Throuple

What We Mean When We Talk About Being Open

Discerning Daddy

I’m really fucking permissive. I think everyone should do what they want, should explore sex and relationships and love how they want. I don’t like the idea of enslaving your partner(s) in prisons built on restrictive rules. I think we should challenge ourselves and grow: to be open to each other’s needs as well as our own.

“It’s like if I don’t let him fuck whoever he wants, whenever he wants, then I’m the one being unreasonable.” Tim and I are at Lemonade on Larchmont. It’s sunny out: a break in the rain. “I don’t want to go out to a bar or a club with my boyfriend and worry if I’m going to find him in the bathroom sucking dick, or getting fucked on the dance floor, or just making out with random guys. He can do whatever he wants when I’m not there. I don’t give a fuck. But when I tell him that I’m the jealous one, I’m insecure, I’m hung up and not sex-positive.”

But being permissive doesn’t mean it has to be a fucking free-for-all. It’s ok to tell your partner(s) that you don’t want them fucking tricks in your bed, or that when you guys go out that’s your time, or don’t be on Scruff when you’re on a date with each other, or whatever other boundaries are going to help you manage what can sometimes be a really scary thing: sharing your man (or woman or lover or people) with someone else.

Jealousy is natural. Jealousy can be sexy: it can mean: You are mine. You are valuable to me and I don’t want to lose you. And that can be hot. Unchecked jealousy can be overwhelming and scary, but a little bit of jealousy can make my dick hard. It makes me feel wanted.

This idea that we all just need to get over ourselves and our bodies and our sexuality and be 100% open all the time is, in my opinion, ridiculous. Unless that’s what you and your partner(s) all want: which is also totally fucking cool.

“It sounds like he’s not listening to you,” I tell Tim. “But what if he does hear you and then decides he can’t give you what you need?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’d try harder to be cooler.”

I remember driving up Vermont Canyon into Griffith Park. I was horny. I wanted to get my dick sucked. I wanted to fuck. I was in a predatory state of mind. I drove up the hill, LA sprawling and endless, the sky that forever blue. I parked and walked into a canyon where I knew guys cruise.

This was ten years ago. I walked down trails that cut through the canyon, making eye contact with guys I found hot. I fucked a super hot Latin guy in his 20’s who had the kind of broad shoulders, muscled chest, and belly that drove me crazy. He also had one of those big asses that made it hard not to cum instantly. Holding back as long as I could I tried to make sure he wouldn’t forget me for a few days. After, standing up, he reached around and played with his hole, tasting me on his fingers. And then he said, “Wow, man, thanks!”. The way he said “Thanks!!” made my dick so hard I pushed him to his knees and let him suck me off.

That kid deserved two loads.

Driving back up the hill I saw my boyfriend, Jared, walking into some bushes with a tall handsome man in a suit.

I almost puked. I wanted to park my car and drag that fucking suited dude into the middle of the road and beat him senseless.

I was blind with fury.

I didn’t get out of my car. I didn’t beat that suited dude senseless. I went home. I walked my dog Maggie. I jerked off a few times. And then Jared came over: we had planned to meet for dinner.

And for 45 seconds I was so mad I wanted to yell and scream and burn the whole world down.

Instead I said, “Hey baby. I was thinking of making a chicken pot pie, but now I want Sushi. Want to go get Sushi with me?”

We went to a place on Franklin I liked a lot. After dinner we walked through the Hollywood hills, the lights of the City sprawled out before us: the City burned full of endless possibilities and beauty, and Jared took my hand.

“I love you so much,” he said.

I never told him I saw him that day. Not because I was keeping secrets, and not because I thought he’d be upset or because I was building a case against him.

I didn’t say anything because it wasn’t important. He hadn’t broken our rules. Neither had I. And while for those few minutes the pain of seeing him with another man had been so overwhelming, cutting deep into all my fears and insecurities: they were mine to manage.

And let’s get real: I had stuck my dick in at least four guys that afternoon. Nothing I had felt was built on rational thought: it was pure emotion. I’m territorial. A fucking caveman. That’s something I am constantly working on: and I don’t judge myself for it. It’s who I am. But I am capable of growing beyond who I am, not because I feel I have to for them, but because I know: I want this. I am not built for monogamy. Even if I am a jealous, possessive, fucking caveman.

