Dancing With Myself Or A Rose By Any Other Name...

I am dating myself. I am not dating myself in the ways of Skinny Rabbit (I am not that egotistical - Skinny Rabbit, you know you indulge in your egotistical ego! Yet here I am, singing a song of myself). I am dating someone with whom I share a name. That is not to say that I am dating another BedroomPrince. Bedroomprince is merely one of my many multifarious identities. The name I speak of refers to the non-virtual, "real life" version of BedroomPrince. From this adventure in dating identical autonyms, the multiplicity of the identity of human beings begins to appear with indefinite clarity.

For the purposes of this mere post, and in order to keep BedroomPrince's non-virtual "real life" title anonymous, I will take on the alias Sigmund. As of this weekend, Sigmund is dating Sigmund.

I should first describe the events of the evening in which I, Sigmund, met dear Sigmund. It was the Saturday following the last week of term, filled with multiple essays and papers to be written on a variety of, seemingly disparate, but ultimately related subjects. I had found myself with nothing to study nor read, and no particular errands to run. Online I found a dear friend, whom I had shared a number of intimate moments with, just as bored as I. This friend just happened to be named Sigmund as well (this is another Sigmund, not the Sigmund I am currently dating). Like most Saturday nights, I was particularly randy, and so I invited Sigmund over to watch movies, with the hope of us getting it on, as we are want to do. Sigmund arrives: we watch one movie in the living room, then watch another in my bedroom when my room mates arrive at home, and then, because of an upset stomach, he leaves. I still haven't gotten my rocks off, which takes me to the local chat room where I begin my hunt. After signing in, I almost immediately receive a message: it is Sigmund (the one in which I am currently dating). I know Sigmund from a long, long time ago. When I was a child of twelve years of age, I was in a musical play in my hometown (All the World's a Stage and Men and Women merely players!), and dearest Sigmund, as cute now as he was when I first fell for him, was the pianist accompanying me. Since that first moment of attraction, I have seen him at many seemingly random events throughout my life; once he played a concerto with our hometown's symphony orchestra, later I saw him on the street of the city I currently live in, then two weeks ago I saw him at the bar, and tonight, he is messaging me online. I couldn't be happier. I finally get to live out my childhood fantasies and kiss my first crush. That Saturday night at midnight, we meet for drinks, make our way back to his place for some more wine after last call, and the next morning I awoke next to him (I got to live out much more than my mere childhood fantasy. I didn't have those thoughts when I was twelve - not yet anyways). And now, after a night of watching the latest Woody Allen movie (Woody Allen seems to play the same role in every movie he directs), I am back in my apartment relating this all to you.

Despite how smitten I am with Sigmund, I am constantly forced to try to reconcile how we are the same person, we are both Sigmund, but so very different defined by the myriad of our subtle, and not so subtle, complexities. A Rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but if it smells different, we give it another name, don't we? Yes, I am Sigmund, but with so many people on this planet who share my name, my name doesn't seem sufficient in defining who I am. Yet if someone asked me who I was, who I am, the answer I would give would be my name. I have always felt that I connect, on some mystical level, with my own name. But here I am, writing not as Sigmund, but as BedroomPrince, readily accepting that one name is inadequate in defining who I am. Who am I? I am Sigmund. I am BedroomPrince. I am many things (I contain multitudes.) Sigmund refers to me, just like the letters c-h-a-i-r refer to a chair. Yet Sigmund refers to so many more identities than just my own. Language fails us once again.

So yes, I many ways I am dating myself. Sigmund is dating Sigmund. I am dating Sigmund. Sigmund is dating BedroomPrince. BedroomPrince is dating S------. I am sure if I desired to name all my multifarious identities, this list could go on forever. But not everything needs to be ruled by the tyranny of language.

What's in a name?
So much, but at the same time, nothing at all.