“Gavin Rossdale’s ex-girlfriend is a man!”

“Lindsay Lohan is gay!”

“Will Smith is secret love of Tom Cruise—and his wife Jada’s on the down-lo!”

“Lady Gaga’s Poker Face is about how she really likes girls!”

Yeah, right.

Is the Bay area the only place in the world where the idea someone might be bisexual—rather than straight or gay—isn’t some super big deal?

Am I the only woman in North America who thinks that men who are open about their (occasional) interest in other men are appealing—and way hotter than fake bisexual Ms. Kate Perry (cover singer of “I kissed a girl,” the phoniest song on the planet)?

Apparently not.

Right now, despite the spate of racy headlines about Gavin Rossdale’s past with singer Marilyn, (cross-dressing, gender bending man/woman), male bisexualty is apparently cool—or at least flirting with it is.

In a recent piece at The Daily Beast, the wonderful Rachel Kramer Bussel writes about how the bisexually tinged “Bromance” is the new cool thing of the moment in celebrity land—or at least flirting with it is. While she recognizes a lot of the well-publicized chest bumping the fellas are engaging in is fake, she sez that doesn’t mean there isn’t something new happening.

Rachael says that a lot of the man-crushes are “faux”—no one’s getting truly sexual—but that the fact the straight male crowd can even just start to embrace their inner pansexual bi guy indicates some new hopes for the future. After all, when Jimmy Kimmel jokes “I Fucked Ben Afleck,” the world’s shifted, right?

Writing in Salon, Sarah Hepola echoes Kramer Bussel and adds that back in the day, male “slips in heterosexuality” were fodder for laughs, and notes that now the need to always define as straight has (somewhat) abated.

Says Hepola, “What was risky four years ago in "Brokeback Mountain" has almost become beside the point (not to mention award fodder) in movies like "Milk," so that James Franco can speak casually with "Fresh Air's Terry Gross about kissing Sean Penn, and it doesn't even generate headlines.”

And then of course, there are the “emo boy” Pete Wentz (married to Ashlee Simpson and father of a new baby) pix of the dude lip-locking with some other lip-liner-ed fella. That doesn’t seem to raise any eyebrows with anyone, does it?

So, ladies, here’s the deal--Is the question “Would you date a bi guy?” Or it is “Hey, why wouldn’t you?”
On the don’t go there side, there’s always the “What if he’s really gay?” thing.

After all, no one wants to be an unwitting beard, window dressing for the down lo. And anal sex is a high-risk practice that carries higher danger of AIDS transmission than many other things, so a girl’s gotta watch out.

On the other hand, if someone tells you’re they’re into guys—but they really like women, too, (or they like women, and an occasional guy), isn’t that kind of a comment about their flexibility and openness?

Are guys who are confident enough to admit they’re sometimes drawn to men potentially a lot more interesting? (And after all, practicing safe sex is common sense with anyone you sleep with, no matter the gender of his or her partners. And hey, herpes knows no bounds (just barriers).

So, ladies, what say you, in your dating life are the bi guys a yea, or a nay?

For my friend Lisa, the idea of a guy who plays with other men is repulsive. “I don't want someone who puts private parts in those places,” she says (a comment there is never an answer to). “It just turns me off.”

My friend Stephanie, on the other hand, looks out for the bi guys on Nerve and Okay Cupid and frequents bisexual meet ups as a way to seek out bi men. “I’m not so into women myself,” she says, “But I think bi guys are way more open minded.”

What do you mean? I ask.

“Oh, bi men who like women are adventurous,” she says. “And they’re better explorers, more interesting. They’ve worked the edges.” (Steph’s dated a gorgeous Irish scientist, a pagan poly programmer, and an emergency room physician since she began to focus on bi men, and each one of them has been fantastic in a lot of ways.)

I asked my friend Jediah, a married guy who identifies as polyamorous and bisexual what he thought about Steph’s comments.

“Well, isn’t everyone bisexual to some degree?” After all, there’s that Kinsey scale, “ he said. “Well, I think men who are bi-sensual, or bi-sexual may have dealt with all their feelings more, and have experienced gender in a more diverse way. That, in turn, may make them somewhat different that the “typical” guy.”

