Redemption

I am in Seoul. It is March 12, the day I originally was to head to Tokyo. I await stabilization in Japan but as the hours go by it appears the news is only becoming worse. Yu-na’s family does not want her to go to Tokyo for the dinner on the 16th. Frankly, neither does mine.

On March 14th Sigmund cancels the dinner. He and Jenny fly on his plane back to Seoul. Jenny will spend the next several weeks working on a plan to help children displaced by the disaster over the long term. The mood is somber, but Sigmund suggests we keep the dinner schedule, but in Korea. We will dine at Pierre Gagnaire at the Lotte Hotel, Korea’s only Michelin starred chef named French restaurant. We’ll dine on the 16th, the day before I leave with my team for Hong Kong.

Meanwhile I’ve been meeting Yu-na daily.

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Our first meeting is on the 12th at a small coffee shop in Seoul. Yu-na looks wonderful in casual blue jeans and a sweater with a tan jacket and a purse worn like a backpack. No watch and little makeup. Her hair is much longer and she wears it tied up in back. The weather is sunny but cold.

It is the first time I’ve seen her since I saw her receding backside at the JFK security checkpoint. I want to catch up. What has happened in the last nine months?

School is going well; her grades are good. Her parents are well. Her brother has landed and retained a good job.

The new event is that Yu-na has saved up and purchased a small pension (in the French sense, a rental property) in a developing waterfront resort island. It’s a small resort, new, not luxurious, aimed at the Korean lower-middle class family. It has a view of the sunset, is within driving range of Seoul with access via a new railway, and has a nice little community around it. The region is known for its delicious grapes and vines are planted extensively. The pension is one of the three nicest units in the neighborhood, with a small pool, a barbeque grill, and even a karaoke room. She plans to call it “Renaissance.” In June she will move to a small villa nearby to manage the pension. The villa is owned by a church and is half populated with local ministers.

She lights up as she talks about this project of hers, a small but important piece of her independence. She is looking forward to being in this little nowhere town, away from busy Seoul, commuting to her university three times a week by train. She talks wistfully about the sunsets, the vineyards, and view she will have from her study. Mostly she talks about having peace and quiet, as well as a small income.

On impulse I tell her I want to visit it. She is delighted.

The next day she drives me there. We listen to her music in the car. She says she always wanted to drive me some place. On the way she stops at what she claims to be the best spicy squid place in the region. It’s excellent.

We make it to the island and I see the pretty little pension. I see her empty apartment, small but comfortable. I see where she will sleep and where she will study, where she will eat and where she will cook. It is a charming cozy place. Empty vines dot the landscape. Rippling water fills the seascape with the setting sun. We arrive with perfect timing to see the sun set from the roof of her 5 floor villa and the rising huge moon.

And it’s there that I kiss her.

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I am vaguely aware that others may not want to read the ravings of a person in love. So I will spare you the sappy syrupy prose I might otherwise secrete here. Suffice it to say that we reconnect and I am instantly in love again.

Is there some reserve in Yu-na’s eyes that wasn’t there before? Yes.

And does it bother me? Yes, terribly.

We talk about it, but the scars remain.

The days pass. We spend time walking among galleries in the art section of Seoul near the presidents house, talking about how a painting or photograph makes us feel. We compare notes. We drink tea. We walk hand in hand.

I spend one evening at a room salon with Park, Sigmund’s old mentor. This is the place Park had taken Sigmund long ago, the place where Sigmund met Jenny the very next night. He has brought his mistress of four years. I ask Yu-na if she is willing to accompany me to a room salon and she agrees. Eventually I have invited another co-worker and a business acquaintance, all my elders, and we close the place down.

Yu-na is an elegant and quiet girl. Sometimes too quiet for the others. At one point when the intellectual discussions have degenerated into drunken joking one of the other men asks her why she’s so quiet all of a sudden. I say to myself, but loud enough for the others to hear, “because she’s smart enough not to talk when there’s nothing to say,” which wins me a look of surprised gratitude from Yu-na but some slightly shocked silence from my elders before Park breaks the ice with another bon mot.

She had sang with me in a previous excursion to a karaoke last year, just the two of us in Japan. I ask why she doesn’t sing here. She tells me she sings only for me.

And that reserve in her eyes still haunts me.

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On March 16 we have dinner with Jenny and Sigmund. As usual they are disgustingly perfect hosts. The staff at Pierre Gagnaire are impressed with four menu degustations plus wines and proffer excellent service. The prices are ruinous as befits Asia nabobs, fully 50% more than Per Se in Manhattan, for example.

After some light opening conversation we take to the meaty discussions, the situation in Japan. We opine on the events, the unfolding chaos, the nuclear issues, but mostly the action plans Jenny considers in light of her charitable mission.

