not sure what kind of life I envisioned for myself—a lonely celibacy, I suppose—but for a month or two I’d resigned myself to it.

Here’s where Epiphany #1 comes in. This must’ve been in January, because I’m pretty sure it was before Jessie came home from her mission. I’d attended one of those BYU firesides where they tell you to get married. I pretty much tuned out the entire thing because it didn’t apply to me, but then I got home, sat on my bed, and had a distinct impression that yes, it did apply to me. Yes, I was gay, but that didn’t mean I was excluded from Heavenly Father’s desire for his children to marry and have families.

I thought of a sister missionary that had been in my district for nearly eight months and was coming home soon. I really admired her intelligence and her love of reading, and her complete disregard of whether people thought she was cool or not. She seemed like the type of person I’d like to marry. So I planned it all out. I’d email her when she got home, and we’d build our friendship while she was in Maryland. Then she’d come out to BYU and we’d start dating and then we’d get engaged and then we’d get married.

I think more than anything I liked this plan because it seemed like a Normal Mormon Guy type of thing to do (or at least a Normal BYU Student type of thing—it’s hard to distinguish after being in Utah Valley for so long).

What we have here, basically, is premeditated falling in love and courtship. This is at best creepy and at worst misogynistic. I think the truth lies somewhere between those two poles, personally, but since I'm the one confessing my sins and you're the one absolving them, I'll let you be the judge of that. I have acknowledged this creepiness before. In the paragraph immediately following the above, in fact:

To my surprise, the following months happened exactly as I’d planned. This is quite disturbing, now that I think about it. It must have disturbed me then, too, because on the morning of the day that we were to mail out the wedding invitations, I was still worried that I was marrying Jessie for the wrong reasons. I didn’t want to marry her just to prove to myself and others that I was normal, or to avoid hurting her feelings, or because it was the right thing to do. I wanted to marry her because I loved her and I wanted to be with her. Which I was pretty sure I did.

Now, I come from a literary school of thought that values subtlety, so when I'm acknowledging a bad quality in myself I generally don't come out and say "and this is a very bad quality, of which I am deeply ashamed and hope to rid myself completely" because I assume my readers are intelligent enough to figure it out. I assume that if I say, for example, "I am a narcissist," that everyone knows I don't mean it as a compliment. It's come to my attention, though, that the subtlety in the above paragraphs has been lost on at least one person, so I'd like to be clear about what I'm confessing to here. Among the possible motivations I had for marrying FoxyJ were:

1. God told me to.
2. In abstract, "she seemed like the type of person I'd like to marry."
3. That was the way I'd planned it.
4. It "seemed like a Normal Mormon Guy type of thing to do."
5. To "prove to myself and others that I was normal."
6. To "avoid hurting her feelings."
7. Because "it was the right thing to do."

Let me be absolutely 100% completely and for totally sure clear: These are all Very Bad Reasons to marry someone. KIDDIES, DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. Yes, even if God told you to marry someone but you're not sure you want to, please take Emily Pearson's advice about "the danger of taking 'every spiritual experience ... at face value" in situations such as these" (as cited in Holly Welker's "Clean Shaven"). If the narrative of "Getting Out," framed as it is in the discourse of personal revelation, seems to excuse the Very Badness of the reasons listed above and makes them seem Not So Very Bad, then I have compounded my sins by representing them as That Which Is Good and True. Which they are not.

I said before that to say that all my reasons for marrying FoxyJ were bad ones is an overstatement, and I feel the need to clarify what I mean, even if doing so detracts from the purpose of confessing my sins. So here are the good reasons I had for marrying FoxyJ, some of which are present in "Getting Out" and some of which are not:

1. "I really admired her intelligence and her love of reading, and her complete disregard of whether people thought she was cool or not."
2. I was "pretty sure" that "I loved her and I wanted to be with her."
3. She had said that she loved me and wanted to marry me.
4. I felt happy when I was with her and could see that being with me made her feel happy.
5. She and I shared many values such as our faith, education, family, liberal politics, and social justice.
   
6. She wanted to marry a traditional Mormon patriarch no more than I wanted to be one. (That is to say, not at all.)
7. Despite the strong feelings I had and knew I would always have for men, I had been surprised over the course of our relationship by how excited I was to be with her--the tingly sensation at first holding her hand, the butterflies before our first awkward kiss, the unignorable arousal we both felt once we finally figured that kissing thing out.
   
8. She was not afraid to talk frankly about sex, to acknowledge that she was nervous and excited about having sex, and to discuss (or joke about, as the case may be) the logistics of our future sexual relationship. (One of the funnier discussions we had was about whether it's okay to have sex on the Sabbath. Or when you're fasting.)
   
9. One of my happiest memories is driving home from a date with her and putting a mixtape she had made into my sister's car stereo. The first song was Lauryn Hill's cover of "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You." I felt giddy all over and almost cried at the realization that this very mature college student, this incredible person with whom I'd had so many intellectually stimulating conversations, would do something so teenage-romantic as making me a mixtape to say she was in love with me. And she'd used a Lauryn Hill song!
10. Marrying her meant I wouldn't have to buy my own copy of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.