In my own life, I give men who self-identify as bi extra kudos.

It’s not a requirement for dating, it’s a nice to have, and it comes with my assumptions bi men will be more comfortable talking about gender and sexuality as fluid, and that they won’t just assume that male hetro-normative privilege thing automatically.

But most of all, I value men who identify as bi because they exemplify something I believe in and practice myself: you fall in love with the person, not the gender.

Do we really love people because they are male, or female, or because of who they are? And don’t we often love people because of the mix of masculine and feminine traits we see in them, regardless of what sex they were born?

In other words, aren’t sexual identity and gender actually choices we make and are really somewhat to fairly fluid?

I don’t think there are that many people in the world that believe that because Gavin Rossdale had a relationship with Marilyn, a trans-sexual singer, he doesn’t have a good relationship with Gwen Stefani, his wife. And it seemed pretty clear to everyone that when Lindsay Lohan fell for Samantha Ronson, she was drawn to the person, not the gender.

So, what’s the deal, yo? Would you date a bi guy? Yes—or no? Share in the comments, please.

Around the blogosphere:

Rachel Kramer Bussel, How Male Bisexuality Got Cool:

"Somewhat surprisingly, women, too, are increasingly open to dating—and are sometimes specifically attracted to—bisexual guys. In December, blogger Jocelyn Nubel wrote about dating a bi guy: “To be honest, I’d never before considered it a turn-on to picture a guy I’m into making out with another guy, but there’s just something about this one. He gets me so worked up, so sexually excited, and I guarantee if I saw that in action, it’d get me all hot and bothered.” That’s a far cry from Carrie Bradshaw’s reaction to the bisexual man she dated in an episode of Sex and the City nine years ago. In that episode, she goes to a spin-the-bottle party with him as the token straight girl, and even makes out with Alanis Morissette, but only so as not to seem like an “old fart.” Throughout the episode, Carrie and her friends make it clear that she finds the world of bisexual men to be disorienting and unreal. “I was Alice in Confused Sexual Orientation Land,” she muses, ultimately deciding she just can’t date someone who can’t pick a side."

Violet Blue: Does bisexual fakery ruin it for the rest of us?

"Straight people think girls are "experimenting" and it's acceptable. When they grow up to be women and declare their real, true bisexuality everyone gets all uncomfortable and wishes they'd just hurry up and choose a side already. Lesbians call them traitors or want to convert or bag them (trust me on this one), while straight dudes think it's hot as long as he's not threatened he's going to be replaced by a woman with masculine traits.

Meanwhile, men who state their sexual orientation as bisexual are pretty much either totally invisible (they might as well be unicorns)."

Feministing community: After Ellen's "The Trouble with 'Bisexual'" and why I am not a Cheeto:"

"Bisexuals are not Cheetos. We don't come with an expiration date. It's not like we go bad if we are not used in a timely fashion. I don't know where this idea came from, which I often see banded around in the lesbian and gay portions of our community, that if you haven't been actively dating both sexes concurrently and very currently, we are not really bi.”

Recently, as I’ve listened to my friend Amanda* describe her string of first and second (and very rarely third) dates with men she’s meeting mostly online on big dating sites, I’ve been thinking about how many of the more recent couples I have talked with have built their relationships out of friendships that unexpectedly turned into something more.

My friends Amira and Jacob, for example, worked together ten years ago, but never saw one another as anything but colleagues. Every so often, after each of them had moved on from the consulting firm, they got together for coffee. But finally, one night two years ago, what had been feeling like a get together between two old friends turned into what felt like a date. ”We were walking through the city, and it had gotten really late,” recalls Amira, who was raised Muslim, “ I looked at Jacob and realized I wanted to put my head on his shoulder. He put his arm around me, and we both realized something had changed.”

Jacob, an observant Jew, felt the same way. “Amira had grown up since I’d last seen her,” he recalls (he’s ten years older), “She had a seriousness about her and a depth that I felt very connected with. I needed to see where this could evolve.” After two years of dating, complicated by a cross-country move, the two turned into a committed, co-habitating couple, and, last month, decided to get married in the fall.

