As I got ready to go watch porn in public with my husband and a dozen other people, I felt electrified — a combination of anticipation and eagerness. New to polyamory, this was a big step for us.
Dan Savage’s 15th annual Hump! Film Festival, which showcases amateur porn videos under five minutes, took place at San Francisco’s Victoria Theatre. Having attended as a couple in years past, I knew how fun the festival could be, but I was surprised at just how natural it felt to be going with such a large group that included several people my husband and I were dating.
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As the videos rolled, the way we all ooh-ed and ahh-ed and laughed at the same moments was a bonding experience unlike anything I’d ever experienced. It turned out that this group porn-watching experience was just what my husband and I needed to shepherd us into finding a polyamorous community we felt loved by and connected to.
Sex drew us in, but in the end, love and affection have been the most important ingredients in creating a supportive network.
After 12 years together, my husband Brendan and I opened our relationship at the beginning of 2019. We met in high school and had long discussed and were curious about having sexual experiences with other people while remaining committed to each other at the same time. We just didn’t know how to go about it.
Since we got together so young, I never had a chance to explore my bisexuality outside of a few awkward threesomes early on in our relationship. Once we both finally finished school in our late twenties, we put in the time and consideration to opening our relationship thoughtfully by going to couples therapy.
We started dating other people as a couple rather than individually. Our first few experiences were a mixture of swinging and finding friends with benefits. Pretty quickly, we found ourselves wanting more emotional connections to our partners rather than purely physical, so we transitioned to a polyamorous dating style — meaning we opened ourselves up to the possibilities of romantic relationships in addition to sexual ones. We also began dating solo in addition to continuing to date as a couple.
I started to date a man who was already part of a well-established polycule — a group of connected nonmonogamous relationships. He told me about how they did things as a group — movie nights, birthday celebrations, vacations. He described hanging out regularly with his partner’s other male partner as friends (or his metamour, as they’re called in the polyamorous community). He even invited Brendan and me to a barbecue with his polycule, and we watched their dynamic in admiration — the friendly and playful banter between metamours, the ease with which they all enjoyed each other’s company without awkwardness.
“This is amazing,” I thought. “I want that.” But how?
The idea behind a polycule comes down to “kitchen table poly” — the concept that everyone can sit around the kitchen table comfortably together regardless of whether the people are sexually or romantically involved with one another. This felt like the elusive model that Brendan and I wanted from the beginning of opening our relationship. When we first transitioned to polyamory, we wanted to be open and involved in each other’s dating lives so we tried being friends with each other’s solo partners. However, trying to force those friendships just ended in resentment on both sides. Being inexperienced, we didn’t have the language to communicate exactly what we wanted to our outside partners, and they didn’t share the same investment in a kitchen table poly model. Ultimately, those relationships didn’t last.
Our first taste of success at kitchen table poly came when we took a couple of our partners to the Folsom Street Fair. The four of us spent the afternoon wandering the streets, intrigued by all the different forms of kink on display, watching people get spit on from second-story windows, and seeing others sneak off into alleyways to have sex. Then we all went to dinner and ended the evening at a Bawdy Storytelling show, a sex and storytelling series that’s often described as “the Moth for perverts.” It was titillating to see Brendan put his arm around his partner while I was holding our girlfriend’s hand. It also felt organic, being able to share affection with multiple people in public in a space that is welcoming of people from all kinds of alternative lifestyles.
When Brendan and I saw that the amateur porn festival Hump! was coming back to SF, we knew it would be a great event to bring all of our like-minded, sex-positive partners together. Some of them had been to Hump! before, some had only heard of it, and some were simply curious and along for the ride.
We threw out invitations to anyone we thought might be interested: friends, partners, metamours. Some of these partners we had been dating for nearly six months; others we had only met the week before. Everyone was welcome.
That night, 15 of us took up an entire row in the theater as we watched films that ran the gamut on sexuality and gender expression. There were serious films with extreme kink and bondage. There were tender and sensual films featuring a traditional threesome in a shower and a woman trying to discover pleasure again after infertility and miscarriage. There were humorous ones like an all-male orgy filmed on selfie sticks and a video that parodied popular Hump! films from years past. In other words, there was something for everyone.
After the festival, we all walked a couple of blocks to Gestalt for beers. On the way to the bar, one of our partners who we’d been seeing for a few months turned to me and said, “I can see why you like this. It’s like we all have this big secret.” I smiled at him in response, looking at all the other people walking down 16th Street who had no idea how this big group traveling down the road was connected. It was like we all had a secret.
At the bar, we claimed a table for all of us, and after a round of official introductions, people broke off into smaller groups. These folks who had been total strangers just a few hours before were already laughing and talking like old friends. As the evening went on, Brendan and I were buzzing with energy seeing that there truly was something special about the chemistry of this crowd. I found myself bouncing from one conversation to the next, unable to sit still for long.
Many of us talked late into the night, nearly shutting down the bar. When we all went our separate ways, we agreed to keep everyone in touch. The next day, we formed a group texting chat that has been affectionately deemed the “Epically Non-Monogamous” thread (a play on the term “ethically nonmonogamous,” the overarching umbrella term for consensual nonmonogamy under which polyamory lives).
We’ve maintained an active group chat over the last eight months, sharing memes, critiquing cultural trends (what’s up with everything being cake, anyway?), and talking about the current state of the world. The conversations don’t always have to do with sex — in fact, most of them don’t. We’re primarily a group of friends with a shared interest in nonmonogamy. Many of us just happen to be dating one another.
Since the pandemic started, our polycule interactions look a little different. Brendan works in health care, so we haven’t yet expanded our quarantine bubble as some polyamorous folks have chosen to do. As of this writing, it’s been 135 days since I have touched anyone but my husband — a stark change from the two or three times a week we were seeing other people before sheltering in place. Slowly, we’ve begun socially distanced dates, hosting people in our backyard in the East Bay, and seeing other partners in Golden Gate Park for picnics. Most of our relationships have shifted into a more companionate place while we try to figure out what’s next.
This summer, Hump! went virtual with their Greatest Hits, Volume I. At the end of June, our polycule planned a watch party, gathering on Zoom to share our reactions. It definitely wasn’t the same as it had been when we all got together in November; by this time in quarantine, most of us had been to our fair share of Zoom events and were feeling burned out by them. We didn’t engage with the films — and each other — in the same way that we had when everyone met for the first time.
But while porn may have brought us together, what has kept us all together isn’t the sex — it’s genuine love and devotion for one another, even if that has to take on a different shape right now. Eight of us still get together on Zoom every Saturday night, and these weekly meetups for the past three months have resulted in the creation of Poly in Place, a space to share our experiences as a polycule living through a pandemic and invite other people to share theirs. We want to provide a sense of community for others the same way that our polycule has for us, even if we can’t all physically be together right now. It’s what’s getting us through until the next time we can all gather to watch porn in person again.