Here is the thing: being open isn’t always easy. Seeing the person (s) you love, being with someone else can be super fucking hot, but it can also kill your hardon. Sometimes I want to know what my partners have done, I want to hear about their adventures, and sometimes the idea of them touching someone else makes me fly into a state of blind rage.

It’s contextual. And the rules we set, the boundaries, are there to protect us.

So that’s what I tell Tim.

“It isn’t about you being cool or not cool. It’s about creating an environment where both of your needs are being met. Not just his.”

Because that’s the whole fucking point, isn’t it? That all of our needs are met. That we get to be allowed to grow and be the people we are. Even if it means sometimes growing apart.

And the rules: the rules and the boundaries are our friends. They create safe places where we get to explore and play and learn and grow. And sometimes we will decide to change the rules, be more open or less open, sometimes we will find this isn’t who we are, or what we want.

Being open can be scary as fuck. It is something that needs to be talked about. A lot. The boundaries need to be clear. And all parties need to be committed to a mutual respect.

But before any of that can work, before we should even begin this journey, we need to find the courage to be honest about who we are. About what we need. Sometimes I love being open. Sometimes I need to close it down. Sometimes I want to go fuck the world with my partner(s) and sometimes all I want is them. Sometimes I’m jealous and sometimes I’m scared.

I’m a human being. And human beings are super complicated. We are built on emotion and logic. Not always in equal measure.. We are full of pain and fear and loss and desire: we are all endless lights full of unlimited possibility: and it’s ok. All of it. Every fucking thing: we are all just doing the best we can. Even when we fuck it all up.

And trust me: I’ve really fucked it all up. On an epic scale.

Here’s what matters the most to me: That my partner(s) and I treat each other with love and kindness and respect. And that we communicate and listen and that we be willing to really see the other. If we do these things, then we are usually going to be ok.

And when we aren’t ok then we do our best to stand together, holding on as tight as we can because even as it all falls apart we can provide support.

So go fuck, be open or closed, have threeways and fourways, cruise and explore and talk endlessly all night long and live your life as big and as full as you can: no matter what that means. And hold each other. Because for real, life can be fucked up: it can throw us so far off course we have no idea how to find our way back. But that‘s why we have each other.

To be beacons in the storm.

Hey! Check out my book, Accidental Warlocks, on Amazon! Your support means the world to me.

TRIAD LIVING PART SEVEN

Triad Living

There is no space. No where to go, no place to find that can be your own. That is the hardest part. Maintaining yourself and still being a part of the relationship. That is true of all relationships. Finding a place that you can sit quietly and just be. We live in a three bedroom house. We have two guest houses. Every spare room is rented out: either on airbnb or to friends. It is how we subsidize our lives. How we afford to live.

And yet there is no space. Someone is always moving about. Always shitting. Always doing laundry. On the phone.   Someone is always washing dishes or sitting on the couch, people are talking, laughing. Rarely are there ever times when it all stops. And then there is work. Or having to take care of the car. Or the bills. Navigating outside relationships with friends. Family. Dying mothers. Ageing fathers. There is Facebook and the phone and tumblr and blogs that have to be maintained.

There is no space. No one can breathe. Everything private occurs publicly. Witnessed by someone. Even if we didn’t rent the rooms out there would be no space. There are three of us. There are three cats and one dog. There are groceries to be bought. In the space of just these few paragraphs someone has walked past me four times. My computer has alerted me, in the upper right hand corner, that someone is trying desperately to tell me something on Facebook Messenger. I have events coming up. It’s someone’s birthday.

There is an endless amount of things that must happen. Right now.

This morning I broke down. I ended up back in bed, after having been up for half an hour, sobbing. Uncontrollably. Sobbing so hard it hurt in my stomach and lower back. The weight of everything spilling over. I realized: this is just what it is. This is life.

A few weeks ago Paco, our little dog, jumped out of our bed and did something to his spine and couldn’t walk anymore. We had to take him outside to pee, expressing him by pressing on his bladder. He shit in his bed at night and didn’t know it. One of our cats began pissing blood. He had crystals in his urine. My mother tried to grow her hair back but it fell out again. She doesn’t like the chemo infusions. She says she can’t sit there like that, for endless hours, having chemicals pumped into her. I’ve had bronchitis for the past six weeks. At night I find it hard to breathe, like a great pressure pushing down on me.

