Cigarettes #4 & 5: It's called adultery, but it's also called I Don't Give a Damn If It Is.

FOURTH CIGARETTE, 3:55pm
Still sitting on the hacking bench
MUSIC: "Alibi," the Mountain Goats

Inside your room we shut the window and we turned on a fan.
We lay there together in the darkness -- I can keep a secret if you can.
Finishing one another's sentences like a pair of identical twins,
Your boyfriend's out of town until Tuesday and nobody saw me come in,
Nobody saw me come in with a gleam in my eye and an almost airtight alibi.

I am obsessed with cheating songs. My favorite iPod playlist is called IS IT GUILTY IN HERE OR IS IT JUST ME? and is full of songs like "How Does a Cheating Woman Feel?," "Conscience Where Were You (When I Needed You Last Night)," and "I Just Started Hating Cheating Songs Today." And "Alibi."

Cheating affects me so strongly because the things pulling me towards it ("Finishing one another's setences like a pair of identical twins," etc.) and the things pushing me away from it (commitment is important and should have consequences, etc.) are all very close to my heart, and I will probably never know for sure where my loyalties lie until I'm actually put in a cheating situation. It's a dilemma I spend a lot of time thinking about, which is why three things from the last few days all came to the surface during Marlboro #4:

Exhibit A: Adultery as Self-Discovery: Bitch PhD posts a defense of open marriage in which she writes: "Mr. B. and I have agreed that the biggest problem with monogamy is that it preemptively cuts off one possible avenue of growth. You are not allowed to explore this set of feelings, this person, what you can learn here, because it is 'wrong.' To me, that seems deeply fucked up and inimical to love."

Exhibit B: Faith and Doubt are One: Writes of Spring posts an apologia in which she writes: "When you believe in a religion that is based on paradox -- the paradox of believing in a figure who is both 100% man and 100% God, which equals 200%, which everyone knows doesn't mean anything -- it makes sense that faith itself would be a paradox too. And that paradox is that faith cannot exist without doubt, and doubt cannot exist without faith."

Exhibit C: Fear and Love are Also One: I watched the movie Requiem in which a priest exorcises a demon with a prayer that asks for "love of God and fear of God."

These three things, plus "Alibi," gave birth to this:

I once told Trespassers William (a very dear friend of mine) that my friends are the people I trust to lie to me. He got very upset and tried to convince me that friendship is based on mutual understanding and therefore can only flourish between two people who are completely honest with one another. I disagree. Honesty is pretty okay, all other things being equal, but when honesty conflicts with the love I feel for someone, love wins every time. Sometimes this means lying to protect someone's feelings. Sometimes it means concealing the baser aspects of my character in order to live up to their expectations of me. (Think of Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets, or Alcibaides in the Symposium. Love makes a man feel ashamed of who he really is. It makes him "want to be a better man," and the first step to becoming a better man is pretending to be a better man, which is to some extent dishonest.)

Our friendship-vs.-honesty argument was at a standstill until it occured to me while listening to "Alibi" that if TW is right about love demanding that I always present my authentic self to my beloved, then he can't ever convince Bitch PhD that adultery is wrong. There are authentic aspects of myself that can only be revealed through an adulterous relationship. ("Finishing one another's sentences like a pair of identical twins!") A relationship can have perfect authenticity or perfect fidelity, but not both.

I pick fidelity. If a man's relationship with God paradoxically demands both fear and love, and both faith and doubt, then it makes sense that a man's relationship with his beloved would paradoxically demand both disclosure and concealment.

FIFTH CIGARETTE, 4:05pm
Still sitting on the hacking bench
MUSIC: "Policy of Truth," Depeche Mode

You had something to hide. You should have hidden it, shouldn't you?
Now you're not satisfied with what your'e being put through.
It's just time to pay the price for not listening to advice
And deciding in your youth on the policy of truth.
You'll see your problems multipled if you continually decide
To faithfully pursue a policy of truth.

A song and a cigarette to ratify my rejection of uncompromising authenticity.

When I put out Marlboro #5 and let go of any attachment to self-expression for self-expression's sake, my obsession with cheating got much less ambivalent.