On Saturday night, the 8th of May, I stayed over at the belly dancer’s house, like I typically do on every other weekend or so. We had our drinks, had our fun, shot the shit, played music, and did the stuff that most couples do.

Around midnight, I was delirious because I had slept like shit the night before. I had gone to bed around midnight on Friday night/Saturday morning and was woke up by one of my cat’s puking. I swear the sound of them “going to the club” could wake the dead. By the time that I got done dealing with puke and a miserable cat, I was too wired to go back to sleep and so I ended up staying awake for the entire rest of my Saturday. By that night I was beyond exhausted. Shortly after midnight I was out.

Around 3:30 in the morning, I hear a smoke detector going off. In my sleep deprived state, I initially thought it was part of a dream that I was having. Then I smelled smoke. It smelled like someone had extinguished a candle, but the odor was much stronger.

It was about that time that I heard my belly dancer talking to her kids. Apparently I wasn’t dreaming and the fucking smoke detector was going off. I slowly woke up and listened to her and her kids. The kids were up, which wasn’t too far of a stretch since they are mostly night owls, and I could hear that they were telling her that they hadn’t been lighting candles or doing anything else. In fact, the smoke detector had woke them up as well.

Shit.

This wasn’t a false alarm or a drill. This was the real deal. I could still smell smoke and I jumped out of bed and immediately put my pants, shirt, and socks on. I grabbed my shoes and jacket and started out of the bedroom.

My belly dancer’s daughter was in her room and I told her it was time to go and checked to make sure that everyone else was out of there. My belly dancer’s son had the dog in his arms and he was following his mom out the front door. I corralled the daughter and her boyfriend out the door and joined them on the porch. Everyone had been accounted for other than the cat.

My belly dancer was on the phone with 911 and was telling them what the situation was. About that time the smoke detector stopped doing its thing. Her son had said that he had walked around the house’s perimeter and he couldn’t see smoke or any flames. My belly dancer relayed that information to the dispatcher. This whole time I was silent and sat down and put my jacket and shoes on.

My belly dancer hung up with 911 and said that the fire department was on the way. While we were standing there, waiting, I decided to do a little investigation of my own. I wanted to see if I could find her cat (yeah right, good luck with that) and also there were a couple of rooms in the basement that hadn’t been cleared.

One thing that my belly dancer told me while I was putting my shoes on was that she had her furnace cleaned out the day before and hadn’t turned it on since the cleaning. She also mentioned that she had woke up a few minutes before the detector went off, because it was cold, and that she had turned the furnace on.

I told her that the furnace was probably burning something off from the cleaning and that that was probably the source of the smell and the smoke. I decided that was going to be part of my investigation, so back into the house I went.

The smoke smell had dissipated a lot by then. I cleared all the rooms in the upstairs first, and then went downstairs. No cat to be seen or found, which I didn’t really think I would find him. He knows his own house and bolt holes better than I do. I got to the furnace and the smoke smell was there, pretty strong. There was no visible smoke and no flames or fire.

I moved on to the other rooms to find the walls, doors, everything I touched to be ice cold. If there was a fire in there, it wasn’t close to any doors, but I wasn’t going to open them. I’ve seen Backdraft too many times. Besides, I’m no firefighter.

About the time I went back upstairs the firetruck pulled up. The crew wasn’t running lights and sirens, thank God. No need to wake the neighborhood up for no reason if that was the case.

They came in, checked the smoke detectors to make sure they weren’t malfunctioning, had their own IR camera to check the walls, ceilings, and floors for any unusual heat, and also had their own portable smoke detector to double check things.

About 20 minutes later they gave us the “all clear” and said that there was no fires going on in the house and that we could go back inside. The belly dancer told them about the furnace and they said that it was most likely the culprit and that she needed to have the HVAC people take a look at it sooner than later and make sure that everything was working okay on it. With that, they left and we went back to bed.

Now when I say we went back to bed, I could have gone back to sleep almost immediately because I was still exhausted from the prior nights lack of sleep. It was now 4:30 in the morning. Not my belly dancer though, she was wired. She wanted to talk about the last hour of events apparently.

Normally I would have told her, “Let’s talk about this later in the morning,” but I could see she needed to say whatever it was that was on her mind, and get it off her chest, so to speak.

“Every time I’m with you, I learn something new about you,” she said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Tonight, during all of this chaos, you were unshakeable. You were the calm inside the storm. You didn’t panic or freak out, or anything. If anything, you calmed me down just with your presence and your matter-of-fact attitude when it came to putting on your shoes and jacket. You didn’t seem stressed out about it at all.”

