And in the Darkness Bind Them...

The Ring. Simple, yet attractive, yet it may consume your mind. It took nearly all my energies to forge, and invested into it is all my will and power. It is impervious and everlasting, yet with it will I ensnare my mortal prey?

Hear my story...

The Forging of the Ring

Ah, The Ring itself... a Ring of Power, my bid for something everlasting, perhaps mortal doom.

I thought it fitting that I would design The Ring myself. Was I building my own shackles, chains I would curse forever? Or was it constructing my own Stargate™ to an unimagined and better world? Either way, it would be a thing of my own construction, something I might damn or bless with my heart and soul, but definitely a product of my thought... which felt right.

Jenny had no rings (a few earrings, three necklaces and two watches was her full collection of jewelry when I met her!), so surreptitious ring sizing was tricky. But doable to a man of my means. It was mostly a matter of carefully calibrated digital camera shots.

The Ring itself was simple. Not too ostentatious in size: an internally-flawless, D-colored, slightly blue-fluorescing, 2.2 carat, round ideal cut in a simple platinum setting. I had no markings or engravings whatsoever (including removing those obnoxious markings that verify platinum content and so on). Simple, clean, pure, and honest.

Sorry, no red diamonds at $1 million per carat. No fancy vivid blues at $500k per carat. No 8 carat flawless white with pink diamond surrounds. No special hand-cast designer setting. Nope... move along, nothing to see here... Even going over two carats might have been a little large given the size of Jenny's fingers because I wanted it to be an every-day ring; no separate wedding band.

Well, so it wasn't two months pay, but DeBeers can shove that advertising up their asses. (I am eager to see the continuing advances artificial diamond technology give the cartel their comeuppance, which, to my mind, started when Argyle left the cartel and control of Russia was lost... but this has yet to fully play out.) And let's keep things in perspective: The Ring cost more than the family home I lived in for most of my life. (Hmm, by coincidence, I called my old home Imladris, and in Tolkein that was a place where The Ring could not remain hidden. What does that mean? No idea. Back to the story...)

The Ring design was so simple that I decided to build a custom ring case. Something special. I used an online computer aided manufacturing system. Very neat: you design whatever 3d thing you want using a computer software package and they ship the finished product to you from their cutting, milling and routing machines. Wave of the future, man. I'm going to do all my stuff this way.

The exterior design had few constraints: originally the case only had to fit the internal ring cushion insert (which is a standard size). But since these inserts were generally of such ugly colors, I later made an angled concentric internal ring post that would fit in the same space. The post curved upwards to show the diamond to good effect. I made the two pieces out of solid blocks of titanium, just because it seemed cool. And in a foot-in-mouth emergency, I could make up some poetry about our hearts "taking flight," or some such romantic nonsense.

I had to send the whole thing to another place for final polishing and such (for example, I had to glue a small strip of leather to the bottom of the post to keep the ring from rotating diamond-down, which required a small post-milling modification), but it was almost all done online.

And that was The Ring and the Ring Bearer.

The Quest

It was hot and wet, conditions I don't like in my weather. I was fumbling with The Ring in my pocket, still trying to sort out the different combinations of possible venues I had set up for The Ask. Days away, but close, too close to mind.

There was a possibility she would say no. Her opinions on marriage were well known to me, as were mine to her. But they were always in a different context. We had alluded to something long term, but the Experiment meant that any direct question would result in The Answer. I am a romantic at heart. I wanted to "pop" the question, so I hadn't asked. But I had a feeling the response would be favorable.

So there I was, in a car cooling off from the sweltering heat, trying to finalize The Ask. The restaurant where we first went out the night of our first unsuccessful kiss? At the Jazz Club where we had our first real date the night of our first successful kiss? The very uncomfortable path, funny in hindsight, to our first sexual encounter at the basement club of the Ritz Carlton? Something related to our first trip together?

I wanted something symbolic. It was also nice to acknowledge the odd history that brought us together, but that was the easy part. I had already prospectively secured a variety of reservations and arrangements in suitable venues. I only had to cancel the ones I wouldn't end up using. So really it was the symbolism that was tough. Besides The Ring itself, of course.

