mmmmcdx

Move in with us!
          —John Ashbery

Oh, sure. I remember the
San Francisco to which I
moved, coming from
a supposedly much more

uptight Boston. The year
was 2000. Easy enough.
Times were Clintonian.
And perhaps that could

have been the problem,
in hindsight. Although
he would stay in office,
despite infidelity. Any

way, I was in an open
relationship. It had
been a way. Nothing
all too new. But if

things grew flirtatious
with a relative stranger—
which would not too often
happen, truth be told—

and I inevitably began
to explain, so as to allay
any problematic, that I
was in an open relation

ship (I’d say, We’re com
mitted but we sometimes
date other people.), I mean,
the contortions, the disbelief

on the faces of those attractive
strangers. Some would literally
leave then and there. Others
would sternly suggest they would

want nothing of that. Still others
were curious but skeptical. Would ask
all sorts of questions about the
logistics of such an arrangement.

And I thought I had moved to
the most progressive city in
the nation. I was stunned.
And so I spent the next

couple of years doing a
lot of explaining and rarely
anything else, if you know
what I mean? Now that I

don’t participate in this
dance, it appears from
the outside looking in
that things may have

changed. So I ask you,
Have they? Really? I’m
insterested. Not that I
would ever step back in

to that fray, but more ob

serve, let’s say, as I do,
from a cultural anthrop
ological angle. The

mating ritual always
having piqued my
interest, and still
does, even as the

actual mating itself,
especially that of the
more nontraditional
nature, has long

seemed most often
to require much more
effort, overwhelming
whatever the potential

outcome might, if things
were in any way to go
in a hopeful direction,
surely be.