So there. I've confessed the Very Badness of some of my reasons for marrying FoxyJ, as well as the complexity introduced into the issue by the good reasons I also had. So what penance can I do to make up for these sins? How do I right this wrong?

I decided earlier this year that the bad reasons outweighed the good--it's easy when one wants to focus on the bad to ignore the good, or vice versa--and that the best way to make this right for me, for FoxyJ, and for our children was to divorce and start over. I would have a man who loved me, Foxy would have a man who loved her (the way that only a straight man could), and our children would have not only two parents who loved them but the added bonus of two stepfathers who would love them just as much. The problem with this plan was not that divorce is inherently bad or even that divorce is an inherently bad option for us. I believe that for the three months we were separated we did an exceptionally good job of co-parenting and relating to each other respectfully as formerly married friends--this is much more to Foxy's credit than to mine, as it is easy to be nice to the person you have wronged but not so easy to be nice to the person who has wronged you. The problem with this attempt at penance, see, is that just like in the case of my original sins I was doing something Very Very Bad: I was deciding for myself what was best for us. Divorce was never Foxy's idea; it was all me.

After realizing this grave error, acknowledging the complexity of my reasons for marrying her and the fact that I did indeed still enjoy spending my life with her, I regrouped with Foxy in order to come up with a plan together. We talked more honestly than we had ever before about the problems in our relationship. We discussed frankly what each of us would need to sacrifice in order to make this marriage work, and whether the benefits of the marriage would make it worth it for each of us. We considered together all the less-than-noble motivations that might underlie our mutual desire to reunite--chief among these questionable motivations was the financial stability our continued marriage would provide for the duration of my master's program and her doctorate. Ultimately we decided together that we had enough genuinely good reasons to stay together and enough faith in our ability to work through the difficulties that it was worth another shot. I am happy with that decision, and happy most of all that we made it together.

As penance for my past sins, then, I propose the following:

1. I will continue to take intuition (what I once would have called God speaking to me) into account when making choices, but I will not do so at the expense of other factors and certainly not at the expense of other people.
2. I will do my best to love FoxyJ not as an abstract idea of the type of person I'd like to marry, but as a real human being.
3. I will not adhere strictly to plans I have made when those plans involve the lives of other people; rather, I will include those people in the making and evaluating of such plans.
4. I will not do anything because it's the Normal Mormon Guy thing to do. At this point in my life, I think that goes without saying. In addition, I will not do anything simply because it's not the Normal Mormon Guy thing to do, or because it's the Normal Agnostic thing to do, or any such stupid reason.
5. I'm going to stop trying to prove to myself and others that I'm normal, or that I'm anything. This one's a bit harder, because I tend to put a lot of energy into proving all sorts of things about myself, and really I just need to get over it. I'll do my best.
6. I will avoid hurting Foxy's feelings, but not by thinking only of what I think she needs, but by listening to what her feelings really are and working with her to honestly address those feelings.
7. I will not do things because they are the right thing to do. Rather, I will do things because I and others affected agree that those are the best things for everyone's best interest. This is a subtle difference, I know, but the important thing here is thinking through the consequences of choices I make and not objectifying others in that process.

I am sorry for these and for many other sins of my past and present life. I hope that through my penance and FoxyJ's continued Foxy-ness we can make the next six years of our marriage even better than the first six years have been.

Transorientation

Modern gender theory distinguishes between sex and gender, defining the former as "the physiological, functional, and psychological differences that distinguish the female and the male," and the latter as "sexual identity, especially in relation to society or culture." Sex, in other words, is something you're born with, while gender is a lot more mutable. We refer to people whose gender identity (man or woman) is not the one traditionally associated with their sex (male or female) as transgendered.

I would propose, and I'm not the first to do so, that there is a similar relationship between sexual orientation and sexual identity. Like sex, orientation--what sex or gender you are attracted to--is something you're born with; you're heterosexual, homosexual, or whatever, and that's unlikely to change, short of some kind of as-yet-unknown orientation reassignment surgery. Sexual identity, on the other hand, is more like gender in that there are many ways to express one's sexuality and these do not necessarily correspond to one's orientation. We might call an individual who is born homosexual but for whatever reasons identifies as straight (or, for that matter, one who is born heterosexual but identifies as gay or lesbian) transoriented or transorientational (I'm undecided on which term I like better).

I have never had any question about my gender identity. I was born male and I identify as a man. I have spent much of my life, though, figuring out my sexual identity. For many years I did not call myself gay because of the LDS Church's counsel that people who experience same-sex attraction should not identify themselves by those feelings. Then a few years ago, even though I was still actively LDS and married to a woman, I began to call myself--both in private and in public--gay. The words "I am gay," this self-identifying speech act, relieved me of years of built-up pressure from refusing to acknowledge this important aspect of my identity. Some people questioned the prudence of putting so much energy into building a gay identity while trying to maintain a straight marriage, while others questioned my right to call myself gay when in fact my actions and lifestyle were completely straight, but I insisted that the word could mean whatever I wanted it to, and when I called myself gay I meant that I was attracted to men, nothing more, nothing less.

