Two girlfriends

Sometimes it is strange having two girlfriends.

I mean, it's not like I spend a lot of time thinking about it, most days. Most days I go placidly about my business: doing work for the professional association I've joined (now that I am unemployed and maybe retired), exercising or eating right (I was better about that last year, but I'll improve again tomorrow ... or, well, any day now), writing blog posts for my professional blog (under my own name) or for this one here, squandering hours reading bullshit I find on the Internet ... you know, all that sort of thing.

And of course it's easier for me to ignore the situation because neither of them lives nearby. Hell, neither of them lives in the same state.

But once in a while I look at the calendar:

• Last December, Marie visited me here. [No posts to link. Sorry.]
• Then in February, I visited Marie at her place.
• In May, Debbie visited me here.
• Two weeks ago, I visited Debbie at her house. Also at that time, she invited me to join her for a cross-country road-trip in August.
• Next week I'll visit Marie again at her summer vacation home.
• Then there's August, in case I accept Debbie's invitation.

What's going on?

In theory, it's easy. Marie is my girlfriend (meaning that we fuck). Debbie and I are just-good-friends (meaning that we don't). Easy, right?

Except that the just-good-friendship between me and Debbie has been acquiring ever more romantic overtones for a while now. [Do I really have to give references? OK, try here, here, here, and here as examples.] I make a point of telling Marie every time I visit Debbie and everything we do; but it's clear that Marie feels a little in awe of Debbie and therefore a little threatened by her, no matter how many assurances I give her.

Where am I in all of this? What do I actually want?

I want both of them, of course. Or, more exactly, I want both of them to love, and neither of them to live with. There are plenty of reasons that I wouldn't want to submerge myself in a union with either of them. (A single example for each: with Debbie I couldn't drink, or nowhere near as much as I do today; with Marie I'd be constantly managing her anger over politics. There are surely other reasons as well, for each of them.)

Is that an option? Can I have what I want (i.e., have them both), clearly and above boards? Probably not. I haven't discussed it with either one, but the whole weight of our cultural expectations is against it.

It's late at night. I'm tired and drunk. I don't know how to wrap this up. Suffice it to say that the situation is a little confusing just now.