miscellaneous thoughts on my evolving relationship with plan c

SEX WITH ANIMALS

Plan C often likes to imagine how shocked our children would be if they knew what we were doing, e.g. spontaneously deciding to have oral sex on the sofa at 11 in the morning.

I also like to try to shock Plan C, arguing (as I did that morning) that anything between consenting adults is all right, and spelling out ‘anything.’ Then I began talking about his relationship with his beloved cat, Polly…and suggested that anything between human and cat was all right, if both consented.

Plan C was appalled: ‘That’s sick!’ he said with evident distress.

‘Why?’ I said, provocatively. ‘If both are enjoying themselves and no one is hurt, what’s the problem?’

I was kidding him….but this was no joke to Plan C. He was horrified.

‘That’s perverse!’ he insisted.

‘But if the person and the cat consent, why not?’

And so on. It was hard to get him to take the suggestion as a joke. He adores Polly, and the thought of anything so ’sick’ or ‘perverse’ really upset him. I guess that must be because of his essentially parental relationship to Polly. He takes such good care of her: his rising hour in the morning is determined by her hunger for breakfast. If she jumps on the bed and mews for breakfast, up he gets, even if he’s tired. And she gets her affectionate brushing from him every day; he’s the parent who grooms her. He calls her ‘Polly girl’ and always talks to her when she’s in the room.

Sometimes he calls me ‘Mimi girl,’ by unconscious analogy with the cat….but he is not ‘parental’ to me.

He’s a very affectionate person.

HIPAA AUTHORIZATION TO DISCLOSE HEALTH INFORMATION

As unmarried but devoted and entirely committed lovers, we didn’t want to be in the situation some gay and lesbian couples have found themselves in, unable to visit one another in hospital rooms or to talk to a partner’s doctor. So at my suggestion we got a lawyer to draw up forms for us to sign. The forms have been signed and notarized. This is what they say:

I, [Plan C/ Mimi], authorize [Mimi / Plan C] to have total access to my health care information, including, but not limited to, medical records, reports, results, recommendations, documentation, charts, invoices, billing or payment information, notes and correspondence. I intend for the authorized person to have all the rights that I have under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability act of 1996….[technical stuff omitted here].

I understand that I am not required to provide this authorization. Further, I am aware that I have the right to revoke this authorization in writing. The revocation must include my name, address, telephone number, date of this Authorization and my signature.

N.B. This isn’t plug-pulling power; we’ve left that to our [separate] children.

HOW COULD I HAVE BEEN SO STUPID

I was looking at my television just now, I mean the piece of furniture (it was off), and remembering how I happened to get it. I had an old boxy one, much smaller, but Performer insisted (last October, and I posted about this) I get at least a 27-inch flat screen, or he wouldn’t watch movies at my apartment.

I consented.

Now, Plan C adores golf, playing it and watching the big tournaments, but he didn’t want to pressure me to get cable just for him. I was planning to get it in time to watch the Democratic Convention in August. Until then, I was happy just to use the screen for films and to get my news from the radio and the web.

But although he acquiesced to missing the golf on tv, because he spends weekends with me in the city, it was clear that he would really be sorry not to see the Masters.

He had gone to a lot of trouble to make his house comfortable for me, such as buying me (this he did without mentioning it beforehand) an incredibly thick long white terrycloth robe and two very soft down pillows. And he was so uninsistent that I really had to get cable a few months before I had planned to.

I was happy to do it for him.

And then, having remembered that, I also recollected how Performer had said he ‘loved giving women expensive jewelry’ but had never given me a thing, whereas Plan C, after knowing me for only two weeks, had given me the last piece of jewelry he ever gave his late wife.

And thinking of Performer’s total lack of generosity, and the three wives he’d been divorced from, and Plan C’s continuing (even, sometimes, excessive) generosity, and the one wife he’d been devoted to for over three decades — How could I have been so stupid??? I asked myself.

That’s what some of my readers were wondering then also.

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Whew!

I’m very lucky.

PLANS FOR THE FUTURE

We’re taking a trip together in late June / early July; we already have the tickets and the reservations. And I’m going to two family weddings with Plan C, one in July and one in August.

SOCKS

Plan C seems to be getting used to my Celeste Stein socks

I wore these socks the other day, and I asked him if he minded.

He said he didn’t.

I said, But you said I looked as if I were going to the gym —?

Oh, no, he said, brushing off the comment. He had no interest in critiquing my socks at all.

We dress in totally different styles. As I’ve mentioned before, Plan C is a very cool dresser, conservative but stylish, wearing ‘cranberry’ shirts, blue checks, creased khaki pants, that sort of thing, always looking tidy and fashionable. He wears his sweaters or jackets looped preppy-style around his neck; I wear mine tied around my waist, as children did back in the 1950s.

I really like the way he looks, all the time. And he seems either to like, or to be getting used to, the more off-beat way I look.

HIS HEALTH, MY HEALTH

He has a chipped tooth, aching shoulders ( a side-effect from medication, perhaps), and trouble sleeping occasionally.

I have swollen gums and osteoporosis.

Doctors, doctors, in our future.

We’re trying not to be old.

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