Within this mortal frame…it was a dark and dreary, rainy and foggy, soggy and sappy night…to be Scooby Doo or not to be doo-BE doo-WAH biddy-POP-a-doo my BABY.

As a cashier at a retail establishment (fast food restaurant, department store, corner shop, etc.), you meet dozens, maybe hundreds of customers, getting to know a few very well.

As the customer, you might meet and get to know one, two or all three cashiers at the same establishment.

What we in the database business call a one-to-many or many-to-one relationship.

In any relationship, there is the period of time where no information is known — the parties involved or the database entries have not been established nor introduced to one other.

After we have properly labeled the database fields, entered the data into the fields inside tables, we look at the tables and create relationships.

Have you ever wondered why fields are inside tables?  I sure have!  Not to mention columns, rows, elements, keys, headers, footers and all sorts of generally accepted conventional terminology/jargon.  Anyway…

I’m straying far off subject because this subject is very personal, meaning I’m drifting, nay running toward logical linguistics to avoid the emotional side of the issue at hand.

As our planet revolves, turning away and toward our home star, shadows lengthen, disappear into darkness and reappear, getting shorter at mid-day.

Sets of states of energy have developed unique capabilities for capturing solar energy, some using chlorophyll, for instance, to transform that energy into work.

A seed grows into an adult plant.

A calf grows into an adult cow.

The rhythms of life as we know it literally revolve around the Sun.

That, and that alone, dictates everything we need to know about ourselves.

That is why we are here, using captured solar energy to write, read, converse, think about and use the pebble-in-a-pond blog entry for moving outward.

I think about my dancing skills as they are, why I don’t seem to gel well with my wife on the dance floor due partly to height difference, partly to different temperaments, partly to gender role interpretations, and partly to our different levels of physical fitness, which takes me back to the days when we hiked on the Appalachian Trail during our week in summer church camp together and remembering that she was often the last one at the back of the hike, nursing a blister or some other reason for not keeping up with the fast pace of the front group of boys in our summer church camp group who practically ran from shelter to shelter, the chaperones having to manage an accordion of campers spreading out and coming back together for mid-morning snacks, lunch, afternoon snacks, early evening tent/shelter setup, dinner, cleanup, sleeping, waking and starting all over again.

And then there is the database of labels representing people I’ve met in my life, like the cashiers I know by name, face and background story who might remember my face but don’t remember my name and know nothing about me.

But the database also includes lovers and family members whose faces and lives I know intimately in one way or another, some including the labeled cashiers.

All while I keep me, this set of states of energy, at a well-trained and well-maintained personal bubble space from others almost constantly, tensing up when one or more people get too close.

Which brings us to here, this very moment, where I as a single student (or, if you will, part of a dance unit, my wife and I being considered a coupled dance unit) am paired up with an instructor who has and has had many students.

My name is not Don Juan.  My sexual exploits are practically and actually, for all intents, purposes and facts, further away from this point in time than my birth was from my last sexual exploit.  It hurts to expose my meager, barren married life in such a fashion but it holds up in comparison to the socioreligious training that reinforced monogamy from birth, despite its questionable status in comparison to our body’s natural tendencies.

This cocooned body, this bubble boy in a middle-aged man’s visage, has only one territory left to conquer if he wishes to maintain the social illusion of monogamy drilled into his thoughts from an early age.

How many times in the past did I hear a girl tell me “But I didn’t know you liked me or wanted to kiss me” because I was too shy or had built up an elaborate defense of goofy actions, wild storytelling and other smoke screens to protect the little scared boy from the prospect of being rejected of my feelings of love, the desire to share the inner me that may or may not even exist except as layers of protection against exposing an empty void?

Had not my father and psychologists/psychiatrists told me no one will be there in that moment before intimacy to give me permission to take the risk of attempting a single kiss?

Oh, but the preachers and other proponents of omnipotent/omniscient being(s) have grilled into my thoughts that there’s always at least One who is watching, One who has put the knowledge of right-and-wrong, good morals and ethics for guidance in situations when temptation is literally in your hands.

But even as Abi, our dance instructor and newfound friend, has said, it’s not always about what’s in a guy’s pants.

But it never has been about what’s in my pants.  I already know that.

The intimacy I seek is about the whole universe represented by the set of states of energy next to me, which has, yes, included what’s in my pants a few times in the past but it was oh, so much more than that.