“I was definitely looking for someone, “ Amira says. “But I didn’t see Jacob as someone I could date—or love—until that night we got together. That was when I realized our friendship could be a lot more.”

“Did you think it would get as serious as it has?” I asked.

“No, not really,” Amira told me. “He was a great guy, but we were so different, I didn’t think it would work out. An then, it did.”

Listening to Amira, I thought about my own relationship with A, and how, almost two years ago and between boyfriends, I’d invited him over for dinner, as a friend. Even though I didn’t think he’d make good boyfriend material for me, I liked him, and felt we should get together before I got all caught up in dating (again).

Yet when A came over, and we started to talk, I had a wonderful time; sometime before the end of that night, I knew he’d touched my heart. Only, like Amira, I didn’t really think we were going to become serious with one other; at the beginning of it all, it seemed like what we wanted in a long term partner was NOT what we saw in each other.

“I thought you were amazing, and you got everything I said, right away,” A recalls, “But you were in a corporate job and I was political; I didn’t know about the activism in your earlier life, or that social change was part of your values.”

“And I didn’t think we’d really have as much in common as we do,” I said. “But you were my friend and I liked you.”

Like Jacob with Amira, A was dubious about where our dating might lead, but because we got along so well, he decided to see what could happen. “There was a moment, perhaps 7 months in, when I started feeling like things were going to work out,” A says. “It was when you said some things that showed you really got me, and you cared about my being happy.”

Are there signs that someone you consider a friend is better off as—or will someday become—partner material? Or is this one of those random things that sometimes flower and take hold, surprisingly enough?

In my case, there was the fact that while I didn’t consider A a boyfriend prospect, something about who he was totally touched my heart (not to mention I responded to his humor, kindness and smarts). For A, it was my intelligence and my bossy New York directness that caught his attention, and my deepening interest in activism and social change that helped hold it (his attention, that is.)

I think for both of us the fact we were friends—and didn’t think we’d turn into life partners—helped decrease the pressure to make things work out. In truth, we both secretly assumed they wouldn’t. A thought I’d get annoyed with his flaws and dump him, I thought he’d drift off to someone younger and more political. And yet, there was this good bond between us—and then somehow, it flipped--and we were falling in love.

My friend Amira describes something similar about falling in love with Jacob. Raised Muslim, she’d always been observant as a matter of habit, but the men she met through her family and culture, didn’t really click. Jacob, who was older, from a totally different faith and background, was fun to talk to, but not someone she’d ever considered—until that night when they stayed out late in the rain and friendship turned to something deeper, a bit more spicy (okay, way more spicy.)

In both cases, Amira and I agree, part of what hastened the ties with these men formerly known as friends was a recognition we share attitudes and values. A understood my ambition and my drive and had no small dose of it himself; I was drawn to his change the world politics and his determination to use his skills to make change happen. For Amira, Jacob shared a deep spirituality she hadn’t know they’d shared, and an appetite to experience life that fit her need to grown beyond her current world. For Jacob, Amira was someone with a fresh perspective, who met his intensity and his insights right where he was—and wasn’t put off a bit.

How do you know if you’re in a friendship that could go deeper? And if the timing’s right to make it happen? (In truth, THAT is the more important question.) Some good signs:

• You’re both ready to take a risk and shift your friendship and you’re able to talk about it. Together.
• You accept that dating might not work out and have a recovery plan, if possible. (This one you can keep to yourself.)
• X seems way more interesting to you than the other people available and you want to invest time in getting more connected.
• You’re building on the friendship you have, but somehow it feels like you are unwrapping a marvelous new confection in the process.

Have you married/dated/ fallen in love with a friend? What happened?

And what it made work—or didn’t? Share in the comments below.

Sex & Relationship posts around the blogosphere to note:

Content Dynasty, Jennifer Van Grove: Bad Form
“And in case you didn’t know, booty calls are bad form if a. you’ve never gotten booty before or b. it’s been more than 3 months since the last booty was had. Life moves quickly, and single people move on. Now you know (though I’m pretty sure you didn’t need me to tell you that).”