Laying in bed, the blankets pulled over my head, I wondered: can I do this? Is it actually sustainable? Am I capable of this? Outside I knew Jon and Alex were fed up with me. Tired of my tantrums. Maybe I should leave. Even though I say we are broke I could leave. The money would be there if I needed it: plane tickets and a new life. An allowance to buy me some time while I re-figure out who I am. The money is always there when I need it. And I’ve done this before. Disappearing into new cities, leaving everything behind. Maybe that is what I should do now. Just disappear. I’ve failed at this life. Maybe it’s time to make a new one.

Ten and a half months ago I got married. We are discussing buying a new house. Laying down roots. More roots. More restrictions. More shackles. And I think about freedom. I think about space. I think about escape. I think about who I am and who I am becoming. 13 months and a few days ago Jon moved in with us. Taking up more space in my life, in my head, in my heart, and in the bed, on the couch, using the bathroom and his shirts and underwear taking up room on the floor and in the dresser. In two weeks Alex will go back to work, in six weeks he will leave for six months. He’s barely been here at all. I feel like I haven’t even had the chance to spend any time with him: because there is no time between the loads of laundry and the doctor and the constant negotiating of all the aspects of our lives. He just got here and now he is leaving again.

I look around my house. I look at all the books. At everything I love. And I feel the burden of things that are trivial, empty, meaningless: and yet all those trivial, empty, meaningless things grow into one giant weight, while the love seems to lose whatever power it once had to help elevate me.

There is the car honking outside. There is the neighbors fighting. There are all those bills: endlessly appearing and subtracting what I have. From my bank accounts. From my relationships. From my self.

I find myself thinking a lot about “a room of one’s own”. A quiet space where I can disappear for a while. I’ve been talking about going to Berlin or Madrid. About living in those dark, poetic skies in Kreuzberg, or on the Chueca Square. Of quiet and space: lying on the floor, no noise, no people, just thinking…my thoughts flying away from me, forever spiraling into new dimensions. Of going for long walks through strange new neighborhoods: a life of discovery.

Of being alone.

There are so many of us. There are so many socks and shoes and shirts: so many different feelings and thoughts and needs: there is never a break: never a moment when you can sit back and just be.

Or at least that is how it feels. The truth is: this is all wrong.

When I am frustrated or upset instead of getting sad or quiet or asking for help I yell. I get mad. I am conflict driven. I work it out through fury.   This can be exhausting for those closest to me. For those who have to suffer my bursts of unexplainable rage. I like to blame everything else around me for the inadequacies I feel inside: the amount of people in the house at any given time, the laundry, the noise, Alex and Jon laughing or talking, the lack of money, the constancy of bills, the political climate and the whole fucking world. The problem is always outside of me. And I start punching.

The truth is simple: there is never time for myself unless I take the time. I know this but I don’t do it. Instead I am constantly caving to the endless chatter of Facebook and the New York Times: the constant call to pay attention to things that don’t actually matter.

Time and space and individuality are, for me, the biggest challenges in this relationship triangle I find myself in. All I want to do is be with them and all I want to do is get away from them.

Yesterday I blew up. I was sitting at my desk: which currently sits in the middle of the living room. When Alex is in Spokane and Jon is working and everyone is out of the house it is my favorite place to be: just me surrounded by all my books. When everyone is home it is chaos. As I sat there, frustrated because I couldn’t write, listening to Rene’s Mexican pop music and Jon and Alex giggling on the couch at Tumblr gifs I began thinking about how impossible my life was. How I had no space, no time: that I could not write and it was their fault. Everything was their fault.

I started huffing and puffing, stomping around: I was mad and they were going to know it. Everyone was going to feel what I was feeling.

Part of what happens, I know, is I pre-fight in my head. I work up a good fury before I even take it to the people. I imagine all the things I am mad at, all the wrongs done to me: I see how no one else is living up to my expectations of them. How everyone else is fucking up my life. I talk to them in my head. Hold lengthy monologues where I tell them how they are fucking up. In my head my arguments always make sense, they always add up: I am always totally justified in what I am feeling and in how I express it. I am always right.

Of course, none if it went as planned. Because they are there too: they are not the them that live in my head: they are real people with their own inner dialogues and their own expectations: their own needs.

I was hysterical with fury and panic. What started out as “I can’t think. I need space. I can’t write.” Turned into a discussion about our entire relationship and whether or not we should even continue. Five hours dissecting every aspect of every possible problem. When all I was really upset about was not having a space to myself. But they had their own upsets. Their own complaints and worries and fears: they were their own universes with their own needs and dogmas. Their own internal monologues. And it all ended up being dumped right there on the floor in front of us.

