elfs | Memories that won't let go.

Once upon a time there was a beautiful and lonely girl named Ermine who was married to a man named Ogre. At first, I thought his was a cutesy nickname associated with the fact that he was a huge man with disproportionately larger hands. He seemed a gregarious enough fellow.

I rather liked Ermine. She was a charming and artistic woman with lovely hair and, to be honest, she was more stacked than the Library at Alexandria. I was at a party-- great Ghu, almost ten years ago-- when I ran into her for the third time in as many years, and we were chatting animatedly and perhaps she was flirting with me. Omaha insists that she was; if so, I didn't notice.

At one point, she was distracted by other needs and I was left alone. Ogre noticed an opening and approached me with an offer. "So you like her, huh? You can have her, if I can have Omaha."

I must have done a good job of keeping the shock off my face. I managed to say that I did not make those kinds of decisions for Omaha, and that if he wanted her he could always ask her himself. He seemed a bit crestfallen, as if his interpersonal skills simply would never be up to the task of impressing Omaha into bed.

The real truth is that was Ermine and Omaha who wanted to end up in bed together, without Ogre or I there to watch. They did, many years and Ermine's divorce later.

But Ogre's comment was so outrageous that it has not only stayed with me all of these years but it has seriously tainted many of my interpersonal relationships. Anything that smacks of "swapping" or has the barest hint of quid-pro-quo squicks me.

Omaha and I have had a mutual interest in other people that often come the form of couples-- I like her (or him), and Omaha likes him (or her). It's simply convenient that we double-date, even if we go our own ways. But the convenience factor rarely overrides the quid-pro-quo impression such arrangements bring, and I'll spend days afterwards analyzing that night into knots just to reassure myself, one way or another, that I wasn't trading on Omaha's willingness and loveliness just to have my own fun.

(I know already that she'll proclaim loudly that I can't do that. Well, I know that. But knowing that, and feeling true to that knowledge, are two different things.)