Feeling Flirty: 30 things a woman should have and know(by Pamela Redmond Satran)
By 30, you should have:

• One old boyfriend you can imagine going back to and one who reminds you of how far you’ve come.
• A past juicy enough that you’re looking forward to retelling it in your old age.
• One friend who always makes you laugh and one who lets you cry.
• A set of screwdrivers, a cordless drill and a black lace bra.
• Something ridiculously expensive that you bought for yourself, just because you deserve it.
• The belief that you deserve it.

Susan sez: There is TONS more in this great post.

Journey from BreakUp: Bedroom Blues
“Lon and I see each other for a couple of weeks, and during this time several things become clear. He is an amazing person and makes a great friend, he is HORRIBLE in bed. My initial response to the later realization was that it had to be MY fault. I mean, my ex-husband... well... he had issues, what with only being able to orgasm while standing up, masturbating, hand on my boob. Now, my FIRST sexual encounter after that is miserable, and sorely disappointing after doing such fabulous kissing. HOW CAN THIS BE?!”

Mistress M: All the Reasons Why
“Its like the shortest of all visits, and the simplest of all good byes remind me just how much I truly love this man. And when I am not sleeping next to him, how desperately I desire to be in his arms.”

*(Names and some details have been changed in this essay to protect people’s privacy)

First, about the addictive stuff, which you non-tech obsessives call the bad habits. When I heard that Jennifer Aniston had broken up with John Mayer because he said he was too busy to see her—but he kept posting tweets online—I knew that Jennifer Aniston, if in some alternative, bizarro universe we were dating—would have dumped me, too. You see, my love of the way technology keeps me connected to the planet mostly likely matches—or outstrips—John Mayer’s. (Maybe we should date?)

If you are dating me, you ARE dating my devices.

For starters, there is my Blackberry. No one could keep his or her Blackberry closer than I do, not even if it turned into a helpless little pocketbook dog. My Blackberry is so omnipresent and my checking it so regular that my friends and lovers are known to say “Put that Blackberry away now!” at least a few times a week. Just like a Japanese teenager in a shopping mall, I believe that my little hand-held machine, slipped into a jacket pocket, connects me to the world and keeps me from being cruelly alone (and bored; I crave a high amount of information, brain is restless.)

Truth is, I don’t see the tweets, the texts and the email scanning I engage in almost as frequently as breathing as a rejection of my sweetie and my pals, I see them as my chance to take hits of an Interwebs oxygen that keeps my blood gases stable, a virtual relationship CRM that—much to my shock—can make my real life significant other and my pals feel a little slighted. (“Uh, sorry,” I mumble, as I slip it back into my pocket.)

And then, there is my computer. It’s not that my MacBook Pro—now covered with stickers and a little banged up from 12 months of travel—is any different than anyone else’s—it’s that this little machine is the gateway to my LIFE. Email, blogs, twitter, facebook, writing, poetry, photos, music—they’re all crammed inside this machine, my very own looking glass and two-way mirror to Wonderland.

My machine is so much the parallel data port to my brain—and the gateway to my activities, work and social network—that I think of it, not the places I am at, as home. This means that if you’re not one of those people who likes to sit, computer out, and noodle on your laptop as you talk, I might drive you crazy because I like to do that at least 20% of the time, especially if we’re just hanging out relaxing in a room other than the kitchen or the bedroom.

And then there’s my Twitter. OMG, do I love twitter. Now, I admit, I’m not as big a fan of twitter as my friend Robert Scoble, who posts more than 20 times a day, or my friend Amy Gahran, who tweets almost as often, but I still love me my twitter stream, both the reading and the writing parts.

Jennifer Anniston may have gotten pissed by John Mayer’s addiction to his tweets, but my sweetie A doesn’t feel that way; he’s more bemused by what I find so fascinating in this endless stream of 140 character posts. For A, twitter isn’t vital information about 940 people I kinda “know,” it’s a kind of noise equivalent to watching a dog watch TV-totally superfluous and mostly boring. And yet, he doesn’t go there with me, thank God.