Alex and I discussed divorce. We discussed my just leaving for six months, moving to Amsterdam or Barcelona, where I could finish my novel. We discussed just giving up sex and opening our relationship up. I was melodramatic. I made them each promise not to leave me right away if we broke up.

I always wonder at people. At their relationships. At how they behave with each other when there is no one else there. I wonder at people beyond Facebook and the bars: I wonder at the truth. I wonder do they go as crazy as I do? Do they ever get angry and yell and scream? Do they say unforgivable things to each other? Do they worry that they are more Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woof and less Love Actually? Do they ever think about all the shit that keeps piling up, suffocating whatever love is there? Do they fight endlessly about nothing, worrying themselves down to the sharpest nerve? Or are they calm and quiet and perfect? Do they live in houses cluttered with clothes and books and the debris of life or are their floors clean and swept, white curtains blowing eternally in the gentlest wind? Everyone else always seems to have their shit together and I always seem to feel like it’s all falling apart.

We didn’t get divorced. We didn’t “open up”. We also didn’t necessarily solve any of our problems: in truth I’m not even sure exactly what our problems are. I’m still trying to figure that out. We all left the bedroom a little broken, a little sad: those kinds of conversations never really work out. I’m beginning to think “talking it through” might not always be the best idea. Maybe sometimes the best idea is just walking away. Getting a little space. A little time for yourself. Maybe a hike in Griffith Park. A walk to Larchmont. Sit in a café and read. A matinee alone. Sometimes we are so up in each other’s faces we can’t even breathe anymore.

I am realizing something about myself: all this talking isn’t about the talking: it’s about fear. About being afraid that I am no longer loved. Or enough. That no one wants me anymore. All this talking, this fighting, this round-about endless dissecting has very little to do with solutions. I want everyone to stop and just pay attention to me. I want them to all be happy and behave exactly how I want them to behave. How I expect them to behave. And that is the fucking endless problem. My expectations of how they should be behaving. My expectations of how life should be: how my life should look. My endless expectations of how everything and everyone around me should behave.

And so I am endlessly let down.

I want space but I want you to always want to be around me. I want time alone but I want you to be always thinking of me, always wanting me: content to just sit around waiting for me. But I also want you to go out and work: just in a way that is convenient to my needs. I want Alex to be successful but I don’t want him to go away for six months: so I get mad. I want Jon to write but I don’t want him to sit in the living room writing when I want to write: so I get mad.

I want the world to conform to me and it will not. It absolutely will not. And that makes me fucking furious.

I am like a five year old kicking and screaming and demanding that everyone listen to me: give to me: save me.

And even knowing this I still think that everybody would be much happier if they just did things my way: if everyone just did what I said. I’m smart. I’ve lived a pretty crazy life. And I’ve survived it. I know what the fuck I’m talking about. I’m pretty sure I know better than everyone else how they should be living their lives.

People should fucking trust me.

This morning I was talking to a friend of mine on Facebook Messenger. He and his husband recently opened up. I asked him how it was.

“Fine.” He said. “Less than I thought.”
“Less how?”

“I’m still not getting laid.”

He was mad at his husband. They hadn’t had sex in a month. They kept fighting about it. Talking about it. All the fighting and talking had begun to make the idea of sex seem not just unsexy but kind of repulsive.

“I don’t even want to fuck him anymore.”

I’d fuck his husband. He is hot. While listening to my friend I found myself imaging me fucking his husband. See, if we were open, I could fuck his husband. It would be okay.

Then I wondered if Alex would fuck him. Who would Alex fuck? And Jon? And I started getting mad. I could feel it building. It’s okay if I fuck the world but you better not want to fuck anyone who isn’t me.

Alex and I share a tumblr account. We post pictures of guys (mixed in with pictures of the three of us) that we think are hot. Recently Alex reblogged a picture of some hairy muscle daddy. I kept going back to that picture. Staring at it. Trying to divine what Alex liked so much about it: fine, it is obvious, the guy is hot. Hotter than me. And that was the problem. I didn’t mind if Alex reblogged chubby older white guys: but lately he’s been reblogging younger guys, muscle guys: super fucking sexy guys. And I didn’t like that. In fact, it made me fucking pissed. Because he shouldn’t want them. He should want me. Why isn’t he taking pictures of me and reblogging them (For the record, if I were honest: he is…it just isn’t enough…but then it is becoming clear none of it is enough)? Why isn’t he texting me and talking to me….and honestly, why does he jerk off in the shower? Why does he even jerk off at all? Why can’t he always fuck me? Why does he….and on it goes until the fury builds and I am ready to fight. To tear it all down. To fucking destroy everything.