By some unspoken protocol we hit a limit of heavy topics and switch to lighter conversation. By the time we are hitting the dessert courses we are in safer territory. And that is when Jenny casually says into the air between Yu-na and myself, “I am glad to see you two seem to have repaired what was broken.”

“The repair isn’t without seams,” I say.

“Then you’ll have to build on top of it something more beautiful,” she replies and waves the issue away as we turn to sample each other’s desserts.

That night Yu-na and I make love. I tell her that I love her. I thank her for coming back.

I tell her I want to come back after Hong Kong and take her with me to Europe. She agrees.

The Real World Intrudes

At 2:46 PM on March 11 Japan suffered a 9.0 magnitude earthquake under the sea off Tohoku, about 130 kilometers from Sendai. This was the harshest earthquake to strike Japan in recorded history. The energy transmitted to the surface is thought to have exceeded half a billion atomic bombs of the type that hit Hiroshima. It is feared the death toll will hit 25,000. The eventual cost is estimated to be over $300 billion.

Sigmund says he will write more about this incredible tragedy later. He was in Tokyo with Jenny at the time.

Needless to say I did not go to Tokyo on March 12, as originally planned, to meet Sigmund, Jenny and Yu-na for dinner. Even though Tokyo business was not seriously affected until a few days later when authorities initiated scheduled rolling blackouts. When rumors of the nuclear reactor meltdown emerged my Japanese executives cancelled our meetings. My team and I were diverted to Seoul. I parked there while we waited for news on what would happen in Tokyo.

I will continue with my story about Yu-na. But I wanted to acknowledge the tremendous disaster in Japan in the backdrop of the narrative.

My Dinner with Sigmund and What Follows

I am in Seoul. I am getting ready to head to Beijing, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and other places. It is March 7, a Monday, and I am having dinner with Sigmund.

As is customary with Sigmund, we talk about a wide range of topics. We are unfettered by convention, social or intellectual. He mentions he will be in Tokyo with Jenny next week. He suggests we meet for dinner there. He will obtain a table for four at Arronia de Takazawa. He thinks it is one of the two or three best restaurants in the world.

I am left struggling to find a date. I ask him for suggestions. He says I should send a message to Yu-na. I tell him that is over and done. She has made it clear to me that there is no future with us together.

Sigmund leans forward. “Do you want it to be over and done?” he asks. I tell him, truthfully, that I do not. I confess to him the activities I only terminated a month ago. The emptiness of the Arrangements. The compromise of my own rules. I reiterate, I do not want it over and done.

“Tell her that. She will come back to you,” he smiles enigmatically and folds his arms like he’s some kind of fucking Yoda. I tell him, no, it won’t happen. I have to just get over it. Sigmund’s voice hardens. “No,” he tells me, poking me for emphasis, “You have to get over being a chicken shit. She said put her heart out for target practice for you last year. Now it’s your turn.”

He takes a pull on his drink, repeats his prognostication: “If you have the guts to ask, she will have the guts to try again.” He looks satisfied, like he knows I’ll do it, even as I shake my head no.

I am quiet.

I realize my feelings.

And that night, I send an email.

---

In Beijing I’ve had a grueling set of meetings. I’m also preparing to be in Tokyo starting March 12.

But suddenly all sense of tiredness evaporates. Yu-na agrees to join me for dinner with Sigmund and Jenny in Tokyo on March 16…

Arrangements Gone Wild

By June I had gone through an intense love affair.

I threw myself into work as therapy. But I found myself looking toward finding another arrangement. Perhaps not the wisest coping strategy.

I threw a lot of caution to the winds in enlisting into Arrangements. I now see it as an illuminating self-destructive behavior. I had convinced myself in February 2010 not to stray from my Arrangement criteria. Yet I regressed and did exactly that.

In the six months between August 2010 and January 2011 I engaged no fewer than four Arrangements. I broke several of my Arrangement rules.

Those Arrangements do not include the two earlier Arrangements where I had still the one year economic contract to pay out. One of those I had to extend on a hardship basis. Her economic situation was dire. And she was in the middle of a school commitment.

I also went through a few reconnections with woman I had met earlier. Some were candidates for previous Arrangements. I reconsidered because I had broken some earlier Arrangement rules. I did so in a manner both unlike me and sometimes unbecoming.

I had never done anything like this before in my life.

Arrangements

Lana was a woman with a profile both taller and older than my typical preference. She had two children one year apart from teen pregnancies in a bad marriage. Her parents had passed away early. She had raised her kids to teens on her own, worked as a successful enterprise salesperson, had done some part-time modeling, and through she was in her late thirties she looked stunning, partly due to half-Asian genetics. Her previous business had tanked in the last economic crises. She was eager to start a new business and had the Project business plan all set. The Arrangement started well. She was a survivor, independent and headstrong. But her time commitments to raise her children, manage the business, remain in the southeast nowhere near my travels, and a number of other things made it impossible to actually meet more than a few times. So the Arrangement quickly terminated by mutual consent though I maintained my investment commitments to her business.