But to develop something symbolic, I first had to identify the thematic elements of our relationship. Fortunately I had determined a theme previously: carrying light into darkness. That would establish the elements of The Ask.

And that made it clear where it should happen. In the dark corners of an intimate jazz club where we had a breakthrough discussion on the role of truth in our relationship. When, after knowing each other for a scant month, I asked her what she saw in our future, and she told me that it seemed likely it would end in pain for her, that the odds were long, and she didn't like to compete with other women for my attention, and so many other things that would ordinarily be so difficult for a woman with so much pride. The night we opened up in a new way, a truthful way, laying bare our fears as well as our hopes. And, to be truthful, the night that ushered in a new age of arguments and fights as we tried and sometimes failed to avoid using that information to hurt each other. But as a watershed point in the relationship, it was most symbolic of the theme of carrying light into darkness.

One Ring to Find Them

So let's establish the setting.

It is the anniversary of our first date. I have rolled up several other anniversaries, our first meeting, our first kiss, and so on, and set Jenny's expectations that we'll have a night out revisiting some of those locations. The same room at the same sushi restaurant for dinner. The same seats at the same theater (which was amazingly difficult to arrange). Ditto the song bar and the karaoke room. The aforementioned jazz club. And the same hotel room. It's going to be an all nighter.

That is special enough to defuse her suspicions, if any.

But there's more. In a country where stretch limos are rare, I have hired the newest one in the country (I should know, it's my damned limo company that bought it). I don't go for a superstretch, because in part I can't get to several of the places we need to go if the car is too long. But it's stretched enough to impress.

The evening goes well. I will spare you the many little details and surprises. It culminates at the jazz club where we first plighted our troth to truth and honesty. I have already announced our love, at an earlier venue where I had arranged to go up to the microphone and in my halting command of the language, tell the audience how I felt about Jenny. I talked about how we had met in this place a year ago, how we had loved and fought, how she was my companion and lover, and how much I looked forward to eternity. Asians are suckers for romance. Many came up afterwards and asked if we were engaged yet. Jenny enjoyed my semi-public declaration of love, but maybe she felt a little unfulfilled given all the questions about engagement. So it was a good set up for the jazz club.

It is very dark. There is one narrow beam halogen light above the jet black table, so narrow that it illuminates the center of the table and not the seats. It is dimmed low. The band has long since retired, replaced with canned music. We are happy, slightly tipsy, our talk orbiting the manner of our meeting, some memories, some memories to be.

At some point I put my suit jacket back on, just before a small cake comes out, decorated with a single candle for our anniversary.

We eat it although I am as nervous as I have ever been. I now remember how strange it felt.

The cake is hollow, and within it is a white shell of meringue. I turn up the halogen, which shines directly upon it, bright enough to light our faces with reflected light. Jenny cracks it, and within is the polished titanium Ring Bearer. For a moment she is confused, but then she gasps and turns to me, eyes shining. I remove the Ring Bearer, shake it off, open it for her, dammit forget to hold it under the light, then remember and move it to the center where the diamond catches the halogen and throws off light in all directions.

I take a deep breath. I remove The Ring, kneel by the table (dark), place the ring upon her finger (trembling), look at her eyes (moist), and Ask her.

Her assent is her hug, her kisses, her tears. It is surreal: the staff have gathered behind us and applause and best-wishes come to us out of the darkness.

And so, poetically, there in a world of darkness, we were bound in our house of light.

The next day, an uncharacteristic private flight for a few days in Bangkok where I had checked out only 10 days before. (By the way, if you can avoid it, do not, N-O-T fly a private jet into Bangkok's main airport. It has one of the most poorly run airports in Asia.) We stay in an overlarge suite at the Peninsula (overlarge = it had a dining room, living room, study, two bedrooms, kitchen, a place for a guard, and possibly other rooms not within walking distance), but a great rooftop deck with a hot-tub and a spectacular view.

And by coincidence, there were plenty of fireworks that night. We pretended they were celebrating our evening... and laughed as we considered them as a web of light in the night sky.

Sidebar: You're So Special

Let's skip ahead: yes, I am engaged.

But funny thing... I haven't told my best friends yet, but I've told a bunch of people online I don't really know. Like you, the reader.

