In Celebration of my Trophy

She was tall, thin, had curly dark hair, and a beaming confident smile. She was practically smart with life experience but not extraordinarily academic, rather materialistic in almost every sense of that term, stubborn, and demanding. She was a most superb trophy. We dated ten years ago and, these days, my friends just call her Faconnable.

Now, if you're unfamiliar with that name, Facconable is a brand of pricey male fashions offered by Nordstrom out here in the Pacific Northwest. Go ahead and Google it - when you're ready to spend $200 on a dress shirt now you know where to look. Anyway, she earned the name because of the tawdry way she convinced me that I'd only be desirable if I had expended the requisite amount on my wardrobe, and that my appeal to her was only limited by the amount of money that I could ante-up in self-improvement.

All of that may sound atrocious although you shouldn't be thinking that I was entirely selfless and victimized. As for myself, I didn't use the earlier term "trophy" carelessly with her because it should somewhat connote my own requirements from this relationship: you see, Facconable was to be the culmination of my success. The icing on the proverbial cake as it were for I was to celebrate my thirtieth birthday by earning my master's degree and landing a lucrative executive position; I had the car, the house, the job, everything... except for one thing that had escaped me forever. You see, in my head, all I lacked was the appropriate (perfect) girl.

Certainly horrific as it may sound we were both getting what we wanted out of the relationship: I had something strikingly pretty to hang off of my arm and she had expensive tastes that through me could be ultimately provided for. We probably weren't very good friends and that translated into some contentious times. The relationship was tumultuous and unsatisfying at best for the both of us.

When it inevitably imploded, the universe corrected itself by deflating my ego with compounded interest and a broken heart. Rightly so. It shattered not only this silly illusion of myself but obliterated the epic fantasy of the "ideal" woman. It was a monumental event in my life that reshaped who I was at the time and created the conditions by which I'd eventually "settle" for my second marriage. And, in retrospect, I wouldn't have changed any of it for the relationship with Facconable took greed to an extreme and transformed a single woman into currency. In its bloody demise I recovered with fresh perspective on many things, but in particular, the conceptual "ownership/possessiveness" of a woman through a relationship.

Love isn't possessive. It is, in fact, just the opposite and seeks to be liberated. There are many facets of our make-up as men that encourage possession (rejection, fear of loss, emotional insecurity, low self-image) as just as many societal instruments that reinforce those perspectives in our patriarchal culture; love is so spoiled when we look at the appalling rates of domestic violence and violence performed upon women in this country. Yet, it's from this disastrous experience that I identify so strongly with Polyamory because it respects women as independent, adventurous, powerful, sexual, and playful; women are their own masters and every one a goddess in her own right, and for me, the expressions of her power through Polyamory is intoxicating and, because of Facconable, today, I can experience that to its fullest extent.

s1m0n