A Queer Life

Love means never having to say, "Put down that meat cleaver!" Hello my pretties! Once upon a time I was married to a man named Tyler. I knew something was wrong with our relationship, but it was like he cast a deep, black magic spell, creating confusion and brain fog whenever I thought about our marriage. We stumbled onto polyamory as an answer.  There are books about polyamory. There are blog posts about polyamory. There are polyamorous people. There are polyamorous groups. I devoured all the information I found. How exactly did it work?  "It can be anything you want it to be," people responded.  "Right, but what about the details?" I asked.  "Communication is very important," they responded. "Most problems are resolved with communication." "Okay, but I mean what about other details?" "Like what specifically?" "Like what if your partner has a new partner and they are bouncing around with excitement and you are ...

Polygon - reverting back to monogamy... Hello my magic bean buyers! I want to talk about my polyamorous days dating Charles. Why? I don't know. Just because.  Charles was too young for me. Let's get that out of the way right now. He was too young, but I needed an ego boost and a distraction, and Charles wasn't demanding. At first Charles was enjoyable company. He was a good listener and seemed to have an active life: competitive sword fighting, visiting family in the country, building an elaborate haunted house, vacationing at a lake in Oklahoma.  And then we had sex.  We had sex because my relationship with my husband, Tyler, needed to change and having sex with Charles seemed like it would do the trick.  But before we had sex, I wanted to call Tyler.  Charles said, "Aren't you guys separating anyway?"  "Yes." He shrugged like he just won an argument and suddenly I hated him. I still wanted to have sex with him though. And because I can't say no...

Third time's a charm. That's right, folks. I'm getting married a third time. This is coming from the girl who at twenty-six, with no boyfriends in sight, felt a deep desperate horror that she would grow ancient without ever marrying. I felt so ugly and unloveable. And now, in less than fifteen years, I married and divorced twice and am now approaching my third marriage.  "My aunt has married nine times," a co-worker told me when I confessed how uncomfortable I was being married three times. "But she's probably a sociopath." My partner, Steve, brings out the me in me. Otherwise, I wouldn't have another relationship inside. Relationship exhaustion.  I don't know how I ever thought polyamory was a good idea. It goes against everything I want in life and I'm still emotionally paying for that.  Always trying to find myself, I felt even more lost the past several years, twisting myself into coupledom. No wonder I avoided dating for so long. But...

I keep writing blogs and not posting them. Will I post this one? We shall see. My life keeps changing from moment to moment. Steve and I weren’t seeing each other and then we were, and planning an ongoing relationship, but within days he called it off again because he saw my failing marriage as a mine field, which it was/is.  Then, days later, I had a meltdown and realized I couldn’t live with Tyler one more day. My body is in a constant state of panic around him. So we had a stand off and then I left just because I had to, and then I came back and then I planned on moving out, but instead he found a place in town so I could stay in our house with the kids. But with him paying rent, that delays our plans to fix up the other house which is my longterm housing solution. That is the only reason we didn’t separate sooner.  I haven’t seen Charles in months and we barely text or talk anymore. We may never see each other again. Our tiny relationship ran its course and that is okay...

The party was wild, but not so wild we didn’t notice each other. Not so wild we didn’t discover we spoke the same language. He said I put my hand on his leg. I don’t remember that part. We left the party and ended up in my friend’s guest bedroom. Clothes on, souls touching. We wanted to be close, holding each other.  We talked. I poured my fairy magic onto him and he loved it. People don’t always love it but he did. We breathed each other swirling among the planets, Steve and I. What the hell was I doing? Was I using my fairy magic irresponsibly? Did that make me an evil fairy? Who the hell cares? Steve activated my pixie dust.  In the morning things might look different but it didn’t matter in that bed, arms mouths minds.  My cup was full, I said. We couldn’t have a relationship, I said. But we exchanged numbers. He came over the next day and met Tyler, ate dinner and played games. I thought of him all week. He returned the next weekend bringing food and wine. This time ...

