In between packing and putting off packing, I’ve been catching up on cached Metokur livestreams. Say what you will about Jim and his Joker-like desire to laugh at the world while it burns, but it’s oddly comforting to know there’s at least one person out there who grasps that taking life, a prospect nobody survives, ‘super cereal guise’ is likely the wrong approach, and that laughing at morons digging their own graves is a great way to keep that juice flowing. It’s a bucket of chuckles, if nothing else, and I certainly can’t pass that up if for no other reason than to not ensure I get high blood pressure when I’m older.

However, the archive that I was flipping back to in between lulls in tonight’s Blazers v Nuggets history-making game, dedicated a tiny portion to watching Louis Theroux’s recent addition to his documentary library Love Without Limits. The flick focuses on polyamory and the people at its epicenter in Portland, Oregon. Of course it would have started in Portland, because bragging about Geo Metros and the hours spent coiffing some of the most ludicrous and hideous facial hair I’ve ever seen wasn’t enough to make Portland in my ‘Top Five Places I’d Rather Commit Suicide Than Visit’. As a tangent, can I say that, just like I have never met someone who drove a Jeep 4×4 that wasn’t the embodiment of the word ‘douche’, I have never met someone from Portland that wasn’t the personification of smug. It’s fucking flabbergasting the amount of cock-sureness that comes out of a city that’s own motto of ‘Keep Portland Weird’ only makes sense if the very people who live there are astoundingly insecure with themselves and thus need to behave extremely abnormally to avoid dealing with their innate boringness and vapidity.

No, I don’t like Portland; don’t ask me to visit, and quit telling me ‘how beautiful’ the Pacific Northwest is. It sucks just like the rest of the country. In fact, it’s worse than parts of the rest of the United States because, unlike everywhere else not named Washington or California, it’s filled with disgusting, unwashed white hippies, instead of hard-working, zero-bullshit humans who don’t need to spend their entire morning telling you ‘how amazing the finger sandwiches at Mustachio’s are’. Side-side note: if I hear one more time that Jimmy John’s is good food, I’m going to go buy a pistol so I can pistol-whip you dipshits. Any place that charges almost twenty bucks for sixteen inches of scooped out bread (thereby defeating the entire point of bread) and sells shit called an ‘Unwich’, which is a stupidly fucking pretentious re-branding of the word ‘salad’, is bottom of the barrel food. Also, the bread they make at Jimmy John’s is horrendous, crusty, and become stale stupidly quickly. If you want overrated chain sandwiches, do Jersey Mike’s instead, because you can at least watch your low-qual lunch meats be sliced to order, which is a fun throw-back to actual delicatessens of yesteryear.

Where was I? Oh, right, the polyamorous documentary. While visiting Portland, Theroux films his time exploring the culture of people who have jumped through all the mental gymnastics courses to reframe the concept of fidelity so that they can cheat on their partners and it’s seen as perfectly acceptable, a.k.a polyamory. If it wasn’t frank enough, I don’t like this stuff. When I was much younger, I was the third wheel in a relationship like this. I’ve also lived with people who practice this stuff, and while they can be very nice people to get along with, I have never met a polyamorous person who did not make the concept their entire identity, nor have I met one who I could say, with confidence, was a properly functioning, motivated, and well-balanced, mature adult. It could be that I’ve met the garbage tier practitioners, but the through-line that all these people had an unbelievable urge to justify what is essentially cheating and not simply call it a ‘fuck-buddy’ relationship (because that’s basically what it is), and how this ridiculous behavior was amplified by a lack of ability anywhere else or with anything else can only lead me to the conclusion that people with zero ambitions that are kind of stupid and really just want to catch a lot of dick/vag but want to seem like they ‘have some of it all figured out’ to their peers believe in this shit.