After 51 years on this planet, I’m probably not about to change wholescale from what I’ve been physically.

Overcoming inhibitions is nigh on impossible, at least in the presence of those who instilled the socioreligious training in me, including my living mother, sister and wife, along with living uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces and nephews who have received the same training and have, for the most part, acted to reinforce it in their lives and their [grand]children.

Who am I?  I am a seeker of new knowledge, whether it be mere novelty or hidden truths about our universe.

I have done many things to get that knowledge, actions which have torn my personality apart, driven me to both suicidal thoughts and suicidal actions many decades ago.

I have installed protections against further damage, making sure, for instance, that I am dependent on my wife’s noodling, nagging and coddling in order to beat down the wild child in me that would seek knowledge at any physical/mental cost.

Otherwise, I have and will walk through a glass barrier to get what I want.

I have said what I wanted and will say what I want and taken what I shouldn’t’ve to add to my knowledge base.

Why have I set up my wife as both the fall guy and permission giver in my life?

Why is she the mental safe zone in which I can place many thoughts that I would not place in the personal space/zone of others?

As the readers who’ve scanned their eyes across these symbols, these word sets, know, I thinly disguise storylines based on people with whom I am currently interacting, including cashiers, waiters, salespersons, family, friends and dance instructors.

The storylines may be pure fantasy, they may be pure fact, or they may be humorous combinations of the two.

Regardless, they’re told from the viewpoint and the behaviour set of an American guy with a personal space several feet in diameter.

He is (I am) not used to other people’s bodies being held close to mine in what, if they were my wife, would be an intimate body position.

Yet, to gain the knowledge I currently seek, about what I can do with my body as a dancer, regardless of dancing talent/skill, I am working through the personal space problem without completely giving up the tensed muscles and high levels of fear when my eyes are inches from my dance partner.

With Abi, the problem hasn’t been as strong because our height differential allows me to look over her head, her eyes easily focused straight ahead at my chest or shirt buttons, if she so chooses.

With Jenn, the problem is much more complex, so complex that I’m writing about as detailed a blog entry as I can to hide the facts far toward the bottom and well away from the eyes of the average ADHD reader flitting from one blog to another for pure instantaneous (gotta find a new word to replace that overused one) six-second eye candy entertainment.

Jenn is Jenn, not more or less.

But Jenn is also representative of a whole lot more.

Of course, she is female and although I can sympathise and have empathised with those who walk the thoughts of LGBT personality traits, I believe and think like a heterosexual male attracted to females of our species.  So there is the fact she is an attractive woman.

Jenn is also an engineer/scientist and you have no idea how much more exciting and sensual a woman with a logical thought set is to me than other thought sets a woman could have.  That fact explains 99% of the reason I stay married to my wife — she is truly one of a kind, even if we aren’t physically matched perfectly (who is? (wait, don’t tell me — the question was rhetorical)).

Jenn and I are closer in height than my wife and I are.  Which leads to two thoughts.  First one, discussed in this paragraph, is that Jenn and I see almost eye-to-eye.  With high-heeled shoes, we are about the same height — eyes and lips at the same level.  With little or no effort, I could lean forward a few inches and plant my lips on hers.  But could I or would I?  That’s the question that has been bugging me ever since I started dancing two years ago when my wife and I started ballroom dancing lessons in time for our 25th wedding anniversary.  Every now and then over that two-year period, I have pulled apart the rim of my personal bubbled space and let a woman other than my wife rest into my outstretched hands/arms for a dance.  For one or two of those women, the level of intimacy, the chemical attraction for hot sex, was like sparks jumping between us, our breathing matched like two lovers gasping for air by the time the song was over.  For one woman in particular, we both literally gasped and said “Wow!” at the end because the dance was actually better than sex, or perhaps gave us the understanding that making love could add no more to the intimacy we had already shared, feeling the rhythm of the music as one.  We were able to repeat that feeling more than once so it was not just one song but a bond that, forgive my devoutly religious friends for saying, opened our eyes to the infinite, the Godlike aspects of the universe, like a deep meditative prayer/trance or deeply meaningful hallucinogenic drug experience.  For another woman who craved to dance with me and I with her all night long but never happened, the only thing we had left was for her to come running toward me, leap into my arms and share the only intimate kiss I’ve had with a woman other than wife since I’ve been married (and yes, I told my wife even though what happens in Ireland, as the Vegas slogan suggests, is supposed to stay in Ireland).  That is not to say that Jenn in any way reciprocates any feelings I have about intimacy on the dance floor.  Even I cannot say that I would close the gap and kiss her.  In this paragraph I am simply exploring and explaining the physical similarities that make such an action more possible with her than with my other dance partner, Abi (what my wife and I have joked are my two temporary dance wives, just as bossy with me as my wife is).

