Truetalk has been writing since he was a teen, and only in the last five or so years has he taken himself seriously as a writer. He lives in the Vancouver area of BC, Canada, where he has lived for most of his life. He finished his degree in psychology at Simon Fraser University in ’95 when he started his counseling practice for individuals and couples. He recently completed his PhD in psychology and philosophy at University of Life in Black Rock City. His counseling practice though broad in a practical sense, is specialized in alternative relationships, including the various forms of polyamoury, polyfidelity, or what ever other poly-like relationship you may be working on. He has studied the human psyche for almost his entire life, and has a thorough understanding of consciousness, human psychology, and our current social structure and how we as individuals or groups function and dysfunction within our culture and general social milieu. He would love to hear any feedback from the readers of this community, answer questions or even take requests or topics to write about.

Previous editions of this column can be found in the Monthly Columns Archives.

Timing is Everything

I am so certain that time has a huge role to play in the unfolding of love to its most wonderful and rare expression in sex. I see it in practice, theory, fiction, and poetry; each time love becomes what it does because of various happenings in time. It follows that to be out of synch is to miss out. In many ways, on levels of different intensity, texture, colour and time this is true, that timing is everything. I am not the one and only to have coined that phrase, it has been said and seen all throughout history that if you don’t have time on your side, than things are going to go wrong; having time as an advisor is a necessity, but not singularly. Quite possibly it is not the best power or influence to master in having success. I am wanting to keep this to the topic of relationships and the expression of love, thus will continue this thought while applied to my attempts at relationships etc..

This is going to sound odd, in that I will now argue that the only logical explanation for my relative perception of my own sexual activity is that I just do not have the right timing. Okay, I can not do that, even immediately trying to write something that will honestly support that vanishes into smoke. There are no words there, and certainly there are many things that I could do to attract women to me more physically. None the less, I still say that timing is very important in the finding, hooking and catching someone to love and to have love back in return. And this will be that story, the missed moments, lost time, or delayed actions that have lead to missing or … weak sexual encounters.

I could easily make this a rather technical and analytical essay on the nuances of interpretation of experience, but that would become boring and I would soon lose my audience. That is why I must use fiction in my writing. Thus, although I say this is my story, I also have to amend that by noting that this is also fiction, as in not the exact things that happened. Memory is always fading, and the older ones are now generations old, their strength and accuracy are always questionable. These stories are based upon my memories, their accuracy cannot be measured. With all that said, what do I want to share first? recent or more distant memory as the source of my story.

I once knew this girl, her name was Natalie, and she was very soft and beautiful. She was surrounded by lovely family, all women except for one dad, and they and we were friends and enjoyed exploring each other at pop and chip parties to slow songs on the floor or on the couch. These were good times, and I think we all loved each other in varying levels of intensity, intimacy and duration. Then we moved; again! I lost that connection, it was pulled from me just as it was getting started, I swear.

So I mourned that loss, and at the same time tried to keep going, to make new friends and lovers so that I could enjoy the company of my own kind. Later in time, like years, we hook up again, this is where the memories get kind of faded, but the details are unnecessary, though they are the meat and blood of this story, maybe I will give you those too, but first the skeleton, just to get the shape of this image. What happened was that we did not connect the second time like we had the first time, we could not (did not? I still can’t tell), make any real connection. On a larger scale, outside of my control really because I was a kid following my dad, my timing was off in that I was ripped away from someone so that it was not possible to have sex, how is that timing? It is about timing because later I was given a second chance to meet and see what happens, though I wanted something, nothing ever came of that, and now she is but a memory in my mind.

I am having a hard time pinning down why that is about time, and that is because there are so many other variables involved making a shielding around time that it becomes obscured. All we can see are these over thoughts, though I will ignore them all and just say that I can feel the chronological dysfunction of the moment. Whether it is actual or not, I can feel this as being a moment of missed timing, and there are more.

Certainly this is one: I met this other woman recently, and you could say I was too late or too early, depending on how things go with her. I saw her at a party, she is so cute, big sparkly eyes full of blue; her long blonde hair fanned down and around her soft shoulders. Her smile was radiant, and she played with me like a little girl. She does this with many men too, and I suppose she may or may not go along for the full ride, but with me we are still great friends. I took her out for a date or two, we kissed a few times, and still hug once in a while, as I ask for it, but we are really close on other levels. I love her and she loves me, we just don’t have sex or touch much. What happened there you ask, well I say it is bad timing.

I met her when she had just broken up with a long term relationship. This immediately can be understood as either good timing, as in she is now just single, or bad timing if now she is hurt and not wanting –at all—to connect with men. It turned out to be the latter of these scenarios. We are still great friends, but from my perspective, and this is because we did connect very well, the timing is off because now she does not want to have a man, and though we get along well she will not come any closer to me than she is now.