Now, normally I’d watch the film, read some articles, and then cut & paste in funny bits and offer up some commentary. This time, I’m going to attempt to watch the documentary in as real-time as I possibly can, and attempt a shitty ‘stream-of-consciousness’ shellacking. The reason is because I know I’m going to get furious at all these degenerates, and since only BBC locals can access this completely legally, I don’t know how long where the stream I’m watching will stay up. I also don’t want to write a full dissertation where the core point of ‘Stop being fucking cucks you cucking fucks and be proper, mature adults who confront their problems, not sweep them under the rug’ gets repeated past ad nauseum; I get that’s my schtick, but even some dead horses don’t need that much beating. Also additionally, it’s going to be a pain to watch, decipher, translate speech-to-text, then commentate, and I don’t want to be up all night again.

Here’s a little nightmare fuel before we dive in:

Top-tier photo-shopping.

Maybe it’s just me, but the last image I would want tied to my crazy-ass documentary is one featuring two chub-nubs and a gal with a supreme muffin top and top-tier slasher smile. That’s Joker-esque; it’s so fucking unnerving. You know, the more I stare at this, the more I’m starting to think that look is exactly what they were looking for, as a subtle warning to normal-ass people who are going to watch this that what they see is three degrees of center. Her outfit is pretty terrible, too, and glasses guy needs to shave his horrendous neckbeard. I don’t know how old these three are, but this is less a good introductory picture into a polyamory documentary and more a good PSA for diabetes.

00:00 – 00:23

‘Well, I’m in a relationship with two other women and my wife, and all of them want to have sex at least once a week, if not more, so, you can do the math on all that”
‘And do you like that?’
‘It’s great. Who wouldn’t want to have my life’.

This is the man who said the above:

I’m not knocking him for managing to swing three girls who all want to hop on his junk regularly, because it’s a challenge for most guys to land one, let alone two and three. However, I have a hard time the poon this man is pulling down is good poon, because this dude is at least forty, and the only time I’ve seen dudes that old land nymphos is if they have fat stacks of cash spilling out of their pockets and the girls are young, vapid, and dumb. Plus, if you’re past forty and bragging about having tons of sex, you have definitely screwed up somewhere. Again, I’m not saying you can’t slay puss at any age, just that people who are definitively at the ‘parents’ age should probably be focusing on other shit, like avoiding gout and getting scoped regularly. Hats off, though, to square-rimmed glasses dude, for killing it; you gotta respect the game and that he’s cucked his wife something fierce.

00:48 – 00:55

‘Joe asked my permission to ask her to marry him… I said, yeah, psh, make her an honest woman, finally’

This ‘family’ is the one that’s sparked the biggest outrage waves around the film. The woman quoted here is Gretchen, who is married to Joe, a man who is clearly clinically obese and should be getting that shit under control because he’s graying in his beard (i.e. he’s an old fuck), and he has kids. If you watch the bit on the Metokur stream, which is the three minute video on YouTube about the doc, you’ll see it’s painfully obvious that the dynamic of the four ‘adults’ is unhealthy and unbalanced. You’ll also see Joe in the comment section justifying and defending (even though he claims he doesn’t need to) his situation, that situation being that Gretchen doesn’t like sex whereas Joe needs his pole polished constantly, hence why he and Heidi get along so great; Heidi needs to be stuffed regularly, and her husband, Jerry, isn’t up to the task.

The reason this mish-mash of a family put people so up in arms is because Jerry is clearly getting the short stick in every bit of the footage, and yet he stays because, like many men on the West coast and in Portland specifically, they go along with whatever their partner says because they’re terrified of being alone. In fact, every single person involved in the four-some is terrified of being alone, but they’re all very clearly stunted emotionally and thus can’t express this very obvious observation. I’m sure Joe would comment on my eventual finished post how wrong I am, which is proof in and of itself because a properly functional and mature adult who had a fucking family and fucking kids to raise would address the stunted sex life with his actual wife and try to find a compromise that didn’t involve invading into someone else’s bedroom while stepping all over the fidelity of his own bond, or consider splitting up because sex in any relationship is a huge part of the relationship. If you disagree with this, you’re an asshole, a retard, and are completely wrong.