The simple reason: I'm afraid. Very afraid.

I'll admit it: I am outright terrified of giving my friends too much time to plan the bachelor party. I made those guys too rich and too idle... and I have given them too much reason for revenge. This, for example. And this. And others that were psychologically far worse, and that I haven't blogged for the sake of privacy.

Oh, yes, and these friends aren't idiots. So they may already have anticipated my engagement and are already sharpening their knives. In fact, I haven't heard a lot from them recently...

I am so dead.

(Update since I wrote this on my computer, yes, I told them. And, yes, it's obvious they are planning something, probably involving a forced abduction.)

A New Adventure

I have been living in Asia, for the past year or so. It has been a good experience, although fraught with distraction. The past months have been fruitful, business is exceptionally good.

And I have been in a relationship. It started roughly a year ago, although at that time it was a friendship, not to scoff at such an important and rare thing (for me). Later, it became a fragment of an idea for a relationship, perhaps unworthy of the term commitment, maybe more of an experiment and proof of concept.

But I get ahead of myself.

Let's rewind several weeks to the beginning of a new adventure…

I was in first class. Usually I find myself not enjoying the service, since I spend most of my time asleep. This was one reason why I got rid of my long-haul jet and went fractional (which has severe limitations on international travel): I am mostly asleep anyhow. Mind you, there were other reasons: my entrepreneurial sensibilities balked at the cost, I disliked paying for the crew lolling about (even though I did anyhow), the permitting was particularly complex, I had lawsuits with the management companies, I disliked the publicity it generated to land a jet in certain Asian countries, and, well, I had heard nightmare stories of certain Asian FBOs and their aviation fueling shenanigans. Oh, yeah, and although my morality was undoubtedly becoming stronger by (mostly) defeating crazy temptations (like flying to the Burbank FBO just to hit Pinks one afternoon), I thought it an even higher cause to donate that $30 million or so to some charities (Note to readers, there are some great depreciation and rollover rules for private jets. Complain to your congressmoron. Um, on second thought, don't.)

Of course the reason I would always reconsider was that damned US airport security. Or a bad sleeper seat. Most airline seats were only slightly more comfortable than the floor of my plane.

But I digress.

So I was in first class.

I was awake, and considering whether to take a Lunesta™, or to watch a movie, work, and later chemically repair my jetlag at the destination. Either way jetlag wasn't a big deal going in the westerly direction, but it was a more efficient use of time to sleep on the plane than at the destination.

This particular airline was bucking the recent trend toward older staff and crappier service and had a complement of two quite attractive and attentive young flight attendants. They were very eager to please, had only two first class customers to lavish attention upon, and were enormously impressed by the fact that I had been on a VIP list to have come from the chairman of the airline. I had an escort from the airport, through security, into the lounge, and to the airplane itself. The other first class passenger was quite curious, and I caught him trying to peek at my luggage tags, which are generally hidden when I travel, but he quickly fell asleep.

...and then there was one.

Recently I had been avoiding full airplane meals in favor of some simple noodles. (Yes, I know those are carbs.) My recent approach to securing noodles was to go to the First Class Lounge of my chosen Asian airline, find the Asian version of cup-o-noodles in their charming styrofoam packaging, and stuff a few of them into my carry-on. Then I'd ask a stewardess to prepare it on board.

This time, as I mentioned, I was constantly hounded by a fawning guide puppy. Seriously, if she had a tail it would have been constantly wagging. So I felt somewhat self-conscious about snagging the noodles. Thus I arrived on board bereft of a supply of noodles. When I mentioned this however, I was notified that they had some on board. So it was that some time after takeoff, unusually amused by this request, one of the stewardesses made me some from their supply in back. While she was doing this, the two were sitting on their own in the little side nook near the restroom, doing stewardessy things. I passed by to change my clothes in the lav -- I had some nifty all-blue sleeper wear, courtesy an earlier trip on Lufthansa, plus unmatched slippers -- and on my way back one of them asked me what I did.

My subconscious must have been in an odd mood. Without hesitating, I replied, "I write about and compare the sexual skills of women in different countries." This elicited a surprising amount of giggling rather than the expected offended look. Which I thought was a good thing. So I took my spicy ramen and started eating while standing there, trying to look cool in my all-blue sleeper wear... plus unmatched slippers.