(And I don’t indulge in twittering our private moments, or during dinner, or while he’s ironing my suit, like Ashton Kutcher did with Demi Moore, or….)

Of course, not all devices are destructive to relationships. Some help them, or make them a whole lot more fun (smile).

When I told the BlogHer contributing editors I was writing this piece, they sent me links to stories of people who met and fell in love online (on twitter!), like Emily Chang and Max Kisler and Gwen Bell and Joel Longtine, or links to where women they know were getting it on discussing their sex toys and vibrators, like the Mommy blogging community Room 704, or the Momservations discussion featuring, uh, handcuffs.

In both of these use cases, if you will, tech is making things better—bringing couples together in public yet somewhat transparent ways to declare their love—and fueling what have to be, at the end of the day, well-researched vibrator recommendations.

That’s all good, of course, but what we need to acknowledge devices do even more keenly is provide virtual real world experiences couples can share. Whether it’s new music or funny videos on YouTube, naughty stuff on YouPorn (yep, just what it sounds like), or watching TV shows online via Hulu, lots of friends have stories about their new habits.

For me and A, there was the bout of Unchained Melody videos we watched obsessively as we both fell in love with that old song (and with one another), for my friends L &E, it’s the Hulu viewings of hit TV shows on the laptop late at night in bed when the kids are asleep; for my pal CG, it’s lots of doses of BattleStar Galactica with her sweetie and his friends(and his wife).

Another important point to note is that there are many ways in which online communication can drive fun and flirtation between couples that heats up real life. More than one person can testify about the heat quotient of sexy tweets and SMS.

At the same time, asynchronous communication makes active listening possible. My friend Marissa and her husband Greg have a whole set of separate email accounts where they discuss the operational aspects of their relationship, household, and kids. Asked about this, Marissa says “I think email has saved my marriage more than once.” What does she mean? “Greg and I are able to say things to one another via email, truth to power and all that, that would be really hard to share face to face, in real time. We rely on our email as an important supplement to real-world conversations.”

And then, of course, there are the people who are so into their devices—and into sharing the online experience—that they end up actually creating content—and products—that help express their relationship to one another in a more public way.

Sean Percival and his wife Laurie have lalawag, an LA tech and tech society blog they program just about daily. My friend Jim Brady, former WashPo editor and his wife Joan, a photographer, are currently in the midst of Fred and Hank Mark America, an almost real time chronicle of their cross country trip with their beagles Hank and Fred, exploring the country while Jim ponders what to do next. And sweethearts Melissa Gira and Nick Douglas, along with some good friends, have collaborated on the plans for boffery, a sexual map of who did what with whom and when that just may become the next topic for edgy mommy-bloggers, sometime real soon.

Is there a tech toy your partner has to pry out of your hot little hands? Or an electronic device (beside the Hitachi) you hide from your dates? Spill all in the comments, or say nothing, as you wish.

Items to relish from around the blogosphere:

Anaiis Flox: The Disconnect in the age of ambient awareness

“Steven Porricelli has never thrown his wife’s laptop out the window, but he’s wanted to.

“Technology is a necessary evil,” he told LifeWire about his wife, Jane, who runs MomGenerations.com. “She’s always texting in one hand and Twittering (an online social network and messaging service) on the other. I’ve woken up before and she’ll be zonked out in bed with the laptop on her lap. It’s insane.”

My husband can relate—and he’s not the only one.”

Au Revoir Goodbye So Long: Museum of my marriage
“I’m tempted to give my mother-in-law the marriage certificate, my ring, and the dress - humble as it was - for inclusion in her remarkable display: “A Marriage Dissolved but Ongoing In This House.” These artifacts might find their only use in further illustrating our once entwined life, as portrayed in image after image hung or propped in house. There we are on the mantle in Maine, Alex leaning against me. On the wall by the dining room table, we’re captured in all of our tight nerves on our wedding day. The fridge has me after Bea’s birth, flushed with love, and another of Alex in the park with Bea the day before Thomas’ birth. In a plexi frame on the bureau in the guest room, we’re posed with our dog, who is now decrepit. Along the stairwell, we stand in a tux and long black gown at his sister’s wedding, more dressed up and posh than ever before or since.”