Anyways, without going to deep into the meat & potatoes of my problem with the people in the film, and polyamory on the whole right now, Gretchen’s quote is infuriating because she clearly doesn’t give a damn what happens or that the two families are playing a stupidly dangerous charade to avoid being properly functioning adults, and has no problem perpetuating the lie that this situation that all four of them are in is an honest and open as they keep trying to frame it. It’s not. It’s two people who want to get fucked cheating on their spouses, and their spouses not having the balls to find more properly compatible partners and leaving the sex pests out to dry.

Can I just say that in the entire minute I’ve been watching this, I have not seen one remotely attractive person? The only one who could have been is Heidi, and that was years ago, when she wasn’t trying to control her husband and her baps weren’t sagging to the floor. Once again, this shit just keeps reinforcing all these patterns I’ve personally witnessed. I know anecdotal evidence isn’t good enough or factual enough, but when did we throw the notion of pattern recognition out the window?

Did I call it or what?

I’m not sure why Heidi and Jerry have a picture of some other woman’s neck and cleavage next to their wedding photo; I can only assuming Heidi did some modeling and that’s her. Regardless, I fucking called it; Heids was a smokeshow. She also clearly didn’t care that much for Jerry since she isn’t even looking at him in their wedding photo which, considering Jerry is an IT Analyst and she’s a Therapist that sells really ugly shirts out of their home, speaks volumes. Maybe they were into each other years ago, but the narration says that twelve years ago (so 2006) Heidi wanted to open the relationship, and that she and Jerry have been married for sixteen years (so 2002), which all indicates to me that Heidi wanted new dick early on, but didn’t want to lose out on her cash-cash money-money flow because, let’s be honest, how many therapists do you know making bank right now? Thus, she went with the ‘let’s open our relationship’ route, and Jerry buckled because, let’s face it, how many IT Analysts do you know that anal more than they IT?

2:48 – 3:16

‘And what’s your relationship with Joe, would you say? How’d you describe him?’
‘Overall, he’s my friend; he’s family, which is family of choice.’
‘There isn’t a special term for how you relate to him? He’s obviously not your husband..’
‘He is not my husband – metamor – metamor would be the appropriate… meta beyond she and I.’

If you’re watching along, this is where you can see that things are not right with this whole setup. Just watch Jerry’s reaction to his wife, the woman he exchanged vows with to love and be with until death and through sickness and health, saying she’s ‘engaged’ to Joe. It’s the look of a man who’s soul has just evaporated from his being. Without Jerry, this documentary would has flown under the radar, no doubt. I’ve seen a number of reviews and commentaries on the film, and while there are plenty of polyamory apologists trying to frame the end result as Theroux injecting his personal beliefs into the subject matter too much, everyone’s heart bleeds for Jerry, and rightfully so.

What a bitch.

This one came from this JOE article regarding Theroux’s opinion on the whole mess. I had my doubts as to why Jerry was so down-trodden when it was clear his wife didn’t love him anymore, and his only other potential partner was far less attractive and possessed zero sex drive, yet he was in the perfect position to find someone else more compatible to him without having to deal with the pain that is divorce since his wife was busy fucking a fat bearded hipster and seemed to give no shits about what Jerry did. I’m sure part his despondency has to do with him being overly attached to Heidi, but in finding this tidbit, this implies that Heidi has rigged her ‘open relationship’ to be exactly what I said these polyamorous relationships are when you unmask them: people cheating on their partners. If Heidi doesn’t want Jerry to participate in threesomes (notice she never stipulates if she’s a part of them), or to watch Heidi fucking someone else, then it’s fairly logical to assume there’s other rules that are probably barring Jer-dog from going out and slaying some nerd snatch like he should be doing. I mean, he’s also overweight, too, which doesn’t help, but it’s fucking Portland.

That dude with the shawl is shirtless and hairy, by the way. You’re welcome. I also didn’t think I’d get to use this one the wya this was going.

