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Super fun evening at a local beer garden with Mizz C, Allan and another Alan who Cassandra is auditioning for swain material. I got the distinct impression that one-L Alan is not actually in the market for swains himself, but rather sees himself as an embedded journalist looking to write the definitive bestseller about the strange sexual kinks of middle aged Americans in this transitional window of time before the world lurches back into fundamentalism.
One-L Alan was a very attractive guy, my age, with a killer sense of humor and intensely blue eyes that no doubt owed their luminous hue to tinted contact lenses. He kept me laughing, so I liked him a lot.
Purpose of the outing was to introduce One-L Alan to the polycule. Unfortunately, two of the polycule are currently in Europe, and the rest had other plans. I was drafted as a kind of last minute replacement.
"I don't quite understand how you fit into the equation," he said rather early in the evening.
"I'm the housemate," I said. "I'm not polyamourous."
"That's what she says," said Mizz C. "But she has a play date with Clark tomorrow."
"Well, that's true," I said. "But I see it more like Clark and I are pals and I'm going to hang out with him. It just so happens that Clark's hobby is sex, so we will probably end up having sex. If Clark's hobby were building model cars, I'd help him build model cars."
"But you don't believe in monogamy."
"No, I don't. But I don't disbelieve in it either. Happens I know a number of people for whom monogamy has worked out very well. I suppose you could say I believe in big loves and small loves, and I don't think the two have to be mutually exclusive.
"Plus you know – the scheduling would just drive me nuts. That whole Google calendar synchronization thing – ugh! That whole 'If this is Tuesday, that must be Algernon' thing would drive me insane. I like spontaneity."
Anthony Wiener's dick was the leitmotif of the evening – that and the feral children. As the dark settled in and the oompah-band finished with Dankeshein and launched into a one-two-THREE one-two-THREE rendition of Que Sera Sera, those kids were everywhere, deep in some strange dynastic game that involved beating each other with light sticks and dragging the Chosen One around in a cart. All those kids needed was a desert island, a helicopter to get them there, and the rotting corpse of a pig, and they could have staged their own interactive, immersive Lord of the Flies dramatization.
Somewhere in the course of the evening, Mizz C announced that she was toying with the idea of running for elective office at the county level, which I thought was an excellent idea – Mizz C is something of an organizational genius and I don't think she altogether comprehends that her mad skills in that area are pretty unique. All she'd really need is a two-year action plan and schmooze points. I could do that for her because like I say – ahem! in all modesty – I am a strategic, programmatic genius.
Anyway, a fun night.
Also had a long telephone chat with BB, On the long trip home from Philly, I read this pretty brilliant essay by Marcia Angell called "The Crazy State of Psychiatry," originally published in The New York Review of Books. I've always been suspicious of psychotropic drugs. I mean, they have their uses, sure, as short-term interventions, but this medicalization of depression – "It's just like diabetes!" – has always struck me as utter bullshit. Honey, if you want to stop being chronically depressed, start exercising, lose weight, and find something you really like doing. Maybe talk to someone about it. It honestly is that simple.
Anyway, this essay confirmed a lot of my suspicions in this area. Two points really stood out. Number one: All the research published in the top medical journals confirming the effectiveness of popular bestselling antidepressants has actually been done by scientists with deep, deep ties to the pharmaceutical industry. In order to get the true skinny, one of the authors of the books Angell reviews in this piece actually had to suborn unpublished research from the Food and Drug Administration under the Freedom of Information Act. The upshot? Placebos are 85 percent as effective as the most "effective" antidepressant. You could actually make a strong argument on this basis that antidepressants are a type of placebo.
Number two — and this was incredibly fascinating to me – placebos with side effects were more effective than placebos without side effects.
BB and I chatted at great length about this and about life in general. He seemed a little bit down, and I felt a distinct pang thinking that he was not his usual jolly self. I wanted to amuse and divert him. Wanted to make him happier. I flashed on Heinlein's definition of love,which Clark had quoted to me in a conversation a few weeks back – Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own – and thought, Ah, yes! A small love.
One-L Alan was a very attractive guy, my age, with a killer sense of humor and intensely blue eyes that no doubt owed their luminous hue to tinted contact lenses. He kept me laughing, so I liked him a lot.
Purpose of the outing was to introduce One-L Alan to the polycule. Unfortunately, two of the polycule are currently in Europe, and the rest had other plans. I was drafted as a kind of last minute replacement.
"I don't quite understand how you fit into the equation," he said rather early in the evening.
"I'm the housemate," I said. "I'm not polyamourous."
"That's what she says," said Mizz C. "But she has a play date with Clark tomorrow."
"Well, that's true," I said. "But I see it more like Clark and I are pals and I'm going to hang out with him. It just so happens that Clark's hobby is sex, so we will probably end up having sex. If Clark's hobby were building model cars, I'd help him build model cars."
"But you don't believe in monogamy."
"No, I don't. But I don't disbelieve in it either. Happens I know a number of people for whom monogamy has worked out very well. I suppose you could say I believe in big loves and small loves, and I don't think the two have to be mutually exclusive.
"Plus you know – the scheduling would just drive me nuts. That whole Google calendar synchronization thing – ugh! That whole 'If this is Tuesday, that must be Algernon' thing would drive me insane. I like spontaneity."
Anthony Wiener's dick was the leitmotif of the evening – that and the feral children. As the dark settled in and the oompah-band finished with Dankeshein and launched into a one-two-THREE one-two-THREE rendition of Que Sera Sera, those kids were everywhere, deep in some strange dynastic game that involved beating each other with light sticks and dragging the Chosen One around in a cart. All those kids needed was a desert island, a helicopter to get them there, and the rotting corpse of a pig, and they could have staged their own interactive, immersive Lord of the Flies dramatization.
Somewhere in the course of the evening, Mizz C announced that she was toying with the idea of running for elective office at the county level, which I thought was an excellent idea – Mizz C is something of an organizational genius and I don't think she altogether comprehends that her mad skills in that area are pretty unique. All she'd really need is a two-year action plan and schmooze points. I could do that for her because like I say – ahem! in all modesty – I am a strategic, programmatic genius.
Anyway, a fun night.
Also had a long telephone chat with BB, On the long trip home from Philly, I read this pretty brilliant essay by Marcia Angell called "The Crazy State of Psychiatry," originally published in The New York Review of Books. I've always been suspicious of psychotropic drugs. I mean, they have their uses, sure, as short-term interventions, but this medicalization of depression – "It's just like diabetes!" – has always struck me as utter bullshit. Honey, if you want to stop being chronically depressed, start exercising, lose weight, and find something you really like doing. Maybe talk to someone about it. It honestly is that simple.
Anyway, this essay confirmed a lot of my suspicions in this area. Two points really stood out. Number one: All the research published in the top medical journals confirming the effectiveness of popular bestselling antidepressants has actually been done by scientists with deep, deep ties to the pharmaceutical industry. In order to get the true skinny, one of the authors of the books Angell reviews in this piece actually had to suborn unpublished research from the Food and Drug Administration under the Freedom of Information Act. The upshot? Placebos are 85 percent as effective as the most "effective" antidepressant. You could actually make a strong argument on this basis that antidepressants are a type of placebo.
Number two — and this was incredibly fascinating to me – placebos with side effects were more effective than placebos without side effects.
BB and I chatted at great length about this and about life in general. He seemed a little bit down, and I felt a distinct pang thinking that he was not his usual jolly self. I wanted to amuse and divert him. Wanted to make him happier. I flashed on Heinlein's definition of love,which Clark had quoted to me in a conversation a few weeks back – Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own – and thought, Ah, yes! A small love.