Mistress M: Big Balls
“In case you have missed it, I am outspoken. I speak my mind. No one walks all over me, I am not a doormat….and if anyone dares not realize this I will de-ball them (assuming they belong to the male population of human society) and feed their balls to them. Simply because I want them to know that “Under no circumstances am I to be used as their punching beg.” Women are a whole another ball game. Most of them back down when they feel my sense of dominance. It’s just how I am programmed.

This alpha personality is mostly a learned behavior from past experiences, but I am just this way, to a serious fault I am a bitch”

Even though I don’t think channeling unseen entities from my past life as a peasant in Hungary 300 years ago is going to help me navigate sex and relationships any better, I do believe that looking back on my dating and friendship past lives makes me more insightful and smarter about what I’m doing today. Or, to put it another way, better I make some new mistakes, rather than the same old ones over and over.

You see, I am old enough now to recognize, that when it comes to both to boyfriends and best girlfriends, I have a habit of repeating myself. As daring or adventurous as I may be, I have themes that kinda repeat in my close friends and lovers.

My BFF Chef BJ is not so different in many ways than my best friend in college, the sultry Martina (name changed), whose head for business was always trumped by her bod for sin, as Melanie Griffin once famously said.

My BF A has more than a little bit in common both with my college flame, the future English professor J, whose idea of a good time was lounging around playing the Stones and reading Edmund Spenser’s “The Faerie Queen” aloud while drinking sherry-spiked tea or B&B.

The delight I feel today in the company of smart, beautiful women like my friends C, V, P and AVF has some true connections with how fun it always was back in the day to hang with my amazingly pretty sister N, whose beauty was matched by her sharpness, whether the mesmerized fellas hanging round got that or not.

And the fun I have with my anarchist friend C, my kickass mountain woman pal Amy, my buddy DZ and my home girl and business partner Lisa is a lot like what I felt planning adventures with my writer pal Barbara B in Brooklyn, when I was just out of college. Our forays around the city to visit Russian Brighton Beach, Mexican Sunset Park, and punk/Puerto Rican Loisada are not dissimilar to the scene and culture surfing my friends and I do now (except that now we explore new cities in different states en pack.)

Another feeling that hasn’t changed that much is the great love and tenderness and amusement and joy and anger and rage I often felt—all at the same time—for my little year old son Zach, who just didn’t stop crying and waking up every few hours till he was at least three (he got so frustrated cause he couldn’t do all the things he wanted to). I sometimes feel exactly the same things now, when I talk with my marvelous, smart and hard-working grown-up son Z, who’s managed to remain one of my favorite people on the planet not only because he’s my child, but because that same appetite for experience and learning (still) fills his heart.

In other words, while remembering my past lives from 200 years ago just gives me a headache, remembering people I’ve cared for in the past and understanding what they have in common with those in my life now just totally rocks.

The interesting exercise, IMHO, is to look at your past relationships, and look at your friends and lovers now and see what the lines are you can draw. Do you friends and partners come in types? Are there themes you can recognize? And if so, what are they?

My favorite friends are all unique, but I can see them in related ways. It’s not that they’re the same, far from it—but I do discern some themes.

• The man who wants to change the world, at least a part of it- I’ve dated or been close friends with more than one person who’s organizing principle was fighting racism, addressing social equity issues, or revitalizing their community; these themes speak to me.
• The smartass, sincere smart guy—As a former New Yorker, I also respond to those super-smart smartasses, especially the ones who are kind underneath the verbal whiplash.
• The beauty with brains: After a bunch of early years feeling I needed to prove how smart I was (like someone might miss it?), my friends who are comfortable with both beauty and their super smarts continue to win my admiration.
• The smarties and the geeks: My people. Always. Even if I don’t watch BSG, collect Girl Genius comics, catalog rocks/taxonomies/heirloom seeds, or obsessively create fermented wild yeast starter dough, people I am close to do those things, always.
• Survivors, every type: So many of the people I have been close to and/or admired have overcome all sorts of very real obstacles to become who they are and/or accomplish what they have.
• Fish out of water: There are always people that no one else really likes, who don't have the many friends, that I meet and think are wonderful, usually because they show me a private self. I try to manage my tendency to become smitten with these types. Is their transformation that thrilling? Or just in my imagination?

