Let's set the way-back machine about 19 years. In those days, I was fairly antisocial, and basically happy that way. I was primarly interested in light bulbs, vacuum tubes, and the early microcomputers just becoming available for the first time. Life wasn't perfect, but I had plenty of diverting hobbies, and ignored the rest of humanity fairly efficiently.

That summer, I volunteered my services at a work camp, to improve housing for underprivileged people. A bunch of us young folks went out days, and busted our butts rebuilding houses, putting up roofs, painting, rewiring, all that bushwa. In the evenings, we would party. Most of the group was paired off in couples, which was of minimal interest to me.

Until one night, we celebrated one girl's birthday. A few folks elected to give her birthday kisses. Not too many, because her BF was a big jealous guy [ironically, he's my brother-in-law now] For some reason, I decided to give it a whirl anyway. I'd never kissed anybody (except family), and I figured he wouldn't bother beating up a scrawny little wimp like me anyway. So I wandered up, bent over, and aimed to give her a polite peck on the cheek, like the others. But, at the last second, she turned her head, and I ended up kissing her full on the lips.

In that one instant, my whole world changed. It was as if a whole section of my brain that I had been previously unaware of had suddenly been switched on. A feeling of wild pleasure flooded through me, unlike anything I'd ever experienced before. I wandered back to where I had been sitting, wrapped in a happy fog.

That fog didn't lift for a week.

Suddenly, I had a new interest. My life as a hermit was over, and now I had the first motivation to be social. But I didn't know how. I spent the next few years trying to figure out human social interactions, with the dubious advantages of a wildly analytical intelligence and a nearly obsessive goal-oriented approach. There is a certain satisfying frustration to a program big enough, and complex enough to truly tax one's mental resources. I enjoyed this frustrating satisfaction for quite a long while.

Fortunately, there were fringe groups of people that were tolerant of various degrees of bizarre social incompetence. The medievalists, the science fiction fans, the theatre crowd, all of these people put up with me, to one degree or another. Eventually I evolved my own social personality, unsurprisingly, it was unconventional in various obvious and subtle ways. I tend to be fairly direct and honest, and at the same time, timid and conservative. Some people note one side of this, and some the other, giving me both a reputation as incredibly clue-resistant on the one hand, and subtle as a brick on the other.

So far, so good. I was dating irregularly, getting to neck with people from time to time, and enjoying myself famously. I was also holding up a GPA of 0.94, but I Just Didn't Care.

Then life threw me the next curve ball.

I was kissing someone deeply and passionately for the first time, and something Happened. The act of sharing a kiss with someone was always magical to me, deeply intimate, special, personal, wildly involving. Several people had remarked on the fact that I was an unusual person to kiss, so I had some hint that the experiences I was having may not be universal, or even common. And that was before.

This time, it was like I had suddenly tasted someone else's soul. Like an immediate connection between us, we merged into a single spirit. This was a peak experience. Absolutely nothing else compared to it. When I eventually had sex for the first time, it wasn't this intense. When the music muse hits me, it isn't this good. When I pull off an absolutely incredible hack, it doesn't feel like this.

Stunned, I just sat there for a while, coming back to myself. I felt renewed, energized, thrumming with life! All that from a quick, experimental kiss that probably only lasted a few seconds in realtime.

Obviously, I had to try it again. So eventually, I finagled a second kiss. Wham! Expecting it, it was even more powerful than the first time. My entire being resonated with this new form of joy. I felt as one with the universe, transported to a dimension of pure happiness, utterly serene, yet bursting with energy. This, I decided, was what life was all about.

She and I dated for about a year and a half, necking wildly, disgusting all our friends, having a blast. Getting up in the morning was easy, schoolwork was easy, life was easy. I figured this magical, mystical connection between us was preordained, eternal, unbreakable. This must be what "soul mates" are all about. However, it was not forever. Suddenly, she needed to "take a couple months off" for some vaguely-specified reason. The next week she was dating this total jerk, who treated her horribly. She wouldn't talk to me. I pined after her for a year, putting my life on hold, going through the motions of life, not really giving a damn any more. I dated a few other people, but my heart just wasn't in it.

Eventually, of course, I realized that she was never coming back, and I'd never find out what really happened. And it was still incredibly fun to date people. Then lightning struck again. I'd just met an interesting person at a party, and we were trading truly horrid puns, flirting up a storm, and of course we were the last to realize that we were Interested in each other. In the quiet, tired, slow end of the night, we finally Kissed for the first time. And the Universe opened up to me again. Just as suddenly, with no preamble, we totally melted into each others' psyches. Suddenly, the empty place in my spirit was refilled, and life was wonderful all over again. This time, the psychic link stayed up, albeit at a low level, when we were apart. She would *know* when I was nearby, which bewildered her friends. We dated wildly, totally involved with each other, until she suddenly decided that she didn't have enough time to support the relationship at the level it deserved. A sudden, last, breathtaking, heartrending kiss, and it was over. It didn't feel as bad as the first time. We broke up friends, and I had the knowledge that there wasn't just one single person that had that special quality that transformed a wonderful intimacy into a religious experience.

But how to find that again? I had kissed a lot of people, and only two had that sudden, incredible, soul-to-soul link. Now, nearly two decades later, that number has climbed to merely ten.

This is not an easy subject to discuss. Most people have never experienced it, and don't believe in it. People who do have have this quality are frightened by my obsession with it, and the people who don't, are insulted that they aren't among the magic few. I've only had the privilege of dating three such people, which is three more than most people get.

This is probably one of the reasons I'm polyamorous -- as several people have pointed out, polyamory is one way of having different people satisfy different needs. And for me, tasting another person's soul is a need. A secret need, one I don't talk about much, but a very real one.

It just occurred to me that I've never had sex with someone like this. I honestly don't know what would happen if I did. If I were to share an orgasm with someone while sharing their soul, I might just recapitulate the climactic scene in the first Star Trek movie. I don't know.

So why am I posting this, risking offending/frightening a lot of my friends? Because I'm tired of keeping this to myself, I'm tired of wondering if I'm the only one, and I just had a deep realization. I experienced this wonderful, transcendental, energizing communion at Philcon. And the person I shared it with isn't the one who stuck in my mind. In other words, this may not be the experience called "soul mates". It is also not "love" (by itself, anyway). There may well not be words for it. It's not the only special thing, there actually are other feelings just as powerful, but different. Now that it's not unique, it's something I can dare share.

However, I still crave it.

-- Spam

6/30/99 12:53PM