Tara was another single mom, still in her twenties. Her interest was getting out of the debt trap being in Las Vegas and a set of dead-end service jobs and starting a photography business. Her talents was quite obvious given her ability to create strong photographs with relatively simple camera and studio equipment, Photoshop on an ancient Macintosh, and a lot of creativity. She had never had an arrangement and in fact had only recently freed herself from the deadbeat father of her children. She was very eager to follow my lead. But her fear of rejection from the windfall that I represented was worrisome. This was compounded by her bipolar condition. Though treated with medication I saw incipient instability. If the emotional attachment grew too strong I worried that there would be a messy breakdown. So ending it early, though itself a messy process, was the expedient and appropriate solution. Again I maintained my investment commitments to her business.

Bella was an attorney in her twenties highly connected to the tech world though mostly artistic. A fantastic writer her interest was in starting a business consultancy. She actually had started one in New York that specialized in labor negotiations but needed assistance in expanding it, in particular into the higher growth areas of technology sector. She had two previous affairs with older married men who had created a lot of opportunity for her. Bella perfectly understood the limited temporal nature of the Arrangement. But she felt strongly she wanted to be connected strongly to my principal business. She was more service oriented. She did not have strong entrepreneurial goals of her own. She wanted to serve my goals. She was a submissive, very much reminiscent of the female character in movie, The Secretary. I retained her as a consultant to one of my businesses and detached on the relationship side over several months. She remains a paid consultant that adds value to one of my businesses.

Sara was a mid-twenties Chinese graduate student in her final year at a top California school. Young, pretty, and intensely ambitious she had already started two energy companies and started working on major deals between US companies and her extensive Chinese connections. A true dynamo in personality and drive, and yet seemingly innocent, she was able to charm professors, politicians and executives into helping her extensively with contacts and references. Sara had great ideas and no sense of limitations. In other words a perfect entrepreneur. She had a charming oral fetish and a princess syndrome. I helped her with two major projects and fundraising. Though to be truthful she did it mostly on her own. As a natural consequence of these she relocated to China. She was kept so busy that the conversion of the relationship to more distant was natural.

One could ask why I chose these women. It was a combination of their needing or liking me and their physical attractiveness. In retrospect I may have rebounded from Yu-na by seeking acceptance and validation first and foremost. This theory is reinforced even more by my breaking a cardinal rule I had about Arrangements: exclusivity. In these cases I maintained the option of having more than one simultaneous Arrangement, and, in fact, even some dating on the side. In the past my Arrangements were entirely exclusive: while in an Arrangement I would not see any other woman. While I had one or more of the Arrangements noted above, I also was seeking alternatives. This is the main danger, I think, of eschewing exclusivity. Too much seeking of alternatives, leading to restlessness and focus outside of the relationship.

Arrangements Revisited

I had hooked up with five woman who were previous Arrangement candidates. These are women whom I had interviewed in the past. One was an actress in Los Angeles who had a few major movie minor role credits. Another was a model now turned business development person for Asia business. A third was an contracts attorney at a major California high technology law firm. The last two were Asian women whom I had met at high end room salons in Asia. One was taking a graduate degree in economics. The other planning to take an MBA in Australia and brushing up on her English.

These weren’t proud moments. I knew of their interest in me. I met them and wined and dined them. I slept with them for the first time. I had not slept with them in the past during their candidacy. So they were all one-night stands. Perhaps not literally one night, but whatever time I spent with them, that was the last time I spent with them. Sexual trysts that gained neither party very much.

I also almost hooked up with three other women I had met through the Arrangement process. One was a 20 year old blonde ex-model and student. She had a boyfriend that had proposed to her, but she was indecisive. Another was an MD-PhD student in her mid-twenties at a reputable east coast medical school. She was thinking of adding an MBA to her already overloaded diploma collection. A third was a 20 year old Asian architecture student. She shared elaborate and open-minded sexual fantasies over phone and email. I did not end up bedding these women. But I came uncomfortably close.

On the exciting side, the lack of inhibition about longer term engagement gave a lot liberty to try more daring things more quickly. I was often surprised how willing my partners were in these initial sexual encounters. To role play, for rough sex, public sex, threesomes, swinging, creative videos… whatever. Nothing truly new to me. But novel in happening so early. Often during our first or first few sexual trysts.

I felt a bit numb about these encounters. I enjoyed them. I enjoyed the women. But there was no lasting positive experience. Conversations weren’t lively or active. They weren’t competitive at all with work. And I started to feel like I was taking advantage of the emotional needs of these women. I started to suspect they were merely filler for the hole left by Yu-na. That the compromises in my Arrangement rules were my subconscious guarantee that these encounters would never be successful or fulfilling.