Back in 7th grade, when I went down to the elementary school playground, sat on the swings and so sweetly kissed my classmate Paul Cullen, it wasn’t a remembered past life memory that made that kiss so sweet, but that first innocent connection. And yet, when I started falling in love with A last year, it was amazing to recognize that while I loved him for the person I was getting to know, he also embodied bits of others I’d admired and cared for, my very own past life regression.

How do people you love and are close with today echo others from your earlier life? Are there types of friends you choose or click with over and over? Share in the comments, please.

Great posts from around the blogosphere this week

Lipstickeater: A Tale of two sisters
“My sister refuses to do corporate power drag for her day-job as a lawyer. For her, dressing close to androgyny is not a magic skin to force and power. Instead, she piles on a pound of eyeliner and steel-black eyeshadow. She’ll rarely wear her hair up—it’s always gently teased and flowing out like Cindy Crawford circa 1992. And then the stilettos. I’ve watched her in action in the courtroom and it’s pretty impressive: she is a sharp and thunder-voiced woman who displays great poise, calm, and logic in face of her opponents. When she combines these traditionally “masculine” traits with her overly feminine style, what you get is not androgyny but a dark, empowering femininity.”

Mimi in New York: The Real World, Venice Beach
“…I'm feeling the pinch. I'm really feeling the pinch. I've been feeling it for a long, long time and I'm so over people telling me I need a nice, stable, steady, secure income. I know I need a nice fucking stable income. We all need a nice, stable, steady, secure income, but a writer in a recession is like a tragi-fucking-comedy. It's like adding job insecurity to job insecurity to get added recessionary jobless hell. I've been trying to get a nice, stable, steady, secure job for about four years. You think I'm applying to serve you your morning latte for fun?”

Living somewhat dangerously: In which various verbs happen to me (NSFW)
"Hey, can I booty call you?

This instant message had appeared on my computer screen the previous Saturday night, and it was from Big Jake. We’d had sex a few weeks previously at a party at which I got so unbelievably drunk — Suffice it to say I had sex with Jake, and I was sorry I was not sober enough to enjoy it (or, who knows, not enjoy it). This was just before Christmas, and of late we’d been in touch."

The conclusion to the story I told them was “and I’m going to say I hope I have more than one meaningful relationship 10 years from now, and maybe that other relationship will be with someone like C.”

“Wow,” said AG.

“Are you going to say talk about who C is?” was A’s response.

“Not really,” I responded (you see, I have to keep some things private.)

While my primary relationship, and the one I hope goes on forever is with A, my partner, I don’t see our deep connection as precluding other meaningful relationships. I love A deeply, am thrilled and amazed we found one another, and would like to spend the rest of my life with him. But—at those cost of sounding like what my friend Christine describes as West Marin hot tubbers—I have to say I can’t believe that, ten years from now, I won’t also have other loved, wonderful people in my life. Like C, who I don’t know that well, but who I think is wonderful.

Of course, on one level, I am amazed I found A at all. After all, this relationship with A is fairly new. A and I will have been together two years come July. We’ve “been in love” for 15 months, and we’ve lived together, in a place we both moved to live in, for just 5 months. But before I was with A, I dated some great people, and before that I was married for twenty-something years. When my marriage ended, I didn’t expect I’d meet someone that I would want to live with, and here A and I are together, in the same house, and it’s all good.

But on another level, I know one of the reasons I fell in love with A is that we share similar values and outlook. We're both progressive, values-driven, identify as queer and non-monogamous, see sexuality as both personal and political, and want to build and participate in meaningful communities. As we grow older, say ten years out, I’d like to think that our ability to work together to meet our goals and build the life we each imagine only gets better.

For one thing, A and I want to live in community. Like our friends Raines Cohen and Betsy Morris, we’d like to find, or help create an intentional community in an urban area like Oakland where progressive dialogue and projects for positive social change happened every day. Ten years from now, I hope we are living in a community we helped to create, with a diverse and interesting group of people, making our community better.