And now the other thought, one that takes a little more courage because I don’t think I have ever directly explored or explained these thoughts in writing (although I find that when I say that I probably have already written about it and forgotten).  Jenn is similar in size, shape and personality to my sister.  My sister, as I’ve recently written, was a rival for my parents’ love but she was also a rival for the love from other girls.  My sister was my confidante for many years as we grew up together, tending to let me know right away if she felt a girl wasn’t right for me or didn’t deserve me; I was protective of her the same way, disapproving of some of her undeserving dates/boyfriends.  She was also a girl, meaning that she was, other than my mother when I was an infant, the only female whose body parts I had seen in person for many years.  I’ve never discussed this with other guys so I can only imagine (and hope) that it is somewhat normal to have seen my sister as not just my sister but as a female, meaning that there was some sexual curiosity about her from me.  I never desired to kiss her or have sex with her but I was curious about, and we certainly discussed, what we each experienced or got to know with the opposite sex.  We had shared the view of our naked bodies when we were little kids, hiding behind the living room curtains to examine why our body parts were different.  Being in the same house together, I certainly heard her and saw her talk about her changing body shape and her female “problems.”  So there is this odd juxtaposition of the platonic love I had/have for my sister as sibling and friend against my curiosity about her as a woman set against her similarity to Jenn.  I wrap this whole paragraph under the word “prudishness” because I knew families where incest was not taboo at the dinner table and in the bedroom.

Those thoughts aside, I like Jenn for who she is and who she is not.  Due to different upbringings and different personalities, we have different experiences which means I’m not sure how much smarter or braver she is than me.  Certainly prettier.

I know the dynamics of her relationship with Abi are way different than the dynamics of my (or my wife’s) relationship with Abi.

Abi and her boyfriend Stephane have gathered that my wife and I are somewhat conservative, maybe conventionally bourgeois/boring in our approach to sexual mores.  They certainly see and treat us as a couple.

But then again, that is the perception I have worked hard to maintain, given my “Walter Mitty” ways of writing adventures that my body has not taken or even hinted that it would take outside of its safe cocooned habits.

I don’t know Jenn, her boyfriend/husband Gilley, Abi or Stephane all that well although I am getting to know them more.

Jenn has her boyfriends (or boy friends) and has voiced her concerns about them with Abi and others.

I believe Abi has said that she, Jenn and Stephane are polyamorous although my wife believes that only Stephane is polyamorous and Abi/Jenn treat their polyamorous boyfriends monogamously.

Sex is not the same as love.

A dance partner is not the same as a lover.

Jenn is like my sister but she not like my sister.

I am happy to have Jenn as a dance partner, part of me wants Jenn to be my only dance partner and part of me is happy to see Jenn dance with her students, especially knowing now that she will dance in the upcoming showcase with her boyfriend.

I am jealous of Jenn’s dance partners, but I am jealous of any woman who has looked me in the eye, even as if I was a mere acquaintance or sibling or platonic friend, and danced with another man (or woman (or whatever)).

The desires of the flesh are fleeting.  The girls I desired when we were both 10 were not the same set of girls/women I desired when we were both 20.

I am an American Protestant by upbringing, not a French atheist/existentialist by thoughts/actions.

Part of me is a Bright — a person who holds we see only what we see, no supernatural hocus-pocus, no deus ex machina to take us by chariot to the great temple in the sky — and part of me is the social animal who wants to believe we are connected in ways unseen that allows ideas such as prayers to circumvent the known laws of nature and cause miracles to occur for no reason other than divine providence.

Either part still puts me here, in this social situation where the weight of history holds me in an imaginary spotlight of responsibility to hold up the banner of my ancestors’ rituals as a leader easily sitting back on the wealth of knowledge, possibly wisdom, that says our socioreligious system is, if not absolutely the best, one of the best and thus worth perpetuating at the cost of the lives/thoughts of individuals like me who may not completely adhere to the system physically/mentally.

