Anthony, 41
I realize that any relationship has to be nurtured and that takes effort.
I just got out of an intense what I call “love bubble” that just got busted. It was a long distance relationship coming off of a three year bout of celibacy, mixed in with a round of twenty-somethings.
I have a biracial background – my dad is African American and my mom is white. I grew up in a predominately wealthy white suburban town. I graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in Religious Studies, and I am a practicing Buddhist.
I started noticing girls when I was 12 years old. Matter of fact, I had my first sexual experience at 12.
Damn!
She was 15 (laughs). The girl came home with me on a Friday and we slept together until Monday morning.
How did you know this young lady?
We met each other through mutual friends.
Growing up, my parents were never together. They met in 1971 and were both kinda hippies. They got together and just really fooled around. My parents were never a couple and never got married. They just hung out and out came me.
Was your father in your life?
No. He was a pretty absentee father. I eventually lived with him from 13 to 18, but it was lame. When I lived with my Mom, my sister took care of me because my mom was a partier. She couldn’t really control me, so when I would get into trouble she would ship me off to live with my father. When I got to New Jersey my father didn’t know what to do, so he told me, “I never had a dad, so why should you have a dad?” So he basically gave me money to do whatever I wanted to do and to stay out of his hair. .
Seems like you were able to move around and do whatever you want…
Yeah, but I think he has serious issues with his father and those things carried over to me. The thing about my mother and father is that neither one settled down. My mom would go after the bad boy type and had multiple relationships. She never married and neither did my father. After his retirement, my father moved back out to California. He is engaged to one woman in Connecticut, but has two girlfriends out here.
Seeing the misadventures of your parents, do you think that has skewered you to look at dating differently?
Yeah I definitely think so because I didn’t get to see the traditional male and female relationship. I saw the opposite of what that was. There was a lot of sex, a lot of (pauses)… I saw everything but normal marriage. And because of that I think I am very much like my dad, not getting attached and having multiple women in my life.
That sounds like how I was …
Yeah man, not having that relationship can really taint the way you view women.
This is true.
The first girlfriend I ever had was Amy. I was in the 9th grade living in Atlantic City, NJ and she lived in Ocean City about 45 minutes away. Her family was from Virginia and racist, so what we did was for three years we hid it from her parents. When it was time for Amy’s parents to meet me, we would send a guy over to her house and pretend that he was I. Our senior year, her sister found out about me and told her father I was African American.
How did her sister find out?
We told Amy’s sister because we thought we could trust her. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal, but obviously it was. When Amy came home, her dad said, “How is your nigger boyfriend?” Amy’s jaw hit the ground and he flipped out, putting hands on her and calling her all kinds of this and that. Amy then ran away and came over to my house and stayed with me. My dad had to deal with that from being with my mom, so he was very sympathetic and let her stay with us for a while. Amy ended up going home because I couldn’t let her choose between me and her family. That was really tough because we were high-school sweethearts. Who knows, we could have been married. But because of her racist parents, I lost the love of my life.
At 18 I moved to Santa Cruz, a whole different world. At that point my heart was broken and I wasn’t into having a girlfriend and getting attached. My heart was just off.
In retrospect, do you ever think you ever got over Amy?
Yes and no. It still has a lingering affect. I feel that I didn’t get over it and that’s why I didn’t let myself get attached to anyone. I started seeing multiple women, looking to get validated, trying to fill that void, and to feel good about myself.
Do you have any contact with her?
Unfortunately no.
A little after being in Santa Cruz, I got into The Dead. I was on a Greatful Dead tour for about nine years, over 500 Dead shows, and over 150 Jerry shows.
And I know with those shows there was a crazy amount of women…
There was a lot of sex, lots of drugs, and lots of open relationships so yeah…
After Amy, I would tell women, “You can be the one and we can date, but you won’t be the only one,” and I was always honest about that. I feel that gives the other person an option to make an intelligent choice. The last thing I want is a woman coming up to me and saying, “You used me, you lied to me, and you took advantage of me.” I told you where I am, what I can offer, and you made the choice. But it always gets complicated. Someone gets attached, someone always gets their feelings hurt, and their heart broken.
From 1989 to 1992, I literally had a harem of girlfriends, like 20 girlfriends from every state The Dead tour stopped at. I liked it because I had no attachments and plenty of fun. One morning I woke up in a hotel room in Hawaii with three women in bed, a bunch of money, a bunch of drugs and I said, “I don’t want to live like this anymore.” I looked at my life and decided that’s not what I want for myself. I took advantage of what was at my disposal, but sleeping around didn’t have any meaning anymore. So I made a decision that day to do one or two things: move to Costa Rica and start a business or find a girl and play house. Then I started dating Holly.
