I am not Yale Marrat.

In that novel, Robert H. Rimmer turned the story of one man’s unconventional marriage to two women into a national controversy. Although my daughter has always said my life is a country song and while my controversy has not played out on the national stage, it does affect people in many states.

My name is Dick Harper and I haven’t cheated on my wife.

But I do love — and am in love with — two women and I’m shouting it from the rooftops!

[This is the final piece in our ongoing polylocution puzzle about boundless love. You really really want to read gekko’s companion piece, Going All the Way (Poly, Part 4).]

If you have hung in through eight or ten blogs and more than a hundred comments, you may have guessed there is something special between Nancy Ahern and me. She gives me great joy.

For the record, Anne not only knows about Nancy, she knows Nancy and she gave us her blessing. They have partied together. Anne stayed in the house of Murphy and Teegan when the girls attended a NASCAR race together without me. With all of that, she does not approve of this lifetime friendship and love.

For more than 30 years, Anne and I have shared the deaths of our parents and the lives of our children and grandchildren and coming great-grandchild, job gains and job losses, old house hassles, used dog stores, baking cookies and fixing furnaces, … and laughter. We have two important things in common: we like elephants and peanut butter. April 1 is our anniversary. No Foolin’.

Dr. Phil calls what we’re doing “right.”

For more than 7 years, Nancy and I have shared the travails of our parents and our children, job gains and job losses, real estate conundrums, used dog stores, hermitting and hanging mirrors, … and laughter. We have two important things in common: we like Mets baseball and we’re both paper-trained. Today is our anniversary.

Dr. Phil calls what we’re doing “wrong.”

The Victorian standard of serial polygamy holds that “one must fall out of love with someone old when he or she falls in love with someone new…”

I disagree. The point is not to lose your love for someone “old” but rather to expand it. Love may give us energy but it acts exactly like entropy.

Entropy measures the disorder or chaos of a system. Energy is finite but the entropy — the carrier of energy — of the Universe is always increasing.

Love can assuredly be chaotic but only those selling unhappiness would want to limit how much love we can have in our lives.

Only those selling unhappiness
would limit how much love
we can have in our lives.

By now, you may think that the people I love or the people Anne loves have somehow lessened my love for her. Nope. She and I have been friends and lovers for a big part of our “grownup” lives. That hasn’t changed.

By now, you may also think you know what is going on between Nancy and me. I won’t tell you if we are sexually intimate, because that is not your business. I will tell you we have been lovers and best friends for seven years today, because that is.

I fell for the beautiful gekko smile; I stay for the conversation.

And that, dear reader, is making love for the rest of our lives.

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[Editor’s Note: Nancy and I are concluding this public conversation about life and love. Please read Going All the Way for her own announcement.] Next week, we return to regularly scheduled political ranting; I’ll report later on some of the difficulties we have faced.

I’m not proud of everything I’ve done.
I’m pretty sure I’d do it all again.
–Jack Nicholson in The Bucket List