I still maintain that language means whatever the speaker intends it to mean (or, conversely, whatever the listener understands it to mean), but in the past month as I've rededicated myself to a marriage to a partner who happens to be a woman, I've begun to question the value of identifying myself as gay. There is no doubt that my inborn orientation is homosexual--I am sexually aroused by men. But the life I live, for all intents and purposes, is straight--the only romantic or sexual partner I've ever had or intend to have is a woman. Still, I'm not comfortable calling myself straight. Beyond the fact that I'm attracted to people who have a certain kind of reproductive organs, I feel that much of my inner life, my thoughts, and the way I experience the world are more like those of a gay man than those of a straight man. I have found, for example, that I tend to relate better to gay men than to straight men (with some notable exceptions).

One of the strongest arguments against homosexual people being in straight marriages is that we aren't being authentic to our true selves. Many, indeed, find the sacrifice of authenticity too much to make the marriage worth it. To be clear, I'm not staying married because I'm stronger or nobler than anyone else, or for that matter, because I'm less authentic; I'm staying married because I realized that for me, the sacrifice of giving up the marriage was greater than the sacrifice of giving up what I might have had otherwise. I believe FoxyJ feels similarly about the sacrifices she's required to make to stay in the marriage versus the sacrifices she'd have to make to end the marriage. Other people consider the same options and come to different conclusions. Every individual has his or her own values, priorities, and life situation; I can only act according to my own. La Agrado, a transvestite character in Pedro Almodovar's All About My Mother speaks beautifully of the more literal cost she's paid to become a woman: "Well, as I was saying, it costs a lot to be authentic, ma'am. And one can't be stingy with these things because you are more authentic the more you resemble what you've dreamed of being."

My motivations for choosing a straight life have been called into question before because by birth I am a member of an underprivileged class and I am trying to pass, as it were, for a member of the privileged class. Perhaps it is for this same reason that while society tends to view male-born women as amusing, female-born men tend to be seen as threatening. Rest assured, my class-conscious friends, I have no interest in being part of a privileged class; I'm much too enamored of the idea of Mr. Fob the Oppressed. This is, to be honest, one of the less-than-noble reasons I cling to the label gay. What it comes down to, though, is that the person I'm in love with, am married to, and want to be married to is a woman.

Perhaps more than anything, I feel that to call myself straight without any qualifiers would be to pretend I'm something I'm not, to ignore the fact that, like a male-born transsexual in the process of becoming a woman, I'm a work in progress. So I won't call myself straight, but I'm not sure gay accurately describes me either. I'll try transoriented on for size and see how it fits.

The Antepenultimate Chapter of Superfolks

A note on authorship: The bulk of this post is not written by me; it was written by Robert Mayer in 1977.

A note on aboutness: It is about me.

A note on copyright: I suspect that reprinting an entire chapter of a novel on my blog does not fall under fair use. I hope Mr. Mayer will forgive me.

A note on objectionable content: The following passage contains at least one crude metaphor and at least two offensive names of planets.

A note on spoilers: If you plan on reading Superfolks and don't want to ruin the mystery of the plot, you may want to stop reading now. By which I mean...

now.

A note on fictional context: Superfolks, as I've mentioned before, is about David Brinkley, who was once the world's greatest superhero, but has now been retired for the past eight years and living a suburban life with his currently-pregnant wife and their two children. Though his powers have been waning for years, Brinkley goes back into action to combat riots and crime sprees that prove to be part of a larger conspiracy. This conspiracy, as it turns out, stretches back over a decade and its target is Brinkley himself: Brinkley discovers that the reason his powers have faded is that his enemies have managed to lace the infrastructure of modern civilization--the water in our faucets, the air in our air conditioners, the metal that holds up our buildings--with Cronkite, the one substance that can kill him. Even without his powers, though, he manages to make it out to space, where, free of the deadly Cronkite, he feels his superhuman strength return.

A note on personal context: I read this chapter about a month ago, after I'd learned that the Cronkite that had been slowly killing me for years was inseparable from the planet I'd been living on, and I'd managed to escape that planet's gravitational pull. Now I pondered excitedly the universe of opportunity that lay before me. Like Brinkley, though, I now hovered in space above Earth, an umbilical cord holding me in place, awaiting a sign while aware that none would come, knowing I couldn't hover in place much longer.

The smile was gone. Brinkley was alone in space. More alone than he had ever been.

He looked down at Earth, glowing like a blue-green marble far below him. The familiar emerald and turquoise swirls were as inviting as a freshly made bed. He wanted nothing more than to return there; his home. To sleep a good, long sleep; without dreams.