“That’s because panicking during a crisis doesn’t help anything and if anything, it makes it worse,” I told her.

“I know, but I’ve never seen you ‘under pressure,’ you know? You just seemed like, ‘I’ve got this.'”

I just shrugged and smirked at her. “Hey, it’s me.”

She was looking at me differently than usual this whole time. Her eyes were shining and I could tell that she was aroused. I could see something else there as well. Respect.

You want to know someone’s real character? See how they act and behave under pressure or during a crisis. You’ll see what they are made of. All of the bullshit, bravado, and whatever “macho façade” that they have going on will either be proven correct, or you’ll know just how full of shit they really are.

So on tonight’s “Let ‘Em Burn,” a comment was made about “Slipping Into Darkness.” To which I said something along the lines of, “Sounds like a song from Saints and Sinners,” which if you don’t know, has a song called “Slipping Into Darkness.” Google it, check it out, I’m not doing it for you.

Apparently it goes much darker than me having a 90’s flashback to a metal song that I thoroughly enjoyed back then and to this day.

I don’t know if her friend died or not, but from the comment, I take it that this person died. But hell, maybe he got sent to an asylum or something.

Here’s the point if it’s about death though:

Fuck Death.

We all die. Sooner than we think we will. Always. We all think that our loved one’s, and us by proxy, are going to live forever. We aren’t. We all die. And sooner than we would like to think we will.

My Mom died in late 2018 before she turned 67. I have friends who died back in their 20’s and 30’s. An acquaintance of mine just lost her 23, almost 24 year old niece, to a drunk driver. The guy jumped the curb, hit the niece, killing her almost instantly, and almost killing the niece’s baby daughter. He then proceeded to drive off, only to be caught a short time later by law enforcement. My Dad just told me a couple of days ago that he needs me to take him to the hospital so they can “whittle on his prostate.” Those are his words. At 72 years old, nothing is a minor procedure anymore.

Fuck Death.

You can’t outrun it. You can’t outlive it. “On a long enough timeline, our probability of survival goes down to zero.” Guess what movie I’m quoting.

Fuck Death.

Live your life in the way that you choose. Live it fully and fearlessly. Live it to the hilt. Eat all of the good food. Drink all of the good drinks, and even some of the bad ones. Do all the shit that you want to do. Your survival isn’t guaranteed. In fact, it’s guaranteed that you won’t survive.

Fuck Death and all of the myopic bullshit and virtue signaling. “Quality women and men,” don’t exist. There’s just men and women, that’s it. Either she’s a “hell yeah!” or a “Fuck no.” That’s it. Anything in between is bullshit and is a no as far as I’m concerned.

Enjoy your life and do what you want. Drink to your friends, lovers, and family who have died. I know I would want you to if it was me. Don’t mourn me. Don’t cry for me. Don’t lament my passing. Drink to me and to life and for Christ’s sake, get to living.

I’m saying this now because tomorrow isn’t guaranteed and I don’t know if I’ll be around to write it.

Drink, eat, and fuck for life. Fuck Death. Drink, eat, fuck and live in spite of death. Do all the shit you wanted to do and don’t put it off. Tomorrow never comes and yesterday will never come back.

Do what you want because tomorrow isn’t guaranteed and nobody is watching and nobody gives a fuck anyways.

There is no remedy for love but to love more – Henry David Thoreau

I follow a handful of blogs and guys on Twitter, and ThomasCrownPua on Twitter posted a great article.

Thomas Crown was doing a Q & A for some of his guys and someone asked, “Should women be a priority in your life?” To which he said, “women will always be your priority.“

It’s why we do anything.

Thomas Crown goes on and talks about hormones, your “mission,” (which is a fucking laugh, by the way) and other stuff. In many ways, he said things that I have already talked about, but he said it better. Go check out his post, you won’t regret it.

I quoted Henry David Thoreau at the beginning of this post. I found that quote in a book called “Drink, Play, Fuck” by Andrew Gottlieb. The book has been around for a moment, the copyright goes back to 2009.

Ah, 2009. That was the year that I got married. It’s funny what words or images will evoke when you look at them. Anyways, enough strolling down memory lane, that’s not what you are here for. You’re here for the “nuggets.”

