By
Ray Purcell
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| Sex, Lies, and Climbing By Ray Purcell |
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| I am just so tired of the whole damn climbing partner scene.� After having been through a series of failed "serious" relationships I just said, what the hell, I might as well just be promiscuous, use and be used, if you know what I mean.� I began to wonder which character in Sex and The City that I was most like. | ||||||||||||
| Ok some of my partners have moved and that"s to be expected.�� I've tried long distance relationships and eventually they just peter out and both partners move on, it's just the way of it.�� One of my partners just couldn't do it any more, it was a physical thing, and he couldn't keep it up because of his knees.� We still see each other as friends, but what was I supposed to, I'm young and healthy with normal drives, I just had to get out and he understood.� | ||||||||||||
| What I'm talking about is getting dumped because of the old; we just grew apart, bullshit.� It must be some kind of guy thing.� I mean is commitment and attention span located on the missing leg of that Y-chromosome?� Or does their sense of time have some correlation to dog-years; "yeah, guess I've been with this partner about five years now, recon it's time to leave it on the porch"?�� | ||||||||||||
| My last partner was married.� Oh god I know, and I don't need to hear it, I should have known better.� What kind of fool's paradise was I living in?� He'd climb with me and he'd climb with her.� Of course she eventually found out about me and then he wanted to climb with both of us.� Well I'm a climber, a risk taker; at first the experimentation was kind of fun, but pretty soon it got awkward.�� First the three of us stopped climbing and then, I should have seen this coming, I started to hear less and less from him.� Last I heard he'd gotten monogamous again.�� He told me that he had bought a tandem recumbent bike and planned long summer tours with her; it sounded like some-kind-of religious atonement. | ||||||||||||
| I went through an open relationship phase.� He was young, ambitious, and cute in a big guy sort of way, but deadly to belay in a fall.�� He was one of these gregarious types that had to climb around, so I did too and tried not to feel guilty about it.�� He left town a few years back, and we still get together and have a climb for old times sake, but he hasn't changed, if it isn't Annie at Red Rocks, it's Dawn at Indian Creek. | ||||||||||||
| I do the group climb thing once and a while too, and after a dry spell the variety's great.� But I absolutely draw the line with those groups with cultish undertones.� The groups that keep their new and naive members as belay slaves under a dominatrix hierarchy.� I've even seen them at family crags like Williamson Rocks and Fossil Falls shamelessly flaunting their deviance in front of everyone!�� The novitiates are either submissively tending to their masters belay wishes, or being publicly whipped with the groups rigid technique, and the way they just gang rope a crag; it's just way too kinky for me. | ||||||||||||
| I was at a social thing the other night, a lot of old friends.� It was all about climbing of course.� As I looked around they just stood out in the crowd, the long-time partners.� It was so disgusting; they just exuded this aura of commitment and stability.�� The knowing looks, the nonverbal understanding, they chatted among others in the crowd about having done all the classics, the kind of things that can only come when your not spending all your time getting used to someone new; it was too much for me to bear and I felt dirty and sorry for myself. | ||||||||||||
| I really hit bottom when I partnered up with a guy who was also a triathelete.� I should never have gotten involved with a guy who went both ways, and on top of that he has a wife and kids too; isn't there some counseling for my kind of problem.�� But he was so enthusiastic about climbing, and I was sure that if I were just good enough he'd want to be straight.�� Now I could take the competition from his wife and kids, but how do you compete against another sport.�� | ||||||||||||
| The next day I was climbing with my daughter; I do that when I'm seeking a little grace.� She doesn't climb that much but she's quite good and has a lot of potential for someone who's only a recreational user.�� Anyway, out of the blue she shares her revelation that "climbers are really nice people, and trust worthy, but I'd never marry one, they're so self centered."�� Then she tells me "all they seem to want to do is take off every weekend and climb, and they don't seem to care who it's with".� Thank God there's some purity in my dirty world.��� | ||||||||||||
| June, 2002 | ||||||||||||
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