Tears began to well behind his eyes. It was not fitting for a superman to cry. But there it was. The planet Earth below a blue-green dollop of poison, infested with Cronkite; for which there was no antidote. If he returned there, it was unlikely he could ever again escape its atmosphere. He would be weak, barely able to fly. And would grow weaker day by day, month by month; until in a year, or five, or ten--there was no way to say exactly--he would die.

He pulled off his mask, to wipe away tears that had filtered beneath it. And put it on again. Pamela was there on Earth; and Allison; and Jennifer. Perhaps even a new baby now. Would he ever see it? And how could he explain?

Earth was his home, the only home he had known. Chosen for him by his parents, Archie and Edith, in the last days of Cronk. Chosen not even by them, but by higher powers; by the Lord Gods Nietzsche and Namath, who guided their hand. He had come to feel almost more Earthling than Cronker; albeit a bit special.

And now?

The choices were spread before him, invitingly, like the spread legs of beauties; out there, in the distant galaxies. The six other planets that harbored human life. He could take up residence on any of them, and resume his role as a superhero, unhindered by Cronkite, cheered and honored by the populace. He could start a new life, a new family. He could live through eternity, never aging, doing his good works.

He could go to the planet Nudj, land of the long-stemmed rain. Or Bazoom, where strange myths grew on trees. Or Wop, or Kike, or Nigger, or Elvis.

Or he didn't have to commit himself to any one. He could travel among them, stopping now here, now there--an itinerant hero, beloved throughout the universe. A girl in every port. It wouldn't be a bad life. Battling monsters, subduing criminals--the life he had been created for. Maybe he would take up the guitar.

There was no other choice. That's what he must do.

And yet, down on Earth, there was Pamela. Allison. Jennifer.

They were his. They needed him.

It's not so, he told himself. Suppose he had died during this long night of combat? Life would go on for them. Pamela would marry again. The children would grow, would become independent. It might even be better for them.

. . . While far out in the universe, their father would become a legend, his name synonymous with all that is good and brave and true . . .

There was no other choice. Here from the perspective of the cosmos he could face without flinching the accumulated sadness of his recent life on Earth. The times each day when there would be a weight in his chest that would move up back of his eyes, until he wanted to lie down in private and cry himself to sleep, for no reason at all. That was the hell of it. For no reason at all. He would look around and see a refrigerator bulging with food, a wife he loved who loved him in return, two little girls growing up bright and true, a job he could keep for the rest of his life if he wanted, that would take care of all the bills--he would see all this and still he would want to cry; would awaken in the middle of the night sometimes and stare at the ceiling in the dark, at the ghostly circle of light cast by a street lamp, and he would recall the world-saving exploits of his youth as if they had been performed by a stranger. He knew he could not come close to performing them now, and would question whether he ever really had. Either way his wish would be the same. He would wish he could fall asleep again and never awaken.

Each time, of course, he would not fall asleep till the gray of dawn burned out the lamplit circle. Then he would be awakened by Pamela and the children stirring. Light would be knifing in beneath the shade, or a new winter snow would be falling, and his despair of the dark night would burrow deep beyond reach into his soul, whitewashed over by the mechanics of the day--till without warning in midafternoon at work it would peep out again like a gopher, and he would walk to the water fountain or down the hall until it passed.

Each time he would review the litany of his blessings. And each time the same answer screamed inside him: It was not enough.

But he didn't know what would be enough. What would satisfy him. What would fill the emptiness.

He had no complaints. Except . . . everything.

Sometimes he thought they should move from Middleville. He should quit his job, and they should go to Savannah, or Missoula, or Santa Fe. Someplace with a pretty name and a pretty view, where the beauty of nature would swallow up human grief, and paint it o'er with unity, oneness, peace.

Other times he knew it would do no good. He was a Cronker amid Earthlings, and always would be. No one would ever know him. He would never know another person. He was an alien, alone in the universe. It was his fate. Cursing it made his fate neither better nor worse.

Now that he knew the cause of his physical weakness--the spread of Cronkite through the arteries of civilization--he knew that moving to another town, another country, would make little real difference. Cronkite was everywhere. The days when he could ever again have a sense of mission . . . down there . . . were gone.

And yet he was not streaking away from Earth, away into the stratosphere, into a new superlife. He was hovering in place; looking down at the emerald-turquoise swirls; wistfully.

He felt like a balloon, flying high, but still held down by a string; an umbilical cord; a cord he would have to cut.

The cord of love.

Above waited a physical--even a spiritual--rebirth. A challenging new career. A full new life.

Below was his family. Three human beings. Perhaps, at this moment, four.

He remembered a small incident from a picnic the previous summer. They had gone to Mystic Seaport to see the old sailing ships, and afterward he had tumbled in the grass with the girls while Pamela grilled hamburgers. An orange-breasted robin hopped near them, and then lit for a distant treetop. Jennifer, her small arms draped loosely around his neck, had said, "Daddy, wouldn't it be nice to fly like a bird?" He had replied that he imagined it would be very nice indeed. But that if people could fly, then birds would no longer be special.