So I started “Drink, Play, Fuck” on Sunday morning and finished it Sunday night. It’s an easy, light, entertaining read. The author mentioned going to Ireland, Vegas, and Thailand over the course of a year after his marriage of 8 years came to an abrupt end and his wife wasn’t “haaappy” and left him to go live with “David,” a guy that she was banging.

The author’s character started off drinking in Ireland for 4 months, went and gambled and golfed for 4 months in Vegas, and ended up in Thailand for the sex for the final 4 months. I’m not going to spoil it for you, and I would have made different choices than the author made, but that’s what life is all about.

That quote from Thoreau got to me though:

“There is no remedy for love but to love more.“

Get out of your heads and into your bodies and just “feel it.” He’s not wrong.

Every time I meet a new woman, I feel it. Every time things go great or they go south, or nowhere, I feel it. It can suck the big one, sometimes. But that’s the price of admission. I’ve talked to guys in the recent past and they say things like, “It’s all so tiresome.” Or “it’s a slog,” or “a grind.” And yes, it most certainly can be.

You meet a new woman, you chat, you text, you talk on the phone, you go out and have a drink or three, and maybe there’s some chemistry there, some spark. Maybe there isn’t. Maybe you take her home and fuck the shit out of her. Maybe you go home alone. Maybe you think to yourselves, “it’s just not worth it.”

I go through that sometimes too. There are times that I think, “I can’t stand another first meet. I can’t stand going out again.” And then I do it anyway.

Why?

Because the only remedy for love is more love. Going out and grinding or matching with yet another woman is better than sitting in my house, talking about my “mission,” and practicing semen retention.

There is no remedy for love but to love more, is:

You feel the pain of someone breaking it off with you. You feel the pain and disappointment of someone that you thought you had a connection with, ghosting you. And you smile and go out and do it again. You don’t hold the sins of the woman from the past against the women of the present and the future.

There is no remedy for love but to love more.

While it can suck and it can hurt, right to your very core, you carry on. My heart has been broken so many times that I have lost count. And yet, here I am. I’m still alive. My heart continues to beat. I still want and desire the company of women. I still lust for them, I still desire them. And yes, I still love them. Even and especially when it hurts. What is the alternative? There is no alternative for me.

Instead of closing myself down, shutting the women out, I open myself to even more. More pain, more disappointment, more heartache.

Do you know what has happened?

It doesn’t hurt as much as it did the last time. It still hurts, but not as much. It shows me how “tough” and resilient I am. And it allows me to love them even more. And so I do.

I was sitting at the belly dancer’s house on Easter Sunday when my Venezuelan girl sent me a wall of text. In short, she wanted to end things. My belly dancer and I have a unique relationship in many ways. She knows I see other women and I know that she sees other men. She saw that I was distracted when I looked at my phone. She asked me what was going on. I told her that it was over between the Venezuelan woman and me. She wanted to comfort me and she told me that she was sorry. I told her that I knew that it was over several days ago and it didn’t come as a surprise. The only surprise was that the Venezuelan girl decided to tell me it was over instead of just ghosting me, which is usually how it goes.

There is no remedy for love but to love more. I know without a doubt that I can and do love more than one woman at a time. Each one brings something different to my life and my experiences. There’s no one woman that can be “everything” for me.

Some women like to camp and hike. I like to camp and hike, so I do that with them. Some like live theater, concerts, and being in large crowds. I like live theater, concerts, and being in large crowds, so I do that with them. Some like to drink and alter their states of consciousness. I like to drink and alter my state of consciousness, so I do that with them. Some like kink, and some don’t. I do kink with the one’s who like it, and I don’t with the one’s who don’t. Some like existential conversations about the meaning of life and why we are here. Some would rather talk about the latest gossip about the latest celebrity. And so I do both. And I love them all.

I wish I was a better writer and could convey my thoughts, feelings, and emotions better than I do. I really wish I could take “out of my head and body what goes on in there,” and just transfer it to you, Dear Reader. But I’m not that good at conveying it I fear. Somewhere the message falters or gets lost in the translation.

There is no remedy for love but to love more. The more you open yourself to it, the more you get in return. And while the hurt, disappointment, pain, and you name it, never go away entirely, it’s far better than shutting down, becoming a recluse, becoming numb.

The older I get, the more I realize that not only can I love more than one woman at a time, I also realize that I don’t want “peace,” whatever that means. I want experience. I want a ton of experience. I want more experience than I already have. And so I love. I love more.

Because that’s the only remedy for what ails me.