Two close encounters

We got back from our trip this evening. I'll write about the main events--the museum visits--later. But before too much more time passes and the details start getting fuzzy, I want to write about the visits to Sheryl and her girlfriend, Trisha, Thursday afternoon and also the PolyOut meeting I attended in Madison Friday night.

I had planned the visit in Oshkosh to take Sheryl and Trisha out to supper and also so I could meet Trisha and "talk about things" with Sheryl. Trisha is a nice woman from Alabama, slightly heavy-set, and I'm guessing she's about 50. Pretty face and beautiful dark hair. Heavy Southern accent; she was living in Alabama when she met Sheryl, and she said she has lived in that region all her life.

First, we had to figure out a problem with Scott's DVD player, which wasn't sending a signal to his TV. It's complicated by a cable box. Eventually, Trisha figured out the problem, and the four or us (me, Janet, Sheryl and Trisha) were on our way to Golden Corral's big buffet, at about 4:45 or so.

Sheryl and I sat across from each other, and she explained the overall problem.

Scott has had a drinking problem for years, she said, and it has been getting worse lately, to the point of blackouts and passing out. When he gets drunk, he gets verbally abusive, and two of them have many differences. On top of that, she said, he looks at porn a lot, and she doesn't like that, especially when joins her in bed after. She thought adding another woman to the household would make bed more exciting for him without the porn.

I knew that Sheryl had left Scott before, a month or two after she first met me in 2005. She was gone about six months, first in Wisconsin and later in Ontario. I remember that well--I visited her twice during that time. What I didn't know is that she had also left him before she met me--a year or two earlier, when she went to Washington. Since she returned from Ontario, they have been together four years. Now they are separated a third time.

About the drinking, she said he was better when the kids were young and in the house. I think she said he stopped drinking entirely for a time. But after Art (the youngest son) graduated and left the house, things got progressively worse.

Through it all, she said, Scott has consistently denied that there are any problems, either with drinking, with porn or with the marriage.

She said she was so happy when Trisha returned from Alabama. There was so much stress while she was gone, she said, that she was having several panic attacks a day.

Now that she is living apart from him, she is hoping to regain her health, meditate more, give up smoking and go back to a vegetarian diet.

That's most of it. We were at Golden Corral about 1 1/2 hours or so. I drove them back to the house, we had a few last hugs, and then we left for Milwaukee.

We stayed on the NW side of Milwaukee, went to the museum the next morning, spent three hours there and then drove to Madison, where that poly meeting was held at 7:30 p.m. Friday. Our motel was on the NE side of Madison, and the meeting was close to downtown and the state capitol. The rain that had fallen much of the day had subsided, but there was still drizzle and low clouds.

The meeting was held in a mini-mall, in the local GLBT outreach office. It was a large room with bookcases along the walls and furniture in the middle for reading and discussions. I think there were up to 15 people at the meeting--a bi group was meeting in a back room.

The official topic was "Being poly in a monogamous world." At first they were talking about things like not being able to use "couples" specials at restaurants (when three are eating together). Then it turned to more serious matters like advance directives, personal representatives and power of attorney. Laws are made on the premise that there is a single spouse--and with poly couples, that isn't always the case. Parental matters with schools were also discussed.

Before long, I had to jump in with my experience up here. How many of you have lived in a very small town with very narrow minds? I talked about how I stay deep in the closet up here. That led others to talk about their small-town experiences. One woman is from Sayner, WI, which is was far north in Wisconsin, not too far from us. Now she lives in Madison and is happy. She talked about the atmosphere in small towns. A man talked about his experiences in Arkansas and the fear he occasionally felt.

Others talked about how they have to carefully hide a major, important part of their lives from nearly everyone else, how they are concerned about their jobs and their livelihoods if the word gets out to the wrong person, about concerns about their families, their children and family members who just don't understand and can't accept something different from the life they have lived.

Many noted how similar this is to what gays and lesbians have to deal with. Others noted that there's a double standard at work: It's much more socially acceptable for women to be bi, than it is for men. And it's much more socially acceptable for men to have multiple partners (i.e., cheating) than it is for women. Several of the women at the meeting noted that women were behind the growth of polyamory and are its most ardent supporters, in part because it emphasizes equality and respect for both sexes and all partners.

There were other topics and talking points that I just can't remember at the moment. It's getting late, and it's been a long day. The entire meeting lasted 90 minutes; it ended at 9 a.m. I said good-bye, shook a few hands, said I hope to attend another meeting, maybe in a year or two, walked back to my car and drove back to the motel.

Oh, one other thing. While driving to and from the meeting, I passed a club that boasted it had "burlesque" inside. That one word, in large, black-on-white letters. Oh, how I wish I could have seen that! It sounds like so much fun. But it's fun only if you're with someone. I wasn't. So I just drove past and gave it a longing look. Maybe. Someday.