Shades of red and AP

4:30pm 2/3

Another airplane entry, this time on Continental 523 enroute to Houston, headed tonight to Huntsville, Alabama?. Coral and cerise light bathes the Grand Canyon and Lake Powell underneath our wing. The surrounding high plateaux are snow-covered, so it looks rather like a cherry-ice-cream-and whipped-cream sculpture, although with striations on the walls (toothpaste? Never mind). Another awe-inspiring, speechless sight, that I hope I never take as granted. The Super Bowl is going on, back on the ground, and I don?t care. And alt.polycon is over by now (given that it is after midnight in Brighton). No ?we?re at the con and having a great time? postings have been apparent, this time, so I wonder how it all went.

Temptation Island is a mono dating exemplar?

Yesterday I went over to rmjwell 's house and watched "Temptation Island 2" videos with a small group of poly people. Having never seen the program before (I rarely watch TV) it was amusing to pick out the mainstream stereotypes and (from a poly view, IMO contrived) issues. Lots of foam-football-throwing fodder "...but, I never thought other people's feelings would be affected!" (shaking head) that seems to be the whole point of the program, playing emotional mindgames. Lots of beautiful bodies (it's TV), but none particularly bright or creative.

Easy to dismiss. But... underneath, something unsettling lurked for me. I think it was from watching "singles in action" in a conventional, mono social setting. Strange and alien to me, watching these people eye and warily assess and circle and flirt, looking just in case The Right One is out there. Or at least The Better One. It reminded me of job fairs for some reason. Mono dating. What a concept. Even if one has a good time with X, once it is apparent that they aren't The Right One (and can't be molded), no more dates are forthcoming. On to the next MOTAS. And the next. It seems so.... so high-school-like. And these are reasonably mature adults in their 20s and early 30s.

I'm rather glad I've never had to plunge into that kind of environment, having never dated, per se. In high school, I was too geeky and mascot-like... I did try to ask various girls out, getting turned down or stood-up 34 consecutive times at one point when I was 18 (persistence is not always rewarded :-). In college, hardly anyone dated (too much work at MIT, and the male-female ratio was 5:1). I met Pat, and we got married. That was it. No other girlfriends, no existence as a single person outside of college. So the Temptation Island (-like) party scene just seems strange to me, and its rules (The Rules?) either obscure or marginally juvenile.

But I wonder if I've missed anything important by skipping all of that when I was a 20-something... sometimes I've heard 4th-hand complaints in poly "dating" that I'm glacially slow to make any move, miss obvious cues, and seem awkward flirting face-to-face. Usually relayed as passing humorous comments by third-parties, or affectionately post-facto by sweeties. Oh, well... better that, than years spent maintaining a façade of vacuous "hey baby heh" posturing (referencing the insidious current song).

Time to go get on another airplane...