The first question they asked was where I published. I told them it was on the Internet and it was anonymous. I mentioned it had a few racy bits and cocked an eyebrow, trying to look suave and debonair in my all-blue sleeper wear... plus unmatched slippers.

(I did not give them the URL, as they knew my name.)

One gal, let's call her Cha, was particularly bold and asked in which country I had enjoyed the best sexual partner. I asked her what country she was from, and then told her, "Unfortunately, not that one. Well, at least not yet!" And then I smiled and sauntered back to my seat, trying to look nonchalant in my all-blue sleeper wear... plus unmatched slippers.

All this was remarkably uncharacteristic of me. I usually don't start conversations. But I'll get to the point of this soon, I promise.

I went to sleep. When I woke up, a few hours before landing, Cha served me a meal, and then effortlessly bent down to chat with me in that eye-popping manner they must practice endlessly at the Sexy Stewardess School (okay, it's really Sigmund's Fantasy School of Sexy Stewardesses in Tight Dresses).

Cha asked if she could feel the fabric of my sleep wear (competing airline and all), which I permitted. A touch. Small talk ensued. At one point she confirmed with me that I was staying at a particular hotel in a presidential suite. Apparently they were going to take care of the transfer for me. But she let drop that there was a good bar there.

I realize: Hell, I'm flirting with a gal, something I wouldn't have thought myself capable of a year ago.

At some point before her legs got sore from bending down to talk to me, I felt there would be an inevitable conclusion to this encounter. I prepared myself for my response. And sure enough, predictably, Cha asked me if I had time for drinks at my hotel.

And I told her, "Sorry, no. I am on my way to get engaged."

Word to the the wise: it's a great way to get out of a sticky situation.

Lucifer into the Darkness

We traditionally think of light as warm, comforting and illuminating, and dark as menacing, sinister and dangerous. And, true, as we age, we approach the eternal Night. The end of reason.

Sure, maybe there's something beyond that, but I'm not going to take it for granted. It like conservative financial planing... what if? So let's just assume billions of people have it wrong, and there is no light at the end of the tunnel, and the end of life is, well, the end of life. The eternal Night holds no menace to me today, but I believe my feelings may change over, say, the next 50 years.

How can the impending Night be made more comfortable? It's awfully abstract, but I can't help feeling that I'd like to be truly comfortable with somebody at that time. Comfortable like a baby is with its mother. I don't mean some kind of idealized love. That's just Disney again. Even babies hate their mothers from time to time, temporarily yes! but for that short time, with all their will.

From where did these thoughts arise?

Let's wind the time machine back a bit. Take me out of the humid heat of northern Asia. Rewind me back to when I was considering the Experiment, in the early spring. Picture me by my computer, sitting crosslegged right there at the largest suite at the Amankila in Bali, in a little shade shack by the pool (they kindly supply the shade shack with spritzers of water and a variety of natural tanning products). Jenny is napping in the bure. Here, I'll even give you a photograph of where I was (taken from our helicopter ride).

The evening is approaching when we'll have dinner by a huge bonfire on the beach. And I am thinking. Madly churning ideas in my head. Weighing costs and benefits measured in the intangible economics of emotions (which lead to reading Sendhil Mullainathan's research in the area, which is quite interesting; unfortunately the link I have doesn't include his paper on smoking taxes which he wrote with Guber in 2002.)

As I've said before, my relationship with Jenny was an experiment in three party commitment and explicit contradictions, aka "brutal honesty". If you don't understand those experiments please read about them again or else the rest of this entry won't make much sense.

So far the experiment was a success. But maybe in a way I had not expected. It made the relationship very difficult. Many things that society taught us to expect or take for granted did not work. So this system constantly challenged us to think about the relationship. The system encouraged us to vent both our love and our frustrations very freely, by battering our not insignificant egos into shriveling husks to be kicked to the side. (And it helped that the sex was so mind-blowingly powerful -- at a level neither of us had experienced before -- that it, too, helped push ego issues aside. But more on that later.)

