The Duchess J., Part II

Where were we? We last left our adventurers in bed, post-tent-orgy and jealousy-tremor, at Burning Man. Let a day or two pass. It's Wednesday; we've been on-playa for nearly three days now, and haven't seen the Duchess since Monday night. Wednesday morning, Princess P is in a decidedly grumpy, depressed mood, for no apparent reason.

It's not something that happens to me often, so the brain searches for reasons. I had had an unusually grumpy morning the day we left for Black Rock City, too, and the moods could possibly be attributed to the fact that I had started a new pack of birth control pills immediately after finishing the hormone pills from the last pack, so I didn't get the week of placebos to have a period in (I was to be bleeding for nearly all of Burning Man, and did not relish the thought of packing all my bloody tampons & pads home with me.) Hormonal issues? But I digress. I was unhappy.

Prince B had plans to take his cycling contraption out for a spin around the city alone; I had a date with a different long-distance lover for the afternoon. The Prince tried to cheer me up for a bit, but recognizing that it didn't seem to be helping, I gave in to my mood and shooed him away, tears still inexplicably in my eyes.

I calmed down a bit and hunted up my date, Han, who was camping across the way. We had a nice time touring the city. My mood slowly improved as we played on the merry-go-round, had an iced coffee (heaven, in the desert!) surrounded by the peace of Starfucker's Oasis, and napped on a bed facing a still-being-constructed dance dome floor. We decorated ourselves with patriotic regalia for a parade, danced to the Burning Band's flaming tuba solo, got too hot, got hungry, went back to camp.

As soon as I got back to my camp, I knew I had returned too early. I knew this because A) Prince B wasn't back yet and B) I knew with certainty that he had gone to visit the Duchess without me and without telling me about it in advance, and the realization revived my insecurity and my worry and my morning's bad mood. I didn't want to mope around camp waiting for him to come back, but dinner was imminent and I didn't want to miss it. So I paced around camp like a caged tiger, not really able to be part of any conversation, not really able to do anything particularly productive or engaged, until the Prince returned. When he did, he was glowing with cheerful enthusiasm and full of bubbling happy stories about what he had done. I noticed that he didn't mention seeing the Duchess, so I asked, and then he told me about what a great time he'd had with her.

Sigh. I'm sure he would have gotten to it if I hadn't asked. But the fact that he didn't lead with it made me suspect that he was aware it would hurt my feelings, which it did, and that made the hurt worse. Sigh.

My already-wonky mood spun out into real badness. I haven't felt jealousy like this before or since. I felt betrayed, angry especially because when we had been talking on Monday I had specifically mentioned that him visiting her without me would be something that would put me on shaky ground. I never meant for him not to be able to do such a thing, and I supported his ability to do so, but damn it, it would have been nice for him to check in with me about it first rather than going off, probably already having a good idea that he would visit her, leaving me in a dangerously bad mood, and not telling me in advance what he was considering.

Here's something that I'm discovering about jealousy for me--when I feel like a part of the process ("How do you feel about me having sex with Pixie right now?") it's always easy to say yes, and the resulting action causes no harm to my psyche. When I feel like things are out of my purview, I get threatened. I'm not necessarily proud of this. But it's an easy fix--just let me know what you're about to be up to. For most things, that puts me back in a generous mood. But perhaps it makes spontaneity more difficult, and I don't wish to curb the spontaneous! So when the urge strikes and it isn't convenient to check with me, for goodness' sake do what you want--and make a point of telling me as soon as is feasibly possible, include me in the experience by sharing the story with me, and that works too, passably well. I bet there are other people out there built like me.

Here's another thing I notice about this jealousy: Prince B has had several other partners at this point. None of them have inspired in me this kind of pain, or, in fact, any jealousy at all. The Duchess is different partly because I'm smitten with her myself--and I wanted to be part of this interaction, and wasn't sure how, and at this point in the week was highly uncertain of my place in all this. The main connection with the Duchess seemed to be through the Prince, and it was envy as much as jealousy that I was experiencing, a powerful feeling of being left out of something that I wanted too. I didn't know if she wanted me, I didn't know if it was my place to go out and try to forge a relationship with someone who already had a connection to my boyfriend--would I be rejected, or, worse, tolerated for the sake of maintaining good relations but secretly not really desired?

This was the nadir, the hardest moment so far in my relationship with Prince B, and fortunately it only lasted an evening.

Anyway, yeah, so I was hurt real bad. I cried for an hour, got mad, got depressed. I don't remember everything the Prince and I talked about. By the end of our conversation, though, I was feeling better. I was resolved to hunt the Duchess out on my own the next day, let her know everything I'd been feeling in the past few days, spend some alone time with her, see what happened. Clear the air. My trust and faith in the Prince was restored, we were continuing to work out the kinks in this system (no pun intended), we'd figure things out by getting them wrong occasionally. I was sheepish for being so sensitive, but I'd vented and felt better.