He hadn't thought the answer would satisfy her; but it had.

Now, alone in space, hovering, he found himself waiting for a similar answer himself. Some sign. Some revelation. Knowing there would be none.

Finally, unable to hover in place any longer, he shed his paralysis with a wrenching motion. He kicked his legs, like a swimmer; and filled his lungs with the pure heady ozone of free will.

He thought Good Thoughts; a ritual; as if crossing himself.

And soared off into space.

Toward the North Star he streaked; and circled it, and continued on beyond. Through the Milky Way; out toward the scattered stars of the distant galaxies, twinkling pure silver in the blue of eternity.

He passed the golden door, through which he had blundered earlier. And continued soaring outward; till he neared the invisible wall.

He paused there, looking down, the entire universe spread before him, gems in a blue-gold setting, exquisite, perfect; creation of the Original Jeweler, the Master Craftsman who had preceded all the others; whom subsequent gods had not been able to match.

He filled himself with the beauty of it all, like a parched wanderer prone beside a stream. The symmetry, the precision. His blood felt purified, his limbs invigorated. The exhaustion of the night's battles had vanished. He felt as powerful as he had ever been.

He switched on his supersight. He scanned the distant universe, until his eyes picked out the tiny blue-green marble, adrift like all the others, yellow, or brown, or red; planets of every color.

Even now he smiled at the sight of it.

Slowly, he flew to the left. To the place in space where Cronk had once been. It was a vacuum now. A black hole. He hovered there, solemn. As if he were visiting a grave. For one last time.

Then he flew on, without tears.

Down and down he flew; his eyes not roaming now; looking neither left nor right; determined not to see the myriad suns, the stars, rushing by. His eyes fixed, unwavering, on his destination. On the blue-green marble growing ever larger below him.

Addendum (A Fifth List)

Reasons FoxyJ and I Have Decided to Keep Working on This Marriage Thing

1. Because we want to.
   

Impulse

In the mid-90s one of my favorite comics was Impulse by Mark Waid and Humberto Ramos. The series starred a teenaged superhero with superspeed who was known for being impulsive--perhaps not the best character trait for someone who can act in an instant on a whim to buy Chinese food... in China. This is, of course, what drove the humor of the book.

I am generally not a very impulsive person, at least not in my day-to-day life. If it's not in my plan for the day, it's generally too much trouble. Maybe I'll fit that spontaneous trip to the park in next week.

When it comes to major life decisions, though--schooling, career, marriage, children--I can be pretty impulsive. I can honestly say that I don't regret any major life decisions I've made, but I often think back on how quickly I've gone from one plan to another, like when I switched from the English PhD track to the MLIS track. Granted, I had a bit of external motivation for that change in the form of two rejections, but still I made the mental hop from one camp to the other rather quickly, considering that we're talking about what I'll be doing for the rest of my life here. Similarly, both times Foxy and I decided to get pregnant, the decision came in the form of an epiphany of sorts after a period of not wanting to have a(nother) child. Both times we... ahem... acted on the epiphany pretty immediately (though if I recall correctly, with Little Dude it took us a month or two before we succeeded).

Again, I don't regret these impulsive decisions. I don't regret pursuing an MLIS instead of a PhD, and I certainly don't regret either of our children. Nor, for that matter, do I regret the decisions to marry or to separate, though both were made at least a little impulsively. Therapist says that he always knows what the right decision is--the thing is he usually doesn't know until after the fact. The right decision, you see, is always the one you've made. That doesn't mean that the next time you're faced with similar options the right decision will be the same one; it means only that the decisions you've already made are the only ones that could have led to the present reality of your life, and it's fruitless to say that reality is "wrong."

With that in mind--the fact that there's no point in questioning past decisions except in so far as what you learn from the questioning might inform future decisions--yesterday Therapist and I talked a bit about my propensity to make major decisions on impulse. What it comes down to, we concluded, is that I tend to get excited about new ideas and want to test them out NOW. While some people live in the past, I live in the future, always anxious to make whatever new future I've envisioned happen ASAP. This isn't a bad thing, per se, but it's a good idea for me to be aware of it and temper my actions accordingly, particularly when other people are involved.

As it turns out, Impulse eventually learned to temper his impulsiveness, at which point he changed his name to Kid Flash. Then last year he grew up and started calling himself Flash. And then last week he died.

Take from that whatever moral you want.

Hope Returns: A Midweek Fobsvithe

I blogged a couple months ago about the death of my optimism. I should have known myself well enough to recognize that like Jesus, Superman, and most soap opera characters, my optimism would not stay dead for long. It's too intrinsic a part of who I am. Next to me, Little Orphan Annie is jaded.

I've said before that I was unhappy in my marriage, but this is inaccurate. I was happy much of the time; the unease I felt was not a lack of happiness but a lack of peace. I was not at peace with who I was and where I was at in life because I couldn't accept the reality of my life. When we don't accept the present reality we fight it, and it's hard to be at peace when you're fighting reality. (It's also hard to win that particular battle.)