Ten years from now, I’d also like to look back and note this month as the moment when A and I defied the odds and tackled our mutual issues with weight, emotional eating, exercise and making caring for ourselves a priority. We both have the habit of prioritizing work over working out, and we’re of an age it’s time to change that. It would be superb to look back at March 2009 as the moment when our resolve to exercise every day, go to the gym 3X a week, hike, bike and walk took hold in a consistent and meaningful way.

I’d also like to look back at the respect, compassion and trust with which we honor one another, and feel like that’s remained intact, and transferred to how we treat other people. There’s no question but that A helps me to be a better partner to him than I have been in the past to others, and that the love I feel from him keeps me centered and stable (along with the love and support of my family and son). His skill in communicating what he likes and doesn’t like—and sharing things that bother him—makes it so easy for us to talk together.

I know this isn’t something A can do with everyone, and it’s built on our mutual trust, but boy, do I l love it!

Ten years from now, I’d still like to feel like A is my best friend, my soul mate, my partner and lover. I hope the joy I feel when we cuddle up at night together is still there, and the endless interest in talking with one another.

But I’d also like to look back and recognize that there were other meaningful partnerships A and I had with others, both friends and lovers. These are people that I’ve yet to meet—or are just getting to know—but who I’d like to feel strongly about, and be deeply connected to. With A, and without, I want to develop and maintain new connections with people who touch my heart.

I’d also like to look back ten years out and say “Wow, we had fun!” As a workaholic who does too much, carving out time for fun, excitement and pleasure is super important to me, whether it’s a hike in the woods, a night listening to live music at a club, or a party with friends. Work is always there, but those bright spots of enjoyment are remembered and treasured. As a midlife person, I have a strong sense of Carpe diem, seize the day, which could also be translated from the Latin as Do it now, or else.

If I had ten wishes for the future for A and myself, what would they look like?

• We continue to have a deep honesty and really good communication between us.
• There is a deep and generous wish to help the other person be the best and most impactful that s/he can be that is still present
• The love, passion and compassion we have for one another has continued
• We’ve both come to terms with what we have been able to accomplish—and not accomplish in our lives—separately and together
• We’re successful in building those good health habits of exercise and diet we try to focus on; we’re going to need them as we get older.
• Being together continues to bring out our best selves
• We're committed and loving, but there is room for others if that is what we want
• Our lives together feel purposeful and truthful
• The work we help one another to do makes a difference in the world
• We love and honor our families, our friends, our communities and they feel that

Where do you think you and your partner(s) will be ten years from now? What would you change and what would you keep the same? Share in the comments or write a blog post, please.

Some blog posts on sex & relationships from around the ‘sphere this week:

Dating is Warefare: Wednesday Epiphany
“We spend far too much time fighting over stupid things like this that are clearly about something larger. And I think it has created a vicious cycle:
* I plan things.
* I ask him first to accompany me - he is my boyfriend after all.
* If he doesn't want to or isn't excited about it, he tries to postpone committing, assuming that telling me "no thanks" will make me angry.
* Meanwhile, I am getting angry about him pushing me off.

The new new plan: The Obstacle to my Happiness-Me
“My mother and I had a very difficult conversation about all of this today and confronted some difficult truths. I am being very passive with BFD, which is obvious to everyone. The closer we get, the more passive I am being. It is a struggle for me to physically reach for him, it is a struggle for me to share my emotions with him. My mother said, look, you have to overcome this — do not talk to him about it, just fix it, pretend if you have to, but fix it. The bottom line is that you are a victim of abuse and you have to be normal. You have to act as a normal person would to get where you want to be in your relationship. Once you act like that, you will be that.”

A divorce in the making: Coupling/Cuddling
"How does my desire for cuddling (and, don’t worry, more too….) size up with this environment of new positions, new partners, and open dalliances? I don’t want old fashioned in the way of inequality or misogyny, but I seem to be veering toward the middle to right-hand side of some sexual road. But is anyone else there? "