I looked into your eyes tonight and together we laughed at our silliness on the dance floor.

I am not at a loss for words at this moment but my schizophrenic writer’s self wants to split into multiple characters to explain how I feel about all the people whose faces I looked into, whose bodies I shared my personal space with tonight.

I cannot explain in words how I feel I am inside your thoughts like synchronised twins — I have immortalised that synchronisation in fiction because in reality I don’t yet have the means to assuredly reinvent myself and test the theory that we do or do not think alike frequently.

I am willing to put myself and my thoughts on this page because I don’t belong to me.

I belong to you, the personal you, and You, the universal you.

There’s only one way to prove to myself and to show you what I think polyamory means — it’s not just about physical desire but I can’t deny my body aches to hold you for more than a few seconds on the dance floor.

But what does my body ache for?

What is a kiss?  What is a hug?  What are the arrangement of our body parts for?

As at least one girlfriend noted, I see sexual intimacy in practical/analytical terms.  As another girlfriend noted, I wouldn’t know what to do with a woman’s body if it was handed to me naked unless there was an instruction manual and a start button.  All of my girlfriends told me that after I was primed by them, I was a good lover, considerate of their needs.  More than one girlfriend has noted that the only intimacy I fully know without being nudged and prodded is intimacy of the written word.

That’s why I’m here.

That’s why I can have a woman press her body against mine and I show no sexual reaction.

It’s why I want to split into several storylines here and describe what goes on in this one person’s thoughts — one part of me:

• is afraid he’ll lose himself and give up all he has for a single moment of happiness
• waits for a sign, a signal that clearly gives him permission to seek intimacy because he wants to be a gentleman and not accused of sexual assault/aggression
• remembers when a few girls tricked him when he was twelve during a game of spin-the-bottle and is still worried he’s being tricked
• lives in a fantasy world where sex doesn’t exist
• is still five years old, the moment when he knew who he was meant to be and gave himself to the universe like a priest or nun renounces the world
• just wants to have fun without worrying about his flirting leading to sex
• is a brainwashed product of his upbringing who thinks everyone else has affairs in their marriage except him

I am who I am.

Polyamory to me is participating in the emotional lives of others with the prospect of sex being an open-ended question that may or may not be answered.

It is flirting past the point of danger, being alone together and not giving in to temptation just because you can.

It is not worrying about what other people say or think because you know you belong to the universe, not just to your local subculture or the global culture.

It means choosing a platonic friendship instead of an erotic relationship sometimes.

And, in this particular instance, it means I haven’t kissed a woman intimately in so long I don’t know if I remember how so all I can promise is to be silly on the dance floor because if I’m not a great dance partner, then I’m one who wants to have fun throwing learned dance moves to the wind and see you laugh, dissecting dance moves when we want to figure out what works.

It is joining together to design and build a robot that has never been seen before because we are putting our energy into a creation we can call our own which we share with the world as a token of our enduring friendship, wherever it may lead.

It is sharing our friends and our friends’ friends.

It means having a friend of the opposite sex is not always easy on a guy like me but I understand I have confusing sexual desires that cloud my agape/platonic friendships and am willing to work through my temporary thoughts for longterm goals and if agape leads to eros sometimes, that’s okay, too, but it’s not my primary goal.