Over the last few months I've gained a sense of peace, not so much because of my change in life circumstances as because of a change in perspective that came through help from Therapist, through some spiritual experiences I've had, and through my mind's natural propensity to find wholeness. Therapist says that it's the nature of the human mind to heal itself if we just let it, and I tend to agree with him. This healthy state of mind and the peace that comes with it are not dependent on any external conditions. Over the past couple weeks I've been struggling with some very difficult questions about who I am and what I want out of life, the kind of questions that not too long ago led me to an anxiety attack, and in the midst of all this I've been calmer and more content with my present life--unanswered questions and all--than I had been in a long time. With this newfound peace has come a renewed sense of optimism, hope, and faith.

In religious contexts hope and faith are often lumped together, and I see why--the two often work together hand in hand. I have hope for FoxyJ's future because I have faith in her ability to do hard things, and finding peace when life throws huge obstacles in your way is one of the hardest things to do. I have hope for our children's future because I have faith in their resilience and in Foxy's and my love for them. I have hope for my future because I have faith in my ability to find peace regardless of my life circumstances. This faith is not based in wishful thinking, but in experience. I know that I and the people I care about (and even the people I don't care about) will be just fine, no matter what happens, because that has been my experience in life thus far.

So if you've come here looking for angst and suffering, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. It's all flowers and sunshine here, baby. And avocados. Lots of avocados.

Oh, and by the way

The antepenultimate chapter of Superfolks holds the key to the universe.

Cushions on the Floor

For the first few years after my parents divorced and until my father moved to the mainland when I was eight or so, my siblings and I spent about every other weekend and a good chunk of our summers at his house. My memories of this time are brief and scattered: eating out more often than we did with my mom; being dared by my stepbrother to poke a whole in the water bed, then being yelled at by him for actually doing it; going to Castle Park to ride the bumper cars and water slides; being frustrated because my stepmother didn't have a chart on an index card for me to follow when setting the table, like my mom did; and distributing the couch cushions around the living room floor, then pretending they were rocks and the carpet was lava as we hopped from one end to the other.

Apart from never feeling too comfortable around my stepmother and stepbrother (I think I liked my stepsister, though), I don't remember being particularly bothered at that young age by the fact that my parents were divorced. It was not until I began to approach adolescence that I concluded, like many tweens and teens, that my life was Absolutely Horrible and The Worst Ever, and decided The Divorce was responsible for all my misery. Sadly, I didn't begin to grow out of this phase until I went to college, and I didn't really come to terms with my parents' divorce until my early twenties, some time after I was married. I eventually got to the point where I no longer feel the need to call my parents' divorce bad or good--it simply is--but it took me a long time to get there.

This evening as I was making dinner, S-Boogie scattered the couch cushions across my living room floor and hopped from one to the other while Little Dude followed on hands and knees. I'm generally disturbed by parallels between my parents' divorce and mine--for instance the fact that S-Boogie is just a year younger than I was--but tonight I was not bothered by the strong visual reminder of summer days spent cushion-hopping at my dad's house, perhaps because it's a happy memory. When I look into my children's future and see my own past, I remind myself first that the journey to peace doesn't have to be so painful for them, and second, that if my children are going to hate me when they're teenagers because that's what teenagers do, there's really nothing I can do about it. Like so many things in life, the only person I can control is me. All I can do is love them, be the best father I can, and hope for the best.

Reconnected

After a few days without, I have an internet connection again. I'm in my new apartment, which is filled with furniture provided by the landlord, housewares and supplies provided by the thrift stores of Seattle, and all the stuff that FoxyJ and I decided belongs to me, which Tolkien Boy and I managed to fit into Simon and the Fobmobile on Monday night. Foxy, S-Boogie, and Little Dude came over for dinner tonight. The kids are going to come again on Friday and stay until Sunday morning, which for the near future at least will be the weekly routine. I'm excited to spend a couple days with them and happy that my schedule and Foxy permit me to do so. I'm also glad that Foxy will get a couple days off every week, as I know taking care of the kids by herself all day every day is a lot. And by "a lot" I mean a lot.

My goal tonight is to do the dishes, get a few more things unpacked, do my homework, and get in bed at a reasonable time. In order to do that, I need to stop celebrating the reinstatement of my internet connection and get off this chair.

Which I am going to do... right... now.

Hope Was Here

Besides us, I know of another mixed-orientation couple that is divorcing, and another that is separating. A good friend of mine is breaking up with his boyfriend of over two years. I might conclude that gay people are not equipped to be in relationships of any sort, but another close friend of mine, a straight man in a long-term straight relationship, is also breaking up with his girlfriend.

When I look into my future I would like to see myself in a happy long-term relationship, but I see a lot of things that scare me. I see a lot of gay men who (a) aren't interested in long-term relationships, (b) I wouldn't want to be with, (c) wouldn't want to be with me, or (d) some combination of the above. I see the Pandora's box I'm opening by accepting the premise that commitments can be broken, by acknowledging that divorce is possible. I fear this will make future commitments that much more difficult to keep, that much more difficult to trust they will be kept.