It really is harder than you might think. There are so many social lies we are used to telling. And perhaps the most difficult part of this whole system is the amount of self-awareness it demands. Or the way it tends to expose to harsh light what you did not know about your thin skin, or where you fooled yourself before. We are trained to be so passive-aggressive. This greases society. For example, in Western relationships I cannot help but create relationship rules by observing patterns of behavior, i.e. "she likes to be held when she is stressed at her job," or "she doesn't like me to look away when we argue." Or these rules come up only after misunderstandings and bad feelings, during reconcilations: "okay, next time you'll know not to do that in front of my friends." The system we were using was unbelievably explicit, which required acknowledging to yourself what you really wanted. And that's tough. Party because most people don't know, don't want to know, and don't want to think about it. They really are scared of what they might find in themselves.

Keep that in mind. Pride and ego were the enemies to this system. You might reserve your silly declaration of undying love because you worry about later rejection, retraction, or foolishness. And you might react badly when your partner vents so many minor-seeming frustrations because it makes you feel inadequate, unappreciated, or wounded. But both are reactions of promoting pride and ego over the Third Party or the principle of explicity.

And we both loved hard work and projects. Maybe we even craved it pathologically. We could sublimate, or at least attach! our egos to such things. So making it a challenge with goals was part of making it work for us.

As we lived this relationship, invested in mutual experiences, and built a library of positive and negative memories, I built a mental model of what we were forging:

Around us we had woven a brilliant web of truths. I saw that it was at least as disturbing and frightening as a cage of lies. I had learned that truth was not more comforting. It was not all good (a late Christian perversion of the Jewish commandment of obeisance). My truth was not a warm light. No, it was a harsh light that threw every ugly detail into sharp relief. It was a house of never-ending light, which illuminated all regions and let bare everything, intentionally and willfully destroying privacy. It was intense and uncomfortable.

But it was the way I wanted my life to be, based on a foundation of solid expectation; an infrastructure upon which perhaps later we could build comforting deceptions. I could never trust the ever-growing complexity of the reverse and yet more typical approach of building truths on top of lies.

Would a house of light be more confining than a cage of lies? With a relationship built on lies and false expectation you always had deniability, the Gödel's theorem argument of why you could leave the world of that relationship. The excuse to yourself, and to the relationship itself of why everything could be later denied. Deniability reduced regret when it turned out you were wrong. It was a hedge, an insurance for the ego. But again, this valued the first parties over the Third Party. Yes, the house of light was much harsher on Self. How could you deny it later without repudiating yourself?

I was pondering this, wheels turning in my mind. As the oppressively bright afternoon sun of Bali transformed itself into a serene sunset, Jenny walked out to me bare and hair askew, bathed in a warm light against a deepening blue background of the sky. And there it was, framed for a moment in time: the picture of our relationship. The harsh light and hardship of our experiment turning into something beautiful and worthwhile -- as we would build a torch that would go together with us into the inevitable and inescapable night.

The Lull before the Storm

It's been a long time since blogging, and there is much to say. Rather than continuing on the fruitless task of catching up to the months of unblogged activity, I will merely fast forward to the present, filling in history as needed.

A few brief catch up notes before my bigger posts (which are coming shortly, I promise):

Jill Monroe had offered "coffee, tea or me." I opted for the tea, literally, personally imported from China. She's back in school now. I hooked her up with my billionaire Asian friend's daughter. Chain mentoring… don't break the chain. Hopefully they'll fall into a torrid lesbian affair...

The other angels are busy and have forgotten me. Fortunately so have the other devils, for the most part:

Maggie moved to the United States to be with her daughter, who is attending junior high school here. Fortunately I moved in the other direction.

Haley took a job at a multinational. Apparently the rumors are true and they do spike the water with Prozac. Or maybe they just keep her busier than your typical newspaper.

Laura sent new email, but mostly of the sneering, "You don't know what you're missing, buddy" tone. Yeah, I'm missing a hole in the head.

The others are in the void.

Sanura has disappeared. And I'm about to hire Bob and Doug's boss!

I eventually did see Kola, the girl with the "better than May" billing. Jenny told me to see her. Really! The context is important, so I will post separately on this in a related topic about the pros and cons of temptation and jealousy, extending on my earlier point about physical and emotional sex.

And I have been traveling a lot.