I guess you could call me an agnostic. I am pretty ambivalent about the idea of God or for that matter the afterlife. I’d like to believe and have faith and all that jazz. But it’s not that easy to set aside skepticism and the need for indisputable evidence.
I guess I’m not really consistent since on the other hand, I do believe in Fate as well angels. By angel I do not mean winged creatures all in white with halos and playing little harps. That is for little kid Sunday school classes. What I mean by angels are people sent into your life briefly in order to pass along a message that you need at just the right time never to be seen again.
I have seen this happen twice. Once a long time ago to me. Once recently to the fantastic Mrs. Fox.
You may be wondering what the fuck this has to do with swinging, poly, open sexuality, or sex at all. We’ll get there, dear reader, so be patient.
A few weeks ago we went to the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, a life changing radical feminist, historically and still majority lesbian separatist event though they do welcome like-minded women who are Bi or Straight. It’s an Amazon week in the woods where women do everything except suck out the shit from the port-a-pots. We spent a lot of time trying to repair the bullshit that society tries to put in our heads.
On top of what society says, I think everyone, but particularly women, have a voice in their own head that tells them bullshit. It tells them they aren’t desirable, smart, attractive, or in general, simply aren’t enough. Sometimes it lies and says the world would be better off without them. It also tells them all the things they should do. If only they made more money, had a better job, got a degree (or another one), had plastic surgery, lost weight… then they would be deserving of love, pleasure, friends, you name it. Maybe they’d finally believe they were deserving of the blessings that life has already given them.
It tells them the things they have to do. To keep peace in the family, to keep safe at work and be able to pay the bills, in general how to go along and get along. Even if that means not standing up to abuse and leading to feeling trapped.
On the final night a woman I’ll call Kim, found out a little bit about us. Not all the details but enough to get on her soapbox at the camp fire and start telling us how she sees it. I’m paraphrasing but this is the gist of what she said.
“What are you afraid of? People who are judgmental? My family is a lot of southern bible thumpers but they don’t judge me. They are real Christians and real Christians know that nobody but God gets to judge you. If people are judging you and claiming its religion, well they don’t know their own religion because that is God’s job. It is between you and God. It is not their job to be trying to bring you down.
My family knows who I am. They love me for me. And if they didn’t then well then they didn’t really love me at all did they?
So what are you afraid of? You think you’re trapped? You can do anything you want. This is America and in America we are free. FREE! People fight to get here and cross desserts and go through awful things because they want to be free. And what are you doing? Limiting yourself and your choices. You can do anything. Move anywhere. Stop hiding. Stop putting yourself in your own cage and letting others dictate who you are. And what for? Why are you doing this? So you can pretend to be who your mother thinks you are?
You only have one life. You only have one story. Why are you living someone else’s story? You got to live your own life, your own story.
Where are you going to be at this point next year? Are you still going to be caging yourself and living someone else’s story? Or are you going to free yourself and live your own story?”
You might be able to see why I think this woman was an angel sent to us with a message that we needed to hear. Preach it sister. Unfortunately I don’t have a recording, but I think I captured the main ideas. It was an important message and probably is in a lot of contexts. I was thinking about it in the context of my work life and for Mrs. Fox she took it as being about letting her mother control her life.
So what does this have to do with anything about swinging? Well it set in motion the swinger Nuclear Option.
Two days after we got home, Mrs. Fox announced to the rest of the quad that she had told her mother that she was 1) a swinger and had been for several years, 2) bisexual, and 3) in a polyamorous relationship with both myself and Mr. Scarlet.
At first I thought she was saying that she was going to tell her mother. Yes, we’d all talked about coming out to our families at some point off in the distant future. Then the realization struck that this conversation had already occurred. Past tense. Mr. Fox referred to it as a nuclear strike. And to some degree it was. Outing yourself to you mother is a Nuclear Option from which there is no going back. It is unilateral, irrevocable, and may provoke retaliation.
However, the angel was right. Somewhat surprising to all of us was that Mrs. Fox’s greatest fear did not occur. She was not disowned or thrown out. Her mother may not understand or agree or like it but she is continuing their relationship. And, since her mother does now know the truth, a huge burden was removed from Mrs. Fox.
