The Ease Of Polyamory
Last week, Gini and I gave a talk to a classroom on polyamory. And there, as here, people wondered how we made polyamory work.
And though every poly is different, for us there’s one trick that makes it easy for us to date other people: We want to spend all of our time with each other.
It’s pathetic, really. We work at home, a situation that’s driven some couples insane, and yet Gini can’t work in her back office for more than a couple of hours before getting lonely for me and joining me on the couch. After a week spent at home working side-by-side and watching Deep Space Nine, I needed a date day with Gini where we could window-show at the mall and hold hands and make snarky comments about the awful overpriced items we somehow still desire.
And then we snuggle in the bed and talk some more.
I dunno. Maybe other polyamorous primaries have issues because getting time with their spouses involves fighting off Skyrim and the need for isolation and the hobbies they want to get done and the guys’ night out. But with us, our need for each other is as clear as our need for water, and if there’s any chance we can be together, we will.
So when Gini wanders off for a weekend with S, or I go off with a weekend with J, I don’t think we get too many of the “Do they really want me?” willies. Because I know when Gini returns, she’s going to get out of that car smiling and she’s going to fling her arms around me and then we’re going to go inside and cuddle the heck out of each other.
In my darker dumber hours, I doubt she loves me. I never doubt she likes me.
That makes it easy.
I Put On Some Make-up, Turn Up The Tape Deck
So it’s a Saturday night and I’m sitting in my living room, tying up my wife’s feet. Well, her legs, really; I’ve been trying to master limb locks and the two-column ties after watching the videos at TwistedMonk.com and the diagrams in the Complete Shibari book. And I’ve been advised that I should just practice at will instead of trying to invariably link the complex intricacies of “ropework” with “hot sex,” since the frustration of “SEX NAO?” will magnify the frustrations of knot-learning.
So I’m on my second drink of the night, watching DS9 with Gini as she lays across the couch and periodically I go, “Okay, try to get out.”
She does. Too often. Not entirely my fault. This Home Depot nylon’s really slippery rope.
I text pictures to a few friends showing them my odd Saturday night, and Jenphalian – a true rope-bunny – wonders what the hell kind of two-column tie I’m trying. She’s bored, I’m happy to learn, so I install Skype and we webcam it up. Gini stands as Jen teaches me her foolproof method of securing limbs – a lot quicker and bunnyproof than the two methods I know – and then I’m holding the Complete Shibari book up to the screen as she squints and tries to make more sense of the book than I have.
Suddenly, my life implodes a little as I realize the oddness of it all. Here I am, chatting with a beloved sex partner of mine on the Internet webcam as we’re discussing better ways to tie up my wife, and this isn’t sexual, we’re genuinely working hard to untangle this problem, and I reflect on all the ways kink and poly and friendship and the Internet have been knotted up in a way that I couldn’t possibly explain to others but makes such a raw and intimate sense to me.
And the strangest things seem suddenly routine.
The Gift Of "Slut"
(WARNING: This one’s a little more explicit than most of my posts. Also, I’m exploring gender issues as gingerly as I can, so please. Be gentle as I question and explore.)
The comedy “Yes, Minister” introduced me to the concept of irregular verbs that shifted depending on who you were talking about: “It’s one of those irregular verbs, isn’t it? I have an independent mind. You are an eccentric. He is round the twist.”
Talking dirty has introduced me to a set of irregular nouns: “Slut” and “Whore.”
I’ve only recently begun to introduce more verbal erotica to my bedroom activities, but it’s been enlightening in the sense that calling my lover “whore” becomes a tipping point. It’s an insult in real life, but once unleashed in the bedroom – and I don’t say it until she’s sufficiently squirmy – it becomes this volcanic release.
“You fucking slut,” I say, shoving my hand down her panties. “Look at how wet you are. You want it, don’t you? You’re so enslaved by lust you’ll do anything, any time. Not just for me, you want to fuck everyone. You are filled with filthy fucking thoughts. In the office, on the street, a dripping dirty whore…”
And they writhe, and cry out, and suddenly the sex is ten times hotter because that was like the key. It’s on. Sometimes they moan no, they’re good girls, and I point out that good girls don’t do what they’re doing to me now, and oh God does it get good.
But I’ve been considering that, because it seems to be a fair constant across a number of women I’ve either been having sex with or eroticaing with. I’ve always been loath to call women “whores,” because I like women who fuck. I don’t want to shame them for indulging in urges I consider not only beneficial, but actively healthy. I like women who aren’t repressed, and as such slut-shaming them in bed seemed like a mean thing to do.
As time has gone on, though, I’ve come to the conclusion that the reaction is societal. It’s not mean, in that context – society is so full of contradictions for women in that they’re told they should be eternally skinny and big-titted and desirable, yet keep your virginity for as long as you can because you’re not supposed to like that and don’t sleep with men unless it’s a stop on the cattle car to Marriageville.
Whispered in the right context, “slut” is freeing. It’s an acknowledgement that yes, you have just as many lusts as men do, not just about me here and now but all the time – and in this moment here in the bedroom, I’m telling you that’s all right. I like that. I want you to be depraved, it turns me on, and let’s open up this space where we admit that the only difference between you and me is that society tells you that you shouldn’t but makes excuses for me.
It’s uncomfortable, viewed from that lens – being the gateway to a temporary freedom feels like I’m surfing a power given to me that I shouldn’t necessarily have. Is it an exercise in male privilege? I’ve been wrestling with that for some time. But on the other hand, they do want it, or the women who trust me enough to share their sexuality with me wouldn’t keep coming back to have me whisper it in their ear…
And I think, after a lot of thought on the topic, that it is ultimately freeing. I think that it’s chipping at that big old concrete wall with an icepick, letting women know that yes, they not only can but actively should harbor sexual desires. It’s picking at a knot in their psyche that needs to be untangled, and sometimes that intersection between “the dominant culture says no” and “your desires say yes” leads to fucking explosive sexual heat.
And I mean, hey, I’ll tell you that here now in a non-bedroom context, as a take from J. Random Guy: it’s good to have those feelings. It doesn’t make you a slut. It makes you a sexually empowered human. And the fact that you’re looking at that cute guy (or girl) behind the movie popcorn counter and picturing all the depraved things you want to do with them? That desire is perfectly okay, and anyone who tells you that it isn’t has an agenda designed on some level to cripple and shame you.
But saying it here doesn’t have the impact that it does in the bedroom. Here with me, with my hands on you, you can be a slut and it is such a good thing and you are such a good girl. I’m crossing the streams. It’s fine.
On Writing
I’ve said before that my Clarion classmate Kat Howard is far smarter than I am. Allow me to let her prove this to you.
Go read her essay “On Being A Writer.” It’s about what it really takes to be a writer, at least in the sense that people traditionally mean it. And she fucking nails it. It’s what I would have written, had I the time. And talent.
A Love Follow-Up
Interestingly enough, though I love a lot of people, I am “in love” with only a handful. So maybe that’s the break-point in my mind.
Then again, I only approach that break-point for romantic love, which seems strangely limiting.