No, there's no way you can tell her and not have to sneak around, not unless you want to be ejected from your home and go live in an apartment complex. If you tell her, you turn over your fate to her--your life, really--because you have no idea how she'll react. Your wife might seem as stable and familiar as granite but if you wiggle her base there's no predicting what she'll do. She might leave you and never look back, she might smash your Precious Moment figurines, and I'm pretty certain she'll demand that you stop seeing your girl on the side. Yes, people have open marriages, but they make the arrangements beforehand. They share lots of love and a mutual disdain for monogamy. This doesn't sound like that.

You need to decide what you want, and that's not going to be easy. You are a guy, Mixed up, who likes things to be organized, but you need to know how you feel about all this and trying to organize feelings is like trying to corral a cat. Emotions are slippery and independent and chaotic and full of unnatural patience; they will wait out your efforts to control them. You need to know how you feel so you can know--not all the way, not perfectly--what to do. Everyone needs love to survive but only you can decide what kind of love you need most. There's passionate hot-sex love, family love, daddy love, and the wife-you-get-along-okay-with-love. I'm sure you'd like to have them all, and maybe someday you can, but it doesn't look good right now.

Why? Because you are a retard about feelings, Mixed up, your own and others. How can you ask for what you want if you're clueless about what you feel? Your emotions are in little pieces stored in separate boxes: your heart and your penis and your mind and your soul. You say you "care very much" for your wife. Dude, that is icy. It's an entire ice sculpture. You're supposed to love her. Life is long; marriage is longer. "Caring" is not going to take you all the way down that road.

You're even worse when it comes to the other woman. There's a robotic ring to the line "she's willing to have sex with me on occasion." It contrasts starkly with the adjective "mind blowing" that occurs further down (I don't know what the two of you are up to but please let it involve clown suits). Then you say you're lighthearted, and frankly I'm not surprised to hear mention of the heart because that kind of sex is a big fucking deal. For both of you. It's nice of her to say she doesn't want to break up your marriage, but what's she going to say? "I love wrecking homes"? Maybe she's in love with you. That would not be so unusual. Maybe you're in love with her. It kind of sounds like you are, or it sounds like you kind of are. Pretending that you're not swapping any emotions during these occasional outings isn't going to make things any clearer.

I recommend a walkabout. How about a week on the Appalacian trail? Alone Mixy. Figure out what's going on in there then decide what you have to do about it. You can love your other woman and not leave your family, you can not love your wife and live happily with her, you live as a hermit in the woods--whatever. But don't let it just happen because you're confused and torn right now. There will not be a perfect solution. There might not even be a good one. But it's still your life and you have the right and the responsibility to choose your own fate. So do it.

He should take it as a lesson: ask a waffling question, get a confusing answer. Tell him he needs to ask her in a straightforward manner: duh. "Would you ever marry me" is a heads-I-win, tails-you-lose question. If she says yes and he doesn't ask her, she's humiliated, and she can't really say no: that "ever" precludes it since no one can predict her feelings until the end of time. When people get married, they throw themselves together in a complicated partnership involving family and money and children and plans: she needs a strong person. He does too but I think he already has one in her--that's why he asked in such an abject way. He's not sure he deserves her. I get it, no one likes to be that vulnerable; no one wants his heart broken into little pieces and stomped on. But real love requires real risk: he has to put himself on the line for her. That's how he's going to show that he deserves her, and that's how she's going to know she wants to say yes.

Yes. What could be less literal than a word? There's no one thing for any word with the exception of proper nouns, which is exactly what the sun is, or has become now that we know that the stars are also suns. One could argue that since there's only one sun we call the sun, when you write, "The sun is a lie," everybody knows exactly what you're talking about. But everybody doesn't know exactly what you mean.

