This summer, Chris and I were at a gathering at a private campground that seemed like it might have been a place of some rustic luxury in the 1920s. We’d heard that the land was all owned — or had been owned — by a retired and very rich judge. I don’t know what the truth of it was, but as we played over the long weekend — hiking, picking berries, fighting the rain, swimming in the lake, going from camp to camp — he began to spin out tales in the voice he identified as simply “The Judge.” He comes up with various dramatis personae all the time, with different voices to match. The Judge’s stories were like some bizarre amalgam of Philip K. Dick, William Faulkner, Penthouse Forum, and Garden and Gun magazine; he often claimed to be quoting from “Retired Country Judge Adventure Quarterly.”
This kept me highly entertained, but it was also funny in another way — ironically. The emergence of this persona coincided with me beginning to feel very, very judged. Not only by Chris, but by Isaac, by my boss, by the woman behind me in line at the grocery store. I have felt like Saturn has been taking my measure for months, and the sentence is coming in any minute now.
It’s a consequence of living outside the law — the relationship standards everyone else is expected to stay within. Trying to make polyamory work forces continual examination of everything you’re doing: Will this trouble him? Will this disrespect her boundaries? How am I feeling right now? Is my behavior fair? Am I being honest with myself? It demands a lot of weighing and measuring — and judging.
I fall apart under even the prospect of judgment. When you’ve spent a lot of your life feeling like you’re being judged for breathing, even existing, you want to evade that death sentence (or impose it on yourself, in a ninja double reverse attempt to restore some kind of autonomy). Do I get double points for judging myself far more harshly than you could, before you get the chance? Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. You get no time off for time served — punishing yourself just compounds the sentence from someone else.