A comic essay written and illustrated by Kelly O'Grady
Polyamory is one of those things that always sounded like a beautiful idea to me. “Oh yeah, I have three significant others, and we all go on boat rides together and laugh as we drink mimosas out of coconuts and make fun of the squares only dating one person at a time.”
But reality can be a real bitch, and any freewheeling poly relationship can spontaneously turn into Reservoir Dogs, with everybody pointing guns at each other and somebody bleeding to death on the ground.
In no way am I speaking for everyone; I can tell you only about my own experience of dabbling in polyamory and how it all blew up in my face. Like many terrible decisions, this story begins with the end of a relationship.
I was back on the market and way too quickly got into a tawdry affair with a gal from the pool I worked at (don’t date coworkers). There had been sexual tension for a very long time, and it turned out that she was poly. So guess what? I was too, suddenly. What a coincidence.
I realize now how shallow I was at the time. She was very attractive and had bitchin’ tattoos of insects. But she was kinda a huge mess. Case in point: at the time I had an art studio, and we were all being evicted, so the artists were throwing a huge “Fuck You” party. She got fucking wasted and turned into a spectacle.
First, she picked a fight with a group of Spanish guys, arguing over how Spain “Spanish” has a lisp; then she knocked a painting off a wall, puked in a vase and lost a shoe. It all culminated with her peeing out a window onto the street below. Did I mention that she offered me a blowjob to get her a burrito in front of a large crowd? Of course, I did get her a burrito, but it was also slightly embarrassing.
Saying you are in a polyamorous relationship is one thing; having to actually meet your partners’ other lovers is a quite another. She invited me over to a barbeque at her “friend” Brian’s apartment, way up in the hills where all the reaaalllly rich people live. The place looked like a bong factory had exploded, and there were skateboards lined up along the walls. Also, of course, Brian had a fucking pet python.
We sat around uncomfortably and watched CSI: Miami on a gigantic plasma-screen television. Brian packed a bowl of rich-kid hyper-weed into one of his 8,000 bongs. I was baked out of my fucking mind, which made time crawl by excruciatingly slowly; then Brian showed me his “art.” I won’t say much about it, except that one of his paintings was entitled Dick War.
At that point I elected to sit outside and watch the grill. Watching meat cook was preferable to sitting there pretending to watch CSI: Miami awkwardly. I fucking hate that show. I’m a Frasier man, damnit.
After an hour of listening to them laugh in the apartment above, I decided to leave without saying anything. It was just all too much. I left the meat burning there in a hardened fist of gristle.
That’s when I decided that polyamory just isn’t for me.
Epilogue: later, I would attend a work party where she brought Brian as her date, then got drunk and told everyone that Brian liked to be pegged. No judgment on Brian; I just felt really embarrassed for the guy, because he just stared down at his cake while she was talking about it.
Still, I know polyamory can work; my roommate Murray is doing the whole poly thing, and it seems to be going great for him and his numerous partners, all of whom he met at the Renaissance Faire. He’s more of a loose goose then I could ever hope to be.
Maybe one day I’ll try it again. My bad experience is probably due to myself and the person I was involved with. I’ve listened to an audio book of The Ethical Slut, and I think I now have a deeper understanding of what I’m getting into (I, too, am an ethical slut!) if I choose to date multiple people. But shit, it’s hard enough getting one person to date me, so why would I get all fancy about it?!