Other times I have been the instigator of the bad timing, as in I miss a move or act too fast. These have happened a lot in my life too, and I could tell a number of such cases. When I was still a teenager, full of self doubt and uncertainty, I knew this beautiful girl. I really liked her too, and one day we were in her room together, not doing too much, just hanging out together. She is lying on her bed wearing just a t-shirt and tight silky shorts, and white socks. No bra or panties, and she is on her back, her young full breasts are pointing up, and then she pulls her shirt tight across her chest and I can see everything. Her breasts are so beautiful, but I am stunned like a deer in the head lights of an on coming car, and then zoom, the moment is gone. I did not touch her, I did not make any kind of move towards giving her back the pleasure she was giving me.

Then I have also done the opposite and moved too quickly. There is an obvious attraction, and it seems strong, we are developing a friendship and making a connection. I feel as though we can do anything with this attraction, or that we should at least make a move towards all that it can be, and I do touch her, and make a move to give her some of the pleasure that she has given me. This usually results in a great scene of sex and love, but then later things change. It seems as though it was not the right timing, and I have moved too fast, and scared the woman away with my aggressive sexual wants and urges.

These are all examples of moments that went wrong because of the timing being off. Some moments were not so much wrong as just not done, or over done, and some yes were just wrong. I have made wrong moves with women, yet the only thing wrong was the timing. There were good, warm and intimate feelings between us also with dabs and splashes of playfulness and aggression. We played like this with innocence and uncertain freedom for a while, but it did not last because we met too soon by many years. These are just a few of the myriad of mishaps I have had in my physical love experiences. The point is that my timing has been off time and again, and I am so frightfully aware of it. It hurts.

I am starting to think and feel that I am to let go of this desire for love. I can never give up hope though. There are only a few meaningful things in life, there is hope, joy, peace and the greatest of these is love. I can never give up hope, and my hope is that love may still come my way. Mean while I will live with joy and peace. I will not search for love as though it is something I can have with effort, as though it is something I have had and lost and must re-find again. Love is not those things; love is a gift, and a blessing. The few times I have really felt it I am so very thankful. Love is so powerful it can bring back the dead (The Matrix), so unpredictable that it can kill you (True Love, or Romeo and Juliet), love can transcend time and space (what Dreams May Come), and inspire master pieces of art (Moulin Rouge). I will be open to love, but I will not demand it or expect it. Instead I will put my energies into other things, unselfish things.

This is where my writing comes in. I know that I must write, and in all honesty when I am single I write the most. I do have a solution for this, but it is slow in the making. I have discovered and embraced the polyamorous way of relationships, in this way, by being polyamorous, I am able to maintain the single feeling I need to write, and still create intimate relationships that have traditionally meant the end of being single. I have been writing about missed time, moments of mayhem and now laughable memories of my life, but they are not all missed moments. I have been given the human quality patience, and in it I find peace and happiness, and thus the love I find is lengthy through time and maves towards a sharing of joy and peace in love. I would like to share a few other stories now to create a more rounded image of my life.

Wow! How is it harder to find the way to put the thoughts together in such a way that the ideas and feelings are translated into words. I am avoiding the chronological ordering of some of these events, because I have been focused upon time, I feel I must remove all potentially revealing variables, and I will just do it.

This story started many years ago. I was at a dance club I had loved to go for years, I was doing my thing: dancing, looking, talking, and listening. We met on the back deck, talked and connected very fast, danced, drank, touched and opened up warmly towards each other. We created a connection in that moment yes, but it was through time that it was formed. We never saw each other all that much for the next eight or so years. Looking back, it seems we both needed to finish stuff, the mysterious area of life that is unknowable, so even now it may not be finished, but the timing was just there, and there was a building up towards something, and it is still growing. Now it seems she is ready to continue that connection we created many years ago.

I can not say I can understand the timing here, but I can say that it is good timing, because I had the most wonderful date in my entire life last night. I can see how many different time energies are intermingling with and around me. For instance, last night I connected again with chris, very early in the night there was an understanding that we were on a date. It was the first date that we never had a chance to go on the first time we met. She was too quickly taken into the arms of celibacy, while I was taken into the arms of monogamy. We were that night just taking the time needed to make that first connection of physical love fruitful. It took around eight years to do, but we both were able and willing to take that time, and so last night we were going out on our first real date after the first awesome sexual encounter of physical love. That was our timing, but around me I saw many other missed connections of other women who were off by just a number of hours at connecting with me.

It started as we were all walking up commercial drive. There we loosened up in our familiar space of a shared community. There were beautiful ladies flaunting their powers of attraction, and willingly giving each who would but ask a moment with them. As we moved through the streets the people would stare and wonder, or laugh and some even joined our ranks through the powerful actions of certain friends. I started to notice soon that many of these women who were flirting with me seemed to desire more from me than I was able to give them there and now. I wanted to tell each of them to come again at another time, but that this one was being taken up with this beauty here at my side. Please be patient with me, as I have with her, and I would slowly maneuver myself away from some of these women. Others, whom I was already very close with, I would give warmer welcomes, and deeper feelings of love.