Me?  Are you fucking kidding me?  Have I become a compliant suburban nobody who follows the rules, doesn’t rock the boat, stays under the radar because I value the quietude of a safe survival versus getting out there, scared out of my wits, taking chances and risking my heritage in order to find the knowledge that I truly seek?

My wife doesn’t read this blog but my sister, my mother’s friends (maybe even my mother) and others from my socioreligious background read some if not all of my blog entries.  I have no idea if Abi, Stephane, Gilley or Jenn read this or even know it exists.  They’ve never said and I’ve never asked.

This may or may not be a surprise statement to them: my wife and I have discussed divorce a few times recently, coming to the conclusion that for practical matters, two people who aren’t completely compatible are cheaper living together in their first marriage than as two people after a divorce who would have to split up their retirement savings and get two households, no matter how much happier or unhappier they would be mentally and/or emotionally.

I butt heads with my wife all the time, but I butted heads with my father and was once thought by him to question authority to my detriment because I was a contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian sometimes.

There’s no guarantee that my having the life of a single, albeit divorced man, would mean I was more or less a contrarian out from under the pretenses and hypocrisy of the institute of monogamous marriage itself, let alone a barren one when the man might still have the chance to procreate with the right person.

My wife and I already know that marriage doesn’t make you happy all the time and divorce doesn’t always make you miserable.  What matters is what we do with the thoughts and personalities that are us in the time we have left on this planet.  It is just as possible that if we divorced we’d be attracted to someone just like us again and again and again, either realising that our first marriage was better than we thought or that we keep making the same mistakes over and over again (maybe even a little of both).

I remember when I was a senior program manager traveling back and forth over the Atlantic Ocean, wondering if I had children would I feel more inclined to push myself harder up the corporate ladder over those less competent than me, and less thinking the thought, “Well, I don’t have kids so it’s only fair that the people above me who aren’t doing as good a job as I could deserve/need that job more than I do which, by extension, means the people below me should have my job because they have [grand]kids, regardless of their potential to perform my job duties as well as I am.”

That’s the problem that faces me every time I look at a woman of childbearing years.  Could she be the one that my wife has not been?

It’s not my wife’s fault that she was unable to bear children.  God/nature took care of that.  We were never the ones to think of adopting someone else’s offspring and the cost of surrogacy wasn’t in our budget.

Abi has two kids she adores but who don’t live with her.  Jenn has no children that I know of.

As I wind down this blog entry, my thoughts meandering, using my dance instructors/partners as substitutes for thoughts of women who are not my wife because I have let them into my personal space even if we have not been dance floor lovers or ever will be, I ask myself if I can keep letting down my barriers for Abi and Jenn that I have not done for any other person, including my wife, in order for us to dance as one, our bodies interlocked, our thoughts entwined in the music and words of a song, leaving unanswered questions between us, questions that may never be thought or asked.

I am attracted to Abi and Jenn like I am attracted to no other and not the same to either one.  The attraction does not have to be sexual.  The attraction goes much deeper with one than with the other.  With Jenn, I desire to be her work partner and her electromechanical design partner as well as her dance partner.  With Abi, I want to conquer the solar system for a totally different reason, mainly because we can dance together even if she dances with other men better than me.  At the same time, they can deepen and open up my relationship with my wife, if I let them, if that’s all they want from me other than assisting a dance student become a better dance partner/leader.

I am open to new experiences, inside and outside the socioreligious walls that have penned me in and the planet which has held/nourished me and my species from its beginning.

What new knowledge can I write about next?

Shall I recount this evening’s dance practice with Jenn and my wife?  Need I do so?  Is it better to have written around it as I have done so in this blog entry?

Does a partner kiss and tell?  Only as a writer anonymising the experience for a fictional tale, or detailing a tell-all autobiography.

In other words, you’ll have to wait until after dawn.  In the middle of the night, I ain’t confessing nothing that I’d regret writing right now.

Besides, I’ve a Kickstarter campaign to flesh out.  If I’m going to have any hopes of starting a new life, with or sans wife, I’ve got to build my business life into one more sustainable than the one I have now.

Otherwise, this is all talk.