I sort of want to kill you for asking this question, but if you were here in the room with me and I said, "I want to kill you for asking that question," would you run for your life? No you wouldn't, because basically you understand that all of language--everything we say and think and represent and dream and mean--is largely figurative. We are creatures of metaphor and culture and the meaning that slithers around, JP, and all art must joust with this slime of meaning. The story is metaphorical, every single story you've ever read or heard is metaphorical, and I would even go so far as to say that all of language is metaphorical, yup, every single word (though I would be willing to debate the inclusion of proper names). There isn't one thing that anything is all the time, there isn't one answer, and it's only when we get stuck inside our days and our heads that we can even manage the illusion that there's something as safe, stable, and predictable as something that means one thing. Light is both particle and wave motherfuckah. And then you die.

Pickles, wow, Scouting New York is a great site. I'm in love with the elevator in Queens and plan to marry it. Lately I'm fascinated with the site drugs-forum.com. There are no pictures, no ads, just a bare-bones discussion board on the topic of how to obtain, process, and ingest drugs (mostly the latter). The entries are written in a fascinating third person style of slang and abbreviations, like: "SWIM was wondering if it was possible for his bunny rabbit to plug kratom extract, rather than parachuting it?"

I'm not sure what they're talking about but the answer is no.

Sorry Bob, I forgot about you. I am bad, bad, bad. Read Twin Study first. The pirate novel may be awhile.

Aw, you made a kitty face from punctuation marks! Actually Sophie, I kind of forget how that story goes but your interpretation is probably better than mine anyway. I like a slow descent into madness and I also like a slow descent into sanity. Is oral interpretation where you fake-read the dialogue of a story as though it's a play, angling your body to different corners of the room for each character? I bet it is...which means you're in high school! Awesome! I did speech in high school too, not because I like making speeches but because I hated my life/Phoenix/parents so much that I decided I had to do the most difficult, terrifying extracurricular activity to ensure I'd get into a college that was far, far away. Now I'm back in Arizona, calling my parents every other day to tell them I love them. Don't worry--I still hate them too. And this stinking, cowboy wasteland. But I also love it.

For the characters, one thing I recall is that the cat girl is also an art chick--one of those blue-haired horn-rimmed girls who wears perfume that smells like gasoline does things like making giant paper mache ovaries and taking a vow of silence for every Saturday in March. She has strong feelings but also looks at everything with an aesthetic eye, which means she's also ironic. Her weirdness is somewhat calculated. The rat boy, on the other hand, is truly, honestly weird, which is one of the things that makes him fascinating to her.

Uh, was that yesterday? The answer is yes. If I could go back in time, I would have lunch with you yesterday.

Thank you for thinking of me as holding forth. I try to think of myself that way too. Your question is really hard. But I guess if I could really say anything and put it anywhere, I'd beam the words: "That lady is your mommy and you love her. Jump into her lap and purr madly. #felinemindfuck" into the brain of my cat.

Alison! Yes, yes, I love her so much. She's all better now. Which is, uh...good, right? I would never say it wasn't good. She seems nice as a sober person but when she was high, she was spectacular. I haven't watched Sir Patrick yet but I've been hoarding Hoarders on TiVo and can't wait. My favorite hoarder so far is Glen, the real-man rat-man. Have you met Glen? He let his house fill up with rats, entirely full, because he loves them with all his heart. He tries to hold in the pain of losing his favorite little buddy but fails--he can't, he can't, the feelings are too strong! That episode also has great moments from my other favorite: the mean, insane Dr. Robin Zasio. That chick is fucking awesome. I'm going to guess that she's the only OCD therapist alive with a personal style inspired by Cher. Not only does she do her own makeup (orange base with a special high-clump mascara on her lower lashes) and wear bell bottom capris, she also says things like: "How did it feel when you found your wife dead in the car?" (Bill sputters: "It hurt like hell."). Once, as a woman told her about her childhood sexual abuse, then crumpled into her arms, Zasio said: "We don't have time to deal with this right now. Let's try to set it aside." Ha ha ha! Yes yes yes! Why not just never talk about it again? Plus she's "obligated" to call CPS on everyone.

I'd be interested to learn the technique of using compressed air to clean a dog.