  He was big but not fat, just overwhelming. Tall and solid looking, he kind of leaned over me when he talked and when he spoke it was more like shouting despite being less than twelve inches away. His name was Brock.  My first impression when he started shouting in my direction was that he wasn't very bright. His voice was like a caricature of a stupid person, and his West Virginian accent didn't help matters. But when I really listened, he never said anything dumb. In fact, he was quite articulate, which made his story all the more disturbing. The other day when the machines were down we started talking, which is more like him monologuing than a real conversation, but he was interesting so I always listened. "I played football in high school," he told me as we leaned against the unmoving conveyor belt. "The coach kept telling me I should be quarterback instead of front linemen. I said no, but he said, 'I really want you to be QB you've got one hell...

There was a time when Tyler and I had been married about four years. Tyler told his coworker that he struck gold when he married me. Tyler and I shared everything. We could say it was paradise.   But something bothered me. Maybe it was our tenuous financial situation. Maybe because owning a home was a fantasy rather than a goal. Maybe I was overwhelmed by Tyler’s exwife taking us to court twice a year and the lawyer bills stacking up. So we moved two states away where we could afford a house, live cheaper, and his exwife would leave us alone. Everything would be better.  And it was true, we moved, bought a house, had more disposable income, and his exwife left us alone because we were so far away she couldn’t complain anymore. We even left Mormonism. We were essentially free. But something still bothered me and this time I wasn’t distracted like I was before. I began feeling homosexual desires. We toyed with polyamory and dated a little. And then we uncovered some dysfunc...

Being sick can make you groggy and foggy, but sometimes that brain fog can help you see things more clearly, like how I feel about the romantic relationships in my life. When I got the flu and laid in bed for three days straight, I realized I have been putting too much time and energy into my relationships. That’s why I didn’t want to be polyamorous in the first place, I couldn’t spare the relationship energy.   The polyamory idea started because I wanted Tyler to find someone else he could focus his attention on to take the pressure off me. He found someone. Someone he communicates with six or more hours a day. But it’s not enough. I still feel oppressed when he’s around.  My relationship with Charles felt a bit like a vacation from my life, so I started living for the weekends when I would see him, but that wasn’t enough either.  Those weekends were starting to feel more like a scrambled egg of activities than a vacation. And even if it were more like a vacation, hol...

I’m drunk and high off my ass right now. The only reason I’m capable of writing is because I ate and urinated several times. Anyway, that’s not what I’m talking about right now. What I’m talking about is how I started watching Sex and the City and how interesting it is that these women are trying to figure out love but they aren’t really articulating what they want from love. They want to be powerful and independent, and financially they are, but in the romance world they don’t seem to know how to do it. So they decide all men are the same; and respond by acting the way they think men are acting toward them; I guess to give men a taste of their own medicine. I’ve only gotten through a few episodes. I’m so behind the times. But it’s a good show. It’s kind of inspiring though. I realized that I’m kind of doing the Carrie Brashaw thing with this blog. It’s all about sex and all those such things. But I feel like I have a bit of a leg up on Carrie Bradshaw because I know what I want from ...

In my post called The Perfect… I fell in love with a married man, my boss, and for the first time I considered polyamory as a valid option. I felt like I belonged with him and his wife. But that would never happen because…you know, all the things. Having sex with Tom would result in a broken marriage, just like all those adultery movies I saw as a kid. Those left me with lasting terror.   One day when Charles and I were making love in his room for hours and his other partner knocked on the door, he said give us five minutes and we scrambled to get dressed. It felt a bit like those adultery movies. Except there was no real fear. I couldn’t live a life of deception, but pretending to was kind of fun.  When leaving that job and Tom and I were saying goodbye we hugged, and touched for the first time. I had been wanting to touch him, hug him, fuck him for over a year, but when it happened, I didn’t even notice. Several days later I thought: “Wait a second! I should have felt chi...