When you have regular weirdos like this everywhere, I’m sure Jerry could find someone willing to let him slam. Fuck Heidi, man. She also nods when Jerry’s explaining the ridiculous terminology to Louis while looking at Jerry, like he said exactly what he’s been trained to and he’s a good boy. Yuck.

03:32 – 03:48

‘You know how when you go over to your friends house, and you sleep over? Our family is different in that our grownups have sleepovers’

This was the apparent explanation they gave to their daughter, Piper, whenever Heidi brought over some dude that wasn’t her dad. First, I don’t now who cut Piper’s hair, but it’s awful. It’s like somewhere between an actual professional cut, and a weird bowl around the bangs. Second, Heidi does that annoying eye-closing shit that people who lie constantly and are really smug do, and never realize that this is their obvious tell. Third, Heidi has that crazy, mega-hard stare that I have only ever seen old-school, super hippies pull, down fucking pat; like that look where they’re looking over their glasses and looking at you so goddamn hard, as if to burn a hole into your head. She’s also got the look dead on, as well.

Heidi then talks about her reasoning for going into polyamory, because we all know she’s the one who pitched the idea because if Jerry did, then we never hear about either of these two. It’s supposedly about her post-partum depression, and that she got in touch with an ‘old male friend’ from over a decade back, and he provided tons of ’emotional support’. To those not rolling their eyes, he pumped and dumped her emotionally-weak ass like a fucking falcon. Then comes the absolutely most heart-wrenching line in entire series.

What do you say to the person you love most in the world when they say they have feelings for someone else?

I need to note, even if it’s not that important, that both Heidi and Jerry have some really unsettling facial tics. I don’t know if it’s emotion or just natural random muscle spasms, but it weirdly adds to that whole ‘three degrees off-center’ feeling I mentioned earlier; like both of these people are a handful of discussions away from a stroke or something. Anyways, the correct answer to the above is: break it off. If a person has feelings for someone else, you know who they don’t have feelings for? You. They wouldn’t have feelings for someone else if they had feelings for you.

This rationalizing shit is, like I said before, what people who are terrified of losing their partner do in an effort to not have to start over. Everyone, barring psychopaths, has a fear of being rejected. It’s ingrained in human psychology to want to be accepted, because we are a social species that also has the benefit of individual agency, and this allows us to both be giants who walk amongst the everyman, and the everyman who walks amongst the giants. The proper growth pattern is to encounter rejection as a child, and use that negative feeling to improve yourself so that you minimize the times that happens in the future. It doesn’t mean you don’t still get rejected, because you do, it means that it gets easier to deal with the older you get because you have more things to fall back into like safety nets if it happens later on in life. Now, I don’t know what causes people to pull a ‘scared turtle’ like Jerry; I can only assume poor parenting or having a fairly issue-free life where this is the first real test he got, and he crumbled and failed. Regardless, at least we can learn from this, and the learning should be that your happiness and success should not impinge on others happiness or success. That is, of course, if you care about the people around you.

6:05

‘There’s no victim; we’re all quite happy.’

First, there’s a bit before this quote where they talk about this bullshit term called ‘compersion’, which was specifically created by the Polyamory community. It means:

The feeling of joy associated with seeing a loved one love another; contrasted with jealousy.

Thanks, Wordnik.

It is specifically ambiguous in its definition because it allows regular-ass people to associate positive sentiments & feelings to situations like ‘My friend Becky got into grad school! Go Becky go!’ or ‘Mom got a promotion at her job! Yay Mom!’ or ‘Holy shit Dad won the lottery! We’re set for life!’ In reality, it’s supposed to be for when your partner falls in love with another person that isn’t you.

You may be wondering, then, what is the proper term for feeling happy when someone you know is happy, like a friend or a significant other or a family member. The words are empathy and sympathy. You could argue that only sympathy fits, but I included empathy because sympathy only deals with the sharing of emotion, while empathy is the comprehension of the emotion and what caused it. You need both to properly grasp someone else’s emotional state. Notice that compersion is supposedly an antonym of jealousy, and only focuses on positive feelings. Looking up jealousy in other definition engines, like Merriam-Webster, doesn’t list compersion as an antonym. That’s probably because it’s a bullshit word, but also probably because jealousy isn’t an antonym to compersion. Jealousy is about wanting something someone else has. You can’t be jealous when your partner finds someone else to be poly with because you already have your partner. This shit doesn’t even work on the etymological level, probably because the people spear-heading it are fucking stupid.