I would like to think that FoxyJ has better chances than I, being that Mormons are almost inherently interested in committed relationships. I wonder how many good Mormon men are available, though, and how many of them can even pretend to be in her intellectual ballpark (all I've ever done is pretend, and for the most part it's worked). Part of this concern is selfish, of course, because I don't want to be responsible for her being alone for the rest of her life, but when I allow myself to see past my narcissism I really am concerned for her happiness.

Last year when I was applying for job after job I came up with the following catch phrase to describe my greatest strength: "I am optimistic enough to believe anything is possible, and stubborn enough to make it so." Problems would surely arise, I acknowledged, but I would deal with them as I had always done. I liked seeing myself this way. I'm afraid I'm losing that naive optimism, though.

There are some things I cannot do, some things that no amount of optimism or stubbornness can control. I can choose to stay married, but I cannot choose the consequences of that decision--I cannot force myself to be happy by telling myself and everyone else how happy I am and I cannot make FoxyJ happy with a relationship from which I am emotionally withdrawn because I don't want her to see how unhappy I am. On the other hand, I cannot choose the consequences of divorce.

I would like to end this post with my usual And that's why I don't really suck and you don't suck and let's all hug, or at least something along the lines of I may not be as naive as I once was, but that doesn't mean I have to give up hope, but honestly I don't see a lot of hope lately.

The Divorce Thus Far, From S-Boogie's Perspective

They say that kids perceive things that adults might not notice, and these things tend to affect them. For the past month or so, things have been a little tense here in the Fob household, and I think S-Boogie has noticed.

There is no screaming at each other, no throwing of household objects (except once, long after the kids were in bed, and it was done very courteously, out the patio door so as not to make noise or hurt anyone), and really very little arguing. Jokes are made, games are played, and family trips to the store or library are as frequent as ever. Mealtime has been unusually quiet, as Daddy wonders how upset Mommy is with him at the moment but doesn't ask because he doesn't want to have that conversation in front of the children. Both Mommy and Daddy are a bit on edge, and Daddy in particular completely abandons his Lenten vow to not yell at his children, a fact he is not particularly proud of.

Four weeks ago today, the Fob family loads up the car and heads out on a trip. As they are leaving, Daddy tells S-Boogie to say goodbye to their apartment, as she might not see it again. She cheerily says bye-bye and talks about how they'll find a new home in Utah and a moving truck will come and bring all their stuff. Several days of travel ensue, spending long hours in the car, one night in a hotel, four nights at the Thteeds, and another night in a hotel.

First sign of distress: S-Boogie is excited to arrive in Utah and stay at Auntie Lika's house. That night, though, the Fob family is headed to a party at editorgirl's house. Daddy reminds her that editorgirl's house is where S-Boogie spent the night when Little Dude was born. "No," S-Boogie breaks down and cries, "I don't want to sleep at editorgirl's house. I want to sleep at Lika's!" Daddy explains that they are just going to editorgirl's for a party, and they will return to Lika's to sleep. S-Boogie has fun at the party, but at 8:30 declares that she is "very very tired" and wants to go home, which is highly unusual for her.

Things settle down a bit now that the Fob family is at Lika's house for a while. That weekend Mommy leaves with Little Dude and Grandma and Grandpa to attend a funeral in Wyoming while S-Boogie stays at Lika's with Daddy. The next day Daddy leaves on an airplane while S-Boogie goes to Auntie Marshmallow's house to spend the night with Cousin Baninga. This doesn't seem to bother S-Boogie, as she loves her cousin and has spent many nights there before. The next day Mommy picks S-Boogie up and they return to Auntie Lika's.

Second sign of distress: After several days, S-Boogie starts talking about how she misses Daddy. Occasionally, she cries. She talks with him on the phone, but that's not quite the same. For the first time in a couple months, S-Boogie has an accident. And then another. And another. And another, all within a couple days. Mommy buys Pull-Ups for nighttime and spends a day of one-on-one time with S-Boogie while Little Dude hangs out with Lika. This seems to help.

Daddy returns and everything appears to be okay. Mommy explains that we will be returning to our Seattle home, after all. We load up the car and hit the road again. Another two days of traveling and another night in a hotel. Finally, we are back home.

Back home, though, the tension seems higher than before. After two weeks of separation, the divorce is more of a reality and the jokes and casual conversation are sparser. Daddy is more keenly aware of the pain he's causing everyone and what he is giving up, and Mommy is stressed about finding a job. Mommy is still a little on edge and Daddy gets angry at S-Boogie about the stupidest things. Daddy is sleeping in the living room.

Third sign of distress: Yesterday while playing on the slide, S-Boogie has another accident. Daddy's assurances that it's okay, that even grown-ups have accidents sometimes, don't alleviate her trauma at having wet her pants again. Then again, at 4 this morning, S-Boogie wakes up with wet jammies and a wet bed.

