Veneers

When I first entered this world of blogs I found myself surrounded by sex bloggers, young married couples with hormones beyond my dreams. A good group and exciting to read (and the pictures were quite okay), but not what I had come to this particular world to find. So after a post or two I prepared my farewell. Then through the magic of Google I found Mark’s blog Defending the Raven: land of a married bi-sexual and, as they say, the rest is history.

Over the ensuing ten months Mark and I have had an interesting relationship. We read each others work though by no means religiously. We are strangely related: he is the “boyfriend” of my “sister”, a stretch to some but quite real to us. The thing is that I always perceived Mark and I to be in different corners of our small community: me with the married with children crowd and Mark in the footloose and fancy free corner.

I confess: I was always a little jealous of Mark’s story, a wife, both understanding and bi herself, threesomes with other men – the years I spent dreaming of that happening. What more could a man ask and really, what did we have in common. Sis always told me – I was missing the picture on this one and while Sis is always right, I still travel my own timetable.

So a few weeks ago when Mark left a comment on my blog, a long thought out comment, I began to realize that he understood the view from my – our – corner. In my best traditions I e-mailed him: I love to stand corrected. Little did I realize that that little peek was the harbinger of things to come.

Yesterday I get an e-mail from a friend – go check out Mark’s blog – the two postings of e-mails and IM’s between him and his wife. So I go, I read: soon my head is spinning. I will not re-tell it here, it is not my story. But the thing is that it is my story, it is many of our stories.

It seems when you strip away the veneer, the veneer of SR being in threesomes, the veneer of Carrie breaking out the toys, the veneer of wives trying to keep marriages together – when you strip away the veneer, you are left with women, women married to bi/gay men: men who want other men, want them sexually or want them for a drink and flirting or want them for emotional support. I will not speak for the women here: SR has already done that and done it quite well. As for us men, we each speak silently, the language of actions and deeds.