Saturday, December 14, 2002, 6:00pm - 10pm
LTD WINTER HOLIDAY PARTY

Celebrate HANUKKAH with dreidels, menorah and latkes, YULE with a ritual for bringing back the light after the year's longest night and CHRISTMAS with Anne's unique miniature Christmas village and an old fashioned Christmas tree. We'll sing holiday songs. You may bring songs or poems of your own or anything which catches your fancy to read to us or lead a sing along.
GIFT EXCHANGE-bring a science fiction/fantasy oriented or love gift. Kids bring kid gift to exchange with each other.
PHONE # Day of event only: (323) 737-3256.
Potluck dinner: bring your favorite holiday dish to share
Location: 2649 Kenwood Avenue.
Directions: Take the 10 fwy to Normandy, turn south, go to the next light at Adams, continue south one moe block to 27th street. Turn left, go one block to Kenwood, turn left and find parking. Phone # day of event only: (323) 737-3256.
RSVP (818) 361-6737, Extension 3

Saturday January 18, 2003 / 11am -2:00pm
GROUP LIVING NOW:
PLANNING A GROUP HOME FOR REAL
WE ARE SELLING OUR HOME IN SYLMAR TO GET A BIGGER, BETTER PLACE--
MOST LIKELY IN THE SAN FERNANDO VALLEY.

Imagine coming home to a beautiful house with plenty of trees, a fire place, pool and a hot tub (clothing optional of course). You come home to the smell of something delicious being cooked by one of your housemates. You share a good dinner with whoever is at home tonight. Afterwards, you can go to the privacy of your room or soak in the hot tub with good friends. Sound good? Go for it!

Many times over the years we've done an exercise at a Live the Dream meeting in which we have everyone write down what they could afford to pay down for a home and what they could pay monthly. Invariably, we discover that many people together can live cheaper and a whole lot nicer than that same number could live separately. If you have some real interest in living in a lovely home with warm, caring, like minded people for little more (and maybe even less) than you are now paying to live alone (or with your spouse) in a smaller place, come to this planning meeting.
Potluck lunch at 1:00pm - Bring something healthy & delicious to share

Afternoon discussion: (Probably in the hot tub) What can we learn from Science Fiction examples of group living? Is the Enterprise (in all its guises) a group home? Do the group homes of the Free Amazons of Darkover (Marion Zimmer Bradley) have something to teach us? Do the "artists" all living together in Lady Sally's very classy and caring Bordello in Spider Robinson's Calahan series have anything we might want to use in reality? Speculative fiction is about the possible...

HOT TUB AVAILABLE ALL DAY--BRING SANDALS AND A TOWEL.
Location: Brussel-Gibbons group house: 809 Lashburn Street, Sylmar, CA 91342.
Directions: Take 405 or 5 to San Fernando Mission off ramp. Take Laurel Canyon to Hubbard. Right. One block to Pearwood right. One block to Lashburn Right..
RSVP PLEASE! (818) 361-6727, Ex. 3

Saturday, February 15, 2003, 11:00am - 4:00pm.
VALENTINE'S DAY TANTRIC WORKSHOP

Special Live the Dream event
Valentines Day Intro to Tantric
Singles Ok with advanced reservation only. Gender balance will be managed, though the exercises during this introduction will be verbal and sensual rather than actually sexual.
Potluck Lunch at 1 pm. Bring something light, healthy and delicious to share. Finger foods best to feed each other.
The introduction is FREE to LTD members with current membership cards-ie dues paid on or after 10-31-02.
It is $7.50 to non-members.
INTENSIVE TANTRIC WORKSHOP
Saturday Night, February 15, 2003 through 4 pm Sunday February 16, 2003.
The intensive workshop is for couples or triads, quads, etc. by advance arrangement. We will not be doing partner rotation during this workshop.

The Intensive is for LTD members only with
current membership cards.

Cost per person: $70.00 paid by 2-8-03 or $95 after that if there is still room available.

This is lead by SHAMA.
Shama is an excellent teacher of Tantric whom our triad has been taking private sessions from for the last couple of months. It has sure changed our love life for the better! We have all learned to enjoy a deeper intimacy with each other through communicating in ways which bring greater joy to our partners as well as experiencing the delights of longer, more intense orgasms. Shama will be sharing many of these techniques with those attending the Intensive workshop. It will be deliciously intense…
Shama is a member of an intimate network/family by choice and is definitely in the poly lifestyle.

You can visit Shama's website at: pleasureparadigm.com
This event is being held at a beautiful home in the hills of Glendale. Early RSVP is a must for this one because space is limited. (818) 361-6737, Ex. 3
Dinner: We'll share dinner out together at a local restaurant before the intensive workshop.
Address: 1447 Hillside Drive, Glendale, CA 91208 Directions are on page two
Directions: Take the 101 or the 5 to the 135 East. Take the Glendale Avenue Exit. Turn Left on North Glendale Avenue (.6 miles), Continue on North Verdugo Road (.6 miles) and bear left on Canada Blvd (.7 miles). Turn left on Hillside Drive. House is on the right side of the street.