“Do you and your dude still fuck?” I asked my friend.

“No. But that’s why we decided to do this. He says he isn’t in a sexual space, whatever the fuck that means. He isn’t horny. But I know he’s fucking other guys. I’ve gone on his phone and looked at his Scruff account. If he isn’t feeling sexual why does he even have a Scruff account?”

“Do you have a Scruff account?”
“Of course.”

I told Alex and Jon if we ever opened up I didn’t want to announce it on Facebook. I didn’t want to know about their adventures. I didn’t want to see it.

But here is something I have learned about me: I can start out adamantly against something, and I can begin to reason with myself.   Begin to see where maybe I have been wrong. I can be opinionated and arrogant and judgmental, but I am also willing to change. To see other sides of the argument. Maybe not while the argument is happening: I am designed to fight to win, but after the battle is over: I begin to think about it. To consider it: to let the opposing sides in. So maybe I would want to know about it: maybe their adventures would become my fantasies. Maybe this could become the new tool in our sexuality. A way to flirt with each other.

Because I want to be involved. I want to be included. Not just because I am selfish and greedy and want the world to revolve around me (all basically true statements) but also because then it feels healthy, it feels like we are still intimate on some level: participating in each other’s sexuality.

Sex matters to me. I believe sexual intimacy is important…maybe even essential to what I want from a relationship: but I’m also beginning to see it doesn’t have to be limited. Maybe being open is a way of allowing all of us to explore what we need, and then bring those experiences back to the relationship. A way to learn more about ourselves.

Alex used to say, when we were first dating, that he didn’t want to limit my sexuality. So much of who we are and what we need or want gets limited: restricted: inside a relationship. But we don’t necessarily have to give in to that. We can step out side the constraints and try something new.

And still be us.

Life is not easy. Often it is hard and messy. Sometimes it feels designed to oppress us. To hold us down. To keep us trapped inside our narrow worlds. But we can step outside those boxes: walk around our self-made prisons, consider life on the outside.

I believe that the only limitations we have are the ones we place on ourselves. That doesn’t mean I will become a world class Opera singer or president: but it doesn’t mean I have to live a small, narrow life either. I can go big if I really want to. I can go as big as I allow myself.

And the other thing I am beginning to realize: all those things that are driving me so crazy: my cellphone bill, my car insurance, mortgage payments and the constant people who are always around me, loving me: wanting and expecting things from me, little Paco and our cat Ash, Henry and Dorian, all these things that are driving me so fucking crazy right now: they are blessings. Things I have fought for. Things I have built. Things I love. I love my house: our home. I love my books and the computer that Alex and Jon bought me for my birthday. I love our crazy little world of animals, I love the two men who sit on the couch and giggle and whisper to each other: even when we forget that we are friends and not enemies, I love them: I love the car my father bought for me when I met Alex and was embarrassed to tell him that I was recently sober and had lost my car along with my house and everything else: I love my father who never stops supporting and loving me, my dying mother who has beat the odds over and over again: I love this life that just three and a half years ago, drowning in drugs and alcohol, seemed so impossible, so far away: I love the way sunlight plays across the wood floors: all these annoyances and distractions are mine.

I have fought hard for this life. And I am lucky. I can remember so clearly living at 1036 Sanborn Ave, high on oxy and whiskey, standing naked in front of a mirror screaming at myself: hearing voices telling me to jump out the window: to die: telling me I was alone and I would always be alone. Forever.

But that was just a lie. I am not alone. I am surrounded by love. Even as we disappoint each other, even as we save each other, even as we scream and yell and cry: if I can just remember: this is mine. It is what I have always wanted.

And while everything comes at a price: it is never so high to make it not worth it. And so maybe my white curtains never seem to flow as perfectly in that gentle warm breeze as I would like, and maybe there are dishes in the sink that no one seems to be doing, and Paco is always barking, and Jon is doing the fucking kitty litter box again, and Alex is watching some stupid video, and maybe Facebook keeps reminding me to wish some asshole