Part Two: The Arrangement

In a previous posting I wrote:

I feel the Arrangement empowers all parties. The Arrangement makes expectations clear. I will write more about it. About what it’s like to live through it. And about some of the woman who have shared Arrangements with me.

But before the stories, I want to start with some background. I want to suggest some history to my approach to arrangements. Why mentoring? Why the economic support? Why the contracts? Why the need for a project? Hopefully this part will illuminate the answers to some of these questions.

Case One: Mentoring

My first experience was an accident.

I consulted for a well-known company. It had a reputation for hiring brilliant young graduates. Most of them were male. Adele was one of the few, the proud, the female. She was bright and on a fast track. She had suitors all around. Young men, peers to her. Older managers easily disregarding company policy against inter-office relationships. Even the occasional “big fish” who liked to practice a little “catch and release” every new season. Nobody would have the guts to tell the big fish otherwise. But Adele was savvy. She flirted but stayed neutral.

Adele was known to almost never accept first dates from co-workers. She was even better known to never take a second date. We flirted without shame, but nothing serious. So I was surprised when she asked me out.

Knowing the second date percentages I calculated two conflicting strategies: get as much as I can on the first date assuming there would be no second date, or give as much as I can to maximize the chances for a second date. Being the kind of person who has never felt comfortable with the first strategy, I opted for door number two.

It did not take long to find out the rationale behind the date. Adele was looking for a mentor. She was ambitious and on a fast track, but underneath she was a bundle of insecurities. One would need a diamond drill to penetrate her outer surface, but underneath was marshmallow. I was a safe bet, an outsider, a consultant guaranteed to disappear soon. Even better, I was from out of town.

This was an unexpected but welcome development. I found the relationship very challenging and interesting. Adele was a bright young woman. She was a only a few years younger than I but far less experienced. This made up for any insecurities I may have felt due to her, shall we say, “complete hotness.” This experience more than any other helped build my self confidence in dating. There were always safe topics to discuss when I felt uncomfortable. It defuses a common relationship problem with men: ego and pride.

This introduced me to the concept of mentoring. I took to it avidly, perhaps too avidly. After some time I discovered how much bandwidth I could expend safely. I found I could mentor one to three persons at most. I mentored men and women at a variety of different ages. I mentored students and adults. I found I enjoyed mentoring kids and women most of all. Kids because of their vast potential that few adults could recognize. And because few people bothered to really talk to kids seriously. They are wickedly smart. And women for a different reason. Because there seemed to be an underlying perhaps evolutionary connection when mentoring a woman, particularly a younger and less experienced woman. The way in which they appreciated the mentoring was different from kids or adults (although sometimes with female students I would see the occasional crush, which I would never encourage or follow up upon.)

So hold this thought: mentoring.

Case Two: Contracted Economic support

The most cynical view of economic support is that it gives me the ability to walk away. This is reminiscent of the joke about why you pay a prostitute. Not to come to your room, but to leave. You pay for a guarantee of no long-term attachments and related complications.

But for me the contracted economic support removes any question as to motivations. A woman might be in a relationship because of economic support. If such support is given month to month it creates a pressure to maintain a relationship. It may erode purer motivations over time. So it’s best to remove that factor entirely by setting a support level that is independent of the relationship. Even if a woman breaks up with me, the support is maintained for the duration of the contract.

Renewing the contract forces some thought to be given about mutual motivations for continuing the relationship. I find this helpful.

I observed many acquaintances with lovers or mistresses. My analysis indicated that the lack of a contracted economic support often led to insecurities, misunderstandings, arguments, and unintended consequences in behavior. The result of this analysis suggested I should either not provide any economic support or that it should be contracted.

I found that in cases where the woman was in solid economic position there was indeed no need for economic support. Women in this set either had their own economic security or were provided for by a third party, for example by parents or divorce settlement. The latter case often were the most demanding of economic support, curiously. But the former case were some of the best balanced woman I had met. Unfortunately it also often came with a lack of scheduling flexibility. This made it difficult to pursue a relationship given my schedule.

This tended to drive options toward contracted economic support.

Case Four: Projects

There is a mathematical technique called proof by contradiction. The case for having a Project uses a similar technique. Arrangements without Projects have so far had a nearly 100% failure rate. I noted this in the update post back in February.

Projects also dovetail very nicely with contracted economic support. Support given toward a project can also help support a woman in a more constructive manner than handouts or gifts. Moreover a contract with a project can define concrete milestones and performance metrics. A relationship alone is difficult to parameterize in a similar manner. So making the contracted economic support based on a project is much simpler and effective. It also forces a greater separation between the relationship and support, a goal mentioned above.

The combination of these factors, contracted economic support, projects and mentoring seems now so natural to me. My explanations here thus may not be effective. Please leave feedback so I may improve these explanations if they are unclear.