Eccentric Flower:199904/polyamory taxes and earrings
From Eccentric Flower
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april fourteenth polyamory, taxes, and earrings Poor Pamie. I feel so guilty. I told some of the usual suspects about her entry and comments thread on polyamory, and they started responding. I suppose I knew that would happen, but bear in mind that mouth organ has permanently sworn off talking about the subject - after several columns failed to settle the matter - because we just don't want to deal with it again. I shouldn't start an argument I myself don't want to have! Meanwhile my personal attitude on poly is conspicuously absent. That's for two reasons. One is that it's changed radically over the last two years - one of the few positive results that those mouth organ discussions have had. But it's also a negative result, which is the second reason. That wasn't very clear, I'm sure, so let's cut to the instant replay (now that the football leagues are allowing that again, I can dust off the phrase, right?) I love a lot of people; I fall in love at the drop of a hat. I could see myself having regular sexual relations with a number of people - although I'm old-fashioned about that kind of thing, believe it or not, and won't go to bed with someone I don't know very well. I don't know if I could spend my life, live in close quarters, with more than one person. I'm amazed that anyone can stand living with me at all, frankly. I am, in short, fertile territory for polyamorous ideals. But I am in a relationship with someone monogamous, someone who takes the position that without exclusivity the relationship loses that which makes it valuable and special. I think this idea has merits as well. In short, I'm torn, and it doesn't do for me to debate it further because the choice has been made for me anyway. In days of yore, my take on poly was fairly negative. Like the rhyme says - Hogamous higamous - I noted that the people espousing poly were mostly male, and therefore concluded that men were using "I'm poly" as an excuse, as a concealer for "I want to screw around and not commit to anyone." To a certain extent, some men probably are still using it that way, but I have learned there is much more to poly than that. (It helps that of my online friends, the three biggest poly boosters I know are all female.) Unfortunately, now that I'm stripped of that quick-fire dismissal, I have to acknowledge that polyamory is something which I occasionally desire and something that I can't have. And if Nonelvis kills me after reading this, it'll serve me right, but I'm not going to lie in my own journal. - - - Romper bomper stomper boo, I hope everyone's been a Do Bee and has sent in their returns. I myself have been rather delinquent - I mailed them late last night - but I have an excuse of sorts; I wouldn't have waited so long if it hadn't been for the fact that I knew I could send them in via telephone, which takes me about twenty minutes from the time I sit down with the W-2s to the time I hang up the phone. So of course I learned on Monday that I could not, in fact, use the phone - I had a total withdrawal from my former employer's retirement plan, one which I wanted to be sure was properly listed since I had taken great care to have taxes removed from it at the time (not wanting to get stuck with a huge bill for unpaid taxes on a three-thousand-dollar lump-sum payment). This necessitated a 1040A, which - thank heavens - I was able to get at the eleventh hour. In doing so, I learned that I actually prefer to file a paper return instead of phoning it in. I like to be able to look up the numbers and check them myself, to have a sheet when I'm done that shows all the math. Call me a Luddite, I suppose. I don't think the IRS is cheating people over the telephone, of course, but I am known to be paranoid with my money. - - - I've finally reached a decision on gender. I had my ears pierced this evening, and I felt so happy afterwards! I realized what I have been suspecting for weeks - that I may not actually want to be female so much as I want the freedom to wear the trappings. If I can improve my mood 200 percent or more by simply shaving, putting in contacts, making my hair pretty, and getting earrings - and let me tell you, I was walking on air on the way home - why do I need more? I can do the job with what's available to me. This is partially the result of my long conversation where I realized that my personality-trait issues and my gender issues were unrelated. Who knew the gender issues would be the more easily solved of the two?
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