Sexuality isn’t just about who you are attracted to, it is about how you express that attraction sexually and interpersonally. I think one of the biggest problems in my life has come from thinking that my sexuality is supposed to be a certain way when that way doesn’t work for me at all.   The monogamous narrative is that our sexuality is supposed to be with one person for the rest of our lives, and if you really love them you will want that. If you don’t want that you are a bad person. The heterosexual narrative says that person needs to be the opposite sex; which further limits the already restrictive norm.  Because this was the ideology I consumed, it never occurred to me that anything else was possible. I remember seeing men on TV who had misteresses and I always thought I would prefer to be the misteress than the wife, which had its own shame.  Misteresses: are evil bloodsucking moneygrabbing whores with no hearts.   are sad sacks with low self esteem who...

The last time I was at Charles’ house we ended up talking and drinking into the late evening with a straight woman, her lesbian sister, a femme presenting trans non-binary person, and, of course, Charles. We all ended up snuggling on the couch writhing around each other like one of those sexy vampire orgy movies. Some of us kissed. We mostly held hands, hugged and stroked each other’s hair.  I suggested an orgy, a real one, not just a snuggle one. Sometimes I wonder about alcohol. Some people call it liquid courage. Some people call it emotional lubrication. Shakespeare said it increases sexual desire but diminishes the performance. For me, alcohol just loosens the valve on all my desires. I cry easier and I usually ask someone if they will kiss me (not usually while crying). Alcohol seems to decrease inhibition. So when I’m under the influence, I act the way I always want to act, I just don’t allow myself. Maybe I need more crying and kissing (fucking) in my everyday life.  ...

I wanted to be a writer since I knew what writing was. That was all I wanted to do with my life. R.L. Stine once said that he found a typewriter when he was nine years old and from that point on just spent all of his time writing. His parents told him to go out and play, and he said, “Why would I want to do that? This is what I want.” The thing about writing is that is possesses your soul. It is like a codependent relationship. You think about it all the time. You want to spend all your time with it. When you’re together nothing else matters. Of course, some days you might fight, or just be prickly with each other, but it’s always glorious. It’s always worth it. It’s like the all the romance movie cliches: “Soul mates.” “Two halves of a heart.” “We spent all our lives trying to find each other.” “Fireworks.” “Magic.” “Connection.” I spent most of my life writing, but having such a passionate love of something makes other people uncomfortable. That’s where the saying: “don’t quit your d...

  I suppose you could say it was a whirlwind romance. You could also say it was a long time coming. But since I don’t trust romance, whirlwind or otherwise, I’m pretty uncomfortable with all of it. There is a term for these giddy feelings: NRE- New Relationship Energy. New relationship energy frightens me. I have always run from it. But here I am, at the ripe old age of forty-three and I decided to give it a shot for the first time. Tyler was gone for work again. He had been gone for seven days so far and I needed some adult companionship. So I invited my friend, Ariel, over. I met Ariel over a year ago at the Pride parade. Ariel had a kid who liked our kids. She had two partners, a guy and a non-binary partner. Poly people in the house! Tyler and I became friends with her and her family. We didn’t see them a lot, because we lived an hour away, but they felt like family right away. I remember meeting Ariel’s husband, Charles, and how his voice and his energy felt like a warm hug. A...

I saw him the first time when I was shopping, not applying for a job. I applied for a job a few weeks before and they hired someone else. But I liked the store, I liked the whole damn company, so I kept shopping there despite my bitterness at not being hired. So there I was, in the store, browsing, when a door to the back opened and for a brief second before it closed again I saw the inner company workings, but mostly I saw him . I had seen enough videos, I knew who he was. He was the company president. This store was a small extension of a company that created a lifestyle (and sometimes, an obsession) for women that encompassed principles of clothing, hair, makeup, personality, relationships, child-rearing (and more!). They created videos, wrote blogs, and held events educating their customers on their system. I knew all the company’s main players. Aleiah was one of the mainest and he was Tom, her husband. That moment of seeing him struck me like a holy vision. Our eyes didn’t meet a...