Who Is the Master, The Word or Myself?
(Humpty Dumpy in Through the Looking Glass)
By Terry Brussel-Gibbons

Alternative Lifestyles is a rather wide reaching term. I used to think Live the Dream was about Alternative Lifestyles. Actually, it is about a rather specifically limited form of Alternative Lifestyles called Polyamory. "Alternative Lifestyles" can mean anything other than the nuclear family of one female/one male monogamous marriage and their children if any. Single moms and dads with children qualify. Nuns qualify in their celibacy. So do group marriages.
The more common life styles generally referred to as "alternative" include swinging, gay/lesbian/bi relationships whether open or closed, SM/BD arrangements and Polyamory.
Let's define these terms a bit. Swinging and Polyamory are actually a continuum; with hard swinging, (sexual intercourse with people to whom you have not even been introduced-formally or otherwise), on one end and closed group marriages on the other. In between are such persons as "swingers" who may have been meeting regularly for years with many of the same people, put on conventions with them, and go to their kids bar mitzvahs, and couples in open committed relationships whose intimate friendship network (which may number from ten to twenty plus) are both family by choice and shared lovers. Polyamory is another word for multiply committed relationships-the belief that it is possible to love and be committed to more than one significant other. The more committed your relationships are, the more they can be considered Polyamory rather than swinging. Poly people may be heterosexual, bi or gay. Swingers may be any of those, but tend to be male heterosexuals and female bisexuals. Poly people or swingers may also be into SM/BD. Or not
The lifestyle of any particular individual, couple or group is sometimes hard to determine. I live with one man I am legally married to. Our hand fasted male partner sleeps with us every night. Another housemate-water brother has lived with us six years and has not been my lover for the last four of them. We have an intimate friendship network which includes loving/sexual relationships which have been part of my life for 20+ years. This is clearly Polyamory, but are we best defined as an open triad with one additional housemate, a fourway group marriage with one member choosing not be sexual or is the whole intimate network just one kind of family-by-choice? One woman has oral intercourse with a beloved male friend under the tolerant eye of her husband and calls it fantasy fulfillment. According to Clinton, she says, this is not even sex. Another woman does the same thing with the same beloved friend under her husband's tolerant gaze and calls it Polyamory. One man watches his wife being spanked by a good friend they see regularly at an SM club they all belong to. The wife has an orgasm and the spanker has an erection (at least). The husband calls it a "scene" and still believes he and his wife are monogamous. Another husband witnesses a similar scene at the same party, calls it SM, and concerns himself with being sure to arrange time for bonding with this other man--perhaps going to a ball game or a concert together. He defines this as proper behavior with his wife's secondary partner in their poly relationship.
I certainly define such scenes as polyamorous and have often gotten a good laugh (with fellow poly people) out of the way some folks kid themselves. Calling a bunch of roses a duck will not make it quack nor will a wolf meow because you call it a pussy cat.
On the other hand, one of the most widely accepted tools of communication is to allow the speaker to own what he says. In a marital fair fight active listening requires that you let your spouse own his words-you can feed back what you think you heard him or her say, but you haven't "gotten" it until your spouse says you have. This rule applies in marriage counseling, mediation (for labor and management or between multiple nations), and sensitivity/encounter groups of all kinds. It may well be a good one if the object is to make a relationship viable rather than for either party to be necessarily "right".
On still another hand the law discriminates in many ways against those of us not living in the more generally accepted life styles. The law may take your children from you for being in a triad or refuse your life partner entry into your intensive care room because you are both the same sex and your 10 yr committed relationship is not called a marriage. If we don't all hang together under some name we can all somehow agree on, politically demanding by our combined numbers the freedoms we seek, it may be the Moral Majority (which is neither) will force us all to hang separately. To the Anita Bryants of the world, the hardest swingers and the most committed polyamorists are all "perverts", whatever we call ourselves.
Perhaps what we all need to aim for is respect for the way others conduct their relationships and for how they choose to define those relationships. It may be that the most important line of distinction we can draw is between tolerance and bigotry rather than between variations in how we express the freedom to be Ourselves...

 

GIVE US YOUR STORIES. We need your stories for research purposes--your names will remain anonymous. If you have been hassled by the government for your lifestyle, particularly by any child services department, we want to hear from you by phone, in writing or by E-Mail.
Our phone number is 818-361-6737.
Our mailing address is
6454 Van Nuys Blvd #211
Van Nuys, CA. 91401.
Our e-mail address is: [email protected]

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