By the time we had reached Broadway we were stars. All surrounded with red and white, the beauty of our aura was clear and there were moments when we had to hold back our love as we know that there are many other people all around, and lets just push these boundaries of open love slowly. We were a super success there, and we spread love and joy and peace all around, and people took with them a piece of hope seeing that some people are still creative and can play and laugh at the forced consumerism that we are submitted to each year, as a reminder that this corporate machine we created still lives. We though danced under the moon light in our red shoes, telling all that they are beautiful and loved, and they need not submit to this message of mass consumerism,

Next we took it to main street. There we shared more deeply, got honest with who we were, where we were coming from, and not too much of where we were going. I think this is because of our awareness of time. At one time during the evening I remember saying to her in response to her wondering how much more time we had, that we had all the time in the world. We even said how we both were tampering with the coming experiences of the sexual union. She having multiple orgasms one coming after the other, she claims to be getting better, while I confessed to wanting to get better at orgasm with out coming. To relax, when you want to come, don’t do it. Soon we both understood that we were already making love, and the physical love that we so want to have will wait a bit longer. We though celebrated this boundary by touching it and coming up against it, reveling in the sexual energy that we shared.

We then strolled down to the No.5. I was gifted there with the opportunity to fulfill personal fantasies that I have involving a partner while watching strippers. It felt like we had come to a new and higher or deeper connection. We now could share deep secrets, and we were both open to pleasing each other and pressing our own skills in magic and invisibility. Looking back I see that we both had an opportunity to fulfill personal fantasies that we have held for some time. She got to dance on a stage with a huge solid brass pole, even kissing on stage with a beautiful woman. I got to make out with a sexy lady in the corner while beautiful skillful dancers take their clothes of on stage. Yours was that moment when you took away all the invisibility and allowed many to see you, and to be seen. Mine involved a more selective revealing of our erotic activities, meanwhile staying relatively unseen. So now our group has traversed all the way to the darker spaces of the psyche, where we keep darker secrets, and hidden powers.

In the end we fasted, we ate no food, and only consumed the love that we were sharing. We remained aware of the community around us, and invited others into our energy, and shared what we could with friends who needed more. Here time was amplified, we were able to in one evening create so much activity, experience and varying moments, that time was expanded. We were happy through out, not that it would be hard while swimming in a river of red, our heart chakras pulsing bright joining the entire river of red as one. We said good bye to everyone, and then together pranced off into the rain of the early evening. Knowing that soon we would have to go our separate ways again, we stayed as close to each other as we could in the moment. I was not even distracted by the odd and seemingly random encounters with other women as we were going home. I was with you to the end. Like children we had to do one more thing before we departed. I will show you mine if you show me yours, and you played it well, because before the end of the night was upon us, you showed me all of your private parts.

There are other stories of good timing, but I will not now share them here. Instead I will now round this up into some conclusions and connection with poly. If you are a magician, learning and opening up to the non-physical energies that exist, then you might consider taking on time, and learning to master time so that you can use it as energy, like how we now use electricity to power our technology. I do not have any real mastery over time, I can see that, but I am thankful that I have patience. Because now I am not struggling with my mishaps in love, rather I am content with what I have, and thankful for all that I am; I am patient and will allow time to reveal itself, allow the unfolding of life’s events patiently. For the rest of us who do not have time magic, nor have they been blessed with a good amount of patience, I will meditate upon this.

How is this connected with poly this month? Well, I know that one of the things that poly couples say is hard is the sharing of time. We are so immersed in the mechanical and linear movement of time, as presented by our current consciousness, and that we are trying to live multiple lives in a single time line. That is to hard to do, really what poly couples and individuals need to do is to remove themselves from this mechanical time line, of linear movement of time. Try to realize that time can be lived in other ways from the fantastic eternity to the simple moment; poly couples would gain by the rethinking of how they live in time. I know that we are at times forced, or so it seems when spoken of, to live within this mechanical and linear time, but we need not to always do that, when not at work, when with a loved one, when using creative use of time and space to be with loved ones. Time is more than a straight line, and we who struggle with the time spent with loved ones can benefit by stepping out of this mechanical time, and living in a more dynamic and chaotic time line. Polyamorous relationships allow for the stepping out of multiple norms that individuals have been shaped to accommodate through their involvement with society. Not just sexual partners, not just the way we love intimately, but also the way we live in time.

Truetalk is a contributing writer as well as a member of this online Community. He can be contacted here or through our message board Forums.

Truetalk ; December 23, 2007

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