Moving on, I have said this time and again, but if you have to say that something is a certain way, or you are a certain thing, or just in general that a thing is something, it is not that something. Since that likely made no sense, the fact that Heidi has to outright say that ‘there is no victim’ should be a massive fucking red flag that there is a victim (*cough* Jerry *cough). If there wasn’t a victim or something off-kilter, you wouldn’t have to whip out a quick +5 to defense for this turn maneuver like Heidi did out of nowhere. People can tell when things are functioning correctly, and when they’re not, regardless of what they are told. It’s why when little kids make a mess and then say, ‘Nothing!’ when their parents call from the other room to find out what the noise is, the parents still come over because they know something isn’t right. The same goes for the second half of the statement; you shouldn’t have to tell someone that you’re happy. It’s obvious when you’re happy, and obvious when you’re not, and if you have to say it out loud, that’s you trying to convince your subconscious that things aren’t fucking sideways.

God, the fucking smarmy ass purse-lipped smile when Jerry ‘agrees’ with Heidi before they cutaway to the next scene has put me over the edge. I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it through this, but I didn’t think it’d be this quick. I did watch a bit more, where Joe walks in with his fuckin’ ‘I’m from the golden decade of the 50s’ hipster-ass beret and roadie beard; you know, what is it with this conglomeration of people and shitty facial hair? If it’s not overgrown and look like something straight out of The Hobbit, it’s manicured like the fucking lawn of the head of your local Homeowner’s Association. Jesus fucking Christmas Christ, can you people have an identity outside of what is attached to your goddamn epidermis? I’m not sticking around to find out what Joe does for work, because it’s probably nothing considering he’s as fat as the Moon and wears ugly French hats unironically.

I might add to this entry later, or do another one, but I’m too infuriated with all this mental hopscotch, and there’s a burning anxiety that the longer I watch, the more I’ll be desensitized to horrible people controlling and doing horrific things to others and not care anymore. I’ll close this out with a quick little letter. Ahem.

Dear Portland –

Stop it. The rest of the United States, the Americas, and the entire world looks at you like that child who is acting out because your Mother and Father didn’t say ‘I love you’ the amount of times you felt you needed to hear it. That is because you are exactly that. You aren’t fun because you’re ‘keepin’ it weird’, you’re weird. You’re spergy. You’re full of annoying spasticks who unironically ride those bicycles from the old 1800s adverts where the wheels are improperly sized and then pull your friends with curly-q’s in their mustaches who are sitting in cars that are like the little pedal plastic toys you give to kids where they get to pretend they’re driving a real vehicle. You never shut up about asparagus in your eggs, or bananas in your pancakes, or that great breakfast burrito place that you stand outside of for two hour when there are twenty dozen other places you could, and should, eat at. It is beyond irritating to listen to you talk about craft beer like you have the world’s greatest tongue, when the only craft you’ve had is Anchor, Stone, or Full Sail, which are all mediocre at best, and I’m being retardedly generous with those assessments. Enough with the obsessive amounts of body jewelery & piercings, and cool it with the ridiculous hairstyles. Can it with the square-rimmed glasses; none of you are hot middle-aged librarians who are sexually frustrated and need a good shag and express that through angled face-lenses. Shut up about your open relationships, and then do everyone a favor and stop having them. Round up all the hair dye that isn’t blond, red, brown, or black, and dump it into the Pacific. Mountains and scenic views exist elsewhere, and are way better.

In short, go fuck yourselves. If you can at least stop being so loud about yourselves, I’ll call it a victory, but I’m not holding out much hope.

Sincerely,

Sahltines