Our camp was doing a group excursion that night, and we had talked long past the time for getting ready. They were calling impatiently for us to come out of the tent and join them, which we finally did.

But despite my newfound lightness, Prince B's expression was dark--and though most of our camp was consumed with hilarity, silliness, his steps were slower and slower, his face tired. I dropped out of the revelry to talk to him, and soon we were trailing behind the rest, trudging along in our silly costumes, and ultimately we left the party entirely to talk.

Prince B was upset for having hurt me. He'd had a great time with Duchess J, had come back to camp full of excitement and glowing happiness and the thrill of the new flame, and my unhappiness had firmly quenched his exuberance. It's not worth it, he said. If poly is going to bring this misery down on our heads whenever something special comes along (and this case was different from either of our separate casual affairs to this point; somehow this was obvious to both of us), then it isn't a good thing. His momentary happiness had thoroughly soured, and now it was my turn to feel guilty for taking that joy away from him with my pain.

Don't give up, I urged him. This sample size is too small, and it won't always be like this; we're working it out. I'm not done trying.

He said he wasn't giving up either, just feeling discouraged. And so, repeating the substance of this conversation over and over in different ways, we wandered through the surreal landscape of Black Rock City at night. Everybody lit up bright colors, wrapped in EL wire. Huge flamethrowers spouting fire nearby and miles away, clearly visible through the night; bikes whizzing by; art cars rolling serenely across a sealike smooth desert floor, spotlights raking the dust in the air, thump-thump-thumps of dance music drifting to our ears from half a dozen different playa nightclubs at once. We wandered and talked until we stopped feeling so bad, and then we wandered and talked until we started feeling even better, and then we realized that it was dark and we were away from most of the crowds and we were horny as hell. We stopped in the midst of a thicket of noisy white flags, blowing in the night breeze; we lay down on the dust of the playa, cuddled, kissed, and ultimately discreetly fucked, there under the white flags and the stars, with Black Rock City moving and shaking and thumping and gliding around us. One passing art car spotted us and gave us a randy cheer. A bicyclist whizzed past inches from Prince B's head, not even seeing us. We finished, happy, dirty, exhausted, reconciled, and wandered the city a little more before bed with clear minds and hearts. Oh, if only every fight we have ends so simply, we have found paradise.

The next day I went to find Duchess J at her camp. Joy in my heart, there she was--and so were many other friends, SweetD and Rawr and DOL and his girlfriend Genius and more. All people I know and love and would love to spend time with, but all I wanted was to extricate the Duchess. I invited her to explore the temple with me, and she agreed, and miraculously we escaped the crowd of people I love without any awkward yes-we're-going-to-the-temple-no-you-can't-comes.

So we biked out together, and had our first real one-on-one conversation since the one we'd had when we first met at Pinto's party, so long ago now, emotional lifetimes ago. Suspicion confirmed: the woman's amazing. She's smart and perceptive and thoughtful and appreciative, opinionated, educated, beautiful. We talked, reached the temple, sat in the sun. Many people wanted to photograph us; we let them. I was happy and relaxed and self-conscious at the same time, proud to be out with this woman, looking for a way to cut through all our interesting theoretical conversation about art and talk about the personal, not finding it yet.

We rode our bikes to a camp called Home, aptly named, a welcoming shady mansion of a place with couches and coffee tables and cuddly places, wallpaper, chandeliers, seriously. The moment came and she seized it first--asked me about the moment on Monday night, described in the previous Duchess J post. Did I have my arm around her already? I can't remember now. I told her about my feelings on Monday and a little less about my feelings on Wednesday. I mentioned that I had never felt jealousy like this before and she asked me why, and I told her that it was because I had never wanted to date one of Prince B's girls too, and that seemed to go over well, and we got to kissing, and that was wonderful. Just wonderful. And most of my worries about not being desired were released, and that was nice too.

We ran into SweetD and Rawr at the sno-cone giveaway we stumbled into after that. And that was a lovely reunion too--spending time with all these people with whom I had reached a level of physical intimacy that was comfortable and rewarding and exciting and clear. Rawr had recently been naturalized into the Bunny Nation, and she wore bunny ears and facepaint, which she got all over our faces when she kissed us goodbye. I invited Duchess J back to camp for dinner. She said yes.

The story goes on, and gets better and better, but there'll have to be another post or five about it, because it is way past a Princess's bedtime. Love to anyone reading this. There's lots to go around.