Me and Holly knew each other for a couple of years. I ran into her while seeing one of The Dead’s Mardi Gras shows. We had a good time and after that, we decided to play house. Holly is from Georgia and was into sewing, cooking, making clothes, and taking care of the house. So I was like, “You take care of me, I’ll take care of you.” I moved us into a beautiful house in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Things were great, but we weren’t together because we loved each other, we were together because we wanted to play house. Holly wanted a man to take care of her and I wanted a woman to take care of me. I am a traditional type of guy: I wanted a woman to cook and clean. You let me go to work and you can take care of everything else. So we did that for a while but resentment built up. Holly didn’t like being captive at home, so the relationship fell apart. After Holly I met Jan.
Jan and I were together for three years. We met and got to know each other because we were both into gardening. We became friends and then business partners. Jan at the time was married, but in a loveless marriage that was all about the money they had together. They didn’t have sex, there was no intimacy, and were just married on paper. I was kind of a life coach for her because Jan was on heavy pharmaceuticals. Within two years of our friendship we became really close and ended up sleeping together. It went on from there. Jan would come to my house and spend about a week and her husband knew where she was going. He would even pack the bag for her.
During the relationship with Jan, I realized she was too much for me to handle.
Was she too needy?
She was very needy. I was her life coach, lover, friend… Here was the final straw: she loaned me $30,000 to buy a house. After I bought it, guess what she did a few weeks later? Moved herself in.
It’s true what they say, nothings for free.
So we did that for two years and I got tired of her flipping out on me. I’d have to get a hotel room or stay at a friends house. After that I just got frustrated with women and took a three year hiatus from them.
What was that like?
It was great. I grew plants, ordered in, and just really took some time for myself. I then came out of that and really wanted a relationship again because I felt had something to offer. Soon after, I ran into Jasmine, the woman who I would be in my most recent relationship with. What’s interesting is we met when she was 15 and I was 18 at a Greatful Dead concert. Jasmine knew I was a bad boy, but she had a crush on me. So we ran into each other last April and we hit it off. Jasmine is an intense person. She owns six acres of property, has a beautiful house in Humboldt, and two high end glass pipe shops. Being with Jasmine was great at first. We would have made a great couple. We are both Libras; financially savvy and similar in so many ways. The thing is, she is selfish and likes money. I mean I like money, but she is just…
I started seeing cracks in the relationship when she defended her friend who ripped me off over some money.
How did he rip you off?
I gave him a bunch of stuff to go to Chicago with, and he fucked up and never paid me.
So he fucked up the work…
And I never got paid.
This why I say everyone can’t be a hustler. The game aint in certain folks.
It was other things too. She was really weird with money like I would give her anything. If she needed $1000.00, I would give her $1000.00, whatever you need. But with her, I didn’t get that back. One day I decided to test her, so I asked, “Hey, can you loan me $500.00?” She told me, “I really don’t loan out money.” I thought, “Good to know. I can’t even ask you for a simple loan.” I didn’t even need the money, I just wanted to see if she would do it. There was also the fact that she didn’t want to work together, she wanted to keep everything separate. So I thought, “What do we have?” We don’t get along intellectually, spiritually, and we don’t work together, so what is this? Is this a sex relationship? If that’s what it is, cool. So I just decided to leave.
Are you heartbroken with how the way things turned out?
Yeah basically. I have always done it three ways: celibacy, multiple women, or find that one woman. So the majority of the time I date multiple women because it is easier and simpler, and it comes from being heartbroken.
Do you think you’ll ever find….
I hope so. I feel confident because I want to start a family at 45 and I’m 41 right now. To be with the type of woman I want, I need to be an amazing guy. But I don’t feel an immediate sense of urgency. A lot of women that I come across with though, their biological clock is ticking. Like I’m talking to this woman who is 37 and she wants to jump into something serious now and I am trying to take my time. I want the relationship to be right before I start a family.
Right now I’m into polyamory and the reason why is a lot of us are in the same situation. We don’t have the time, energy, or desire to be in a relationship but we desire intimacy. It’s great because when you go to a poly event or party, you get involved with a specific play group. The first party I went to I was coming out of a relationship and the first thing I wanted to do was give a woman a massage. I didn’t want anything other than that.
Just a massage?
Yes, I just wanted to feel a connection. I didn’t want sex.
The type of woman I am looking for is someone that can put the breaks on. Two of me is bad news. The women I typically go for are college educated, career, and family oriented. I don’t like partiers because I am a partier and two partiers don’t work out well. And most importantly, I need someone who is supportive.
What is love?
It means that I care about you in the true sense of the world. I’ve realized that any relationship has to be nurtured and that takes effort. It takes time, patience, and growing together and learning. The big thing is compromise. Love and compromise go hand and hand.
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