Sigh. If regression in potty training is the extent of S-Boogie's problems we'll consider ourselves blessed, but the problem is that wetting her pants is most likely an outward sign of much worse things going on inside.

My Marriage, Oversimplified in Four Lists

Reasons I Married FoxyJ

1. She is an amazing person. I loved her, I enjoyed spending time with her, I wanted to share my life with her.
   
2. I believed--most of the time, at least--in the LDS Church, which teaches that homosexual relationships are sinful. As far as I was concerned, marrying a woman was my only option, and I could not imagine being happily married to any woman besides FoxyJ.
   
3. When I considered ending the engagement because I was unsure if I could commit to the marriage, I couldn't bear the thought of hurting FoxyJ.
4. I prayed about it and felt that getting married was the right thing to do.

Reasons I Stayed Married for Five Years Despite Recurring Doubts

1. She is an amazing person. I loved her, I enjoyed spending time with her, I wanted to share my life with her.
2. Even when I no longer believed in the LDS Church, I believed in the commitment I'd made to her. A change in religion does not automatically absolve one of responsibility to the promises one made while under the influence of that religion.
3. When I considered ending the marriage, I couldn't bear the thought of hurting FoxyJ, and later S-Boogie, and later Little Dude.
4. I prayed about it and felt that staying married was the right thing to do.

Reasons I Have Chosen to End the Marriage

1. She is an amazing person. I love her, I enjoy spending time with her, I would like to share my life with her, but as much as all those things are true they don't take away from the constant desire to share my life with a man or the emptiness I've felt for years. Despite frequent moments of joy, overall I was unhappy with my life. My unhappiness, as much as I tried to mask it, hurt FoxyJ.
2. Once I no longer believed in the LDS Church and the option of a homosexual relationship became at least theoretically possible, it became increasingly difficult for me to convince myself that I could be happy without pursuing that option. I spent more time convincing myself that I should stay married than I did simply being married, even before I left the LDS faith.
   
3. When I considered ending the marriage, I couldn't bear the thought of hurting FoxyJ, S-Boogie, and Little Dude, but nor could I bear the thought of hurting them over the coming years as I continued in the pattern of silent discontent, expressed doubt, and guilt-induced recommitment to stay. Looking into the future, it became clear to me that the marriage was not sustainable, and as much as it hurts everyone now, divorce would only hurt more after we have invested even more of our lives into the marriage and the children are older.
4. I will not say that I prayed about it and felt that divorce was the right thing to do. I will not blame God for this decision--the responsibility is mine. Choosing to get married and later stay married not because I really wanted to but because it was the right thing to do did not lead to my happiness or to FoxyJ's. I will say, though, that I have prayed about this decision a lot, and I feel at peace with it.
   

Reasons Ending the Marriage Hurts

1. She is an amazing person. If you have any doubts, consider the fact that she and I took a week-long road trip together after the plans for divorce had been set in motion, after I had hurt her so profoundly. We visited family and friends--some who knew and some who didn't--and we had a lot of fun together. FoxyJ has every reason to be angry at me, and I'm sure she is to some degree or another (depending on the day, I imagine), but she treats me with the same love and concern that she always has.
   
2. In doing this I am making a significant break from the LDS faith I grew up with and that many of the people I love still hold. I am also breaking a serious commitment I made to someone I love dearly, and I fear the consequences for everyone affected by this decision.
3. I cannot bear the thought of hurting FoxyJ, S-Boogie, or Little Dude, and yet here I am doing it. I will do everything I can to ease that pain and especially to ensure that my children always know that they have two parents who love them, but I do not fool myself into believing that anything I do will make this completely right for them.
4. The peace I mentioned above has come only after a lot of internal anguish and frustration. I have felt angry at myself for the decisions I've made, angry at the LDS Church for the role it's played in my decisions, and angry at God by association. My relationship with the Church is best left alone for now, I think, and I'm at peace with it to that extent, but healing my self-image and my relationship with God is a work in progress and I imagine it will be for some time.

A note on comments:

You may notice that I've removed the option of commenting anonymously. If you're going to comment, I want to know at least your chosen pseudonym.

Comments expressing empathy, love, kindness, encouragement, or anything along those lines are welcome.

Comments expressing judgment, contempt, mockery, self-righteousness, or anything along those lines are not welcome. As FoxyJ said this morning, the decision has been made. You will not succeed in convincing me to change my mind. You will not succeed in proving to anyone that you are a better person than I. You will not succeed in showing the world what a clever person you are. You will only succeed in hurting me, and if your intention is to hurt people then perhaps you should stop for a moment and ask yourself why no one likes to talk to you at parties. I will not delete comments that hurt me because by that point the damage will have been done. I will delete comments that may potentially hurt FoxyJ or our children.

And, lest I end on that note, thank you to all the people who have already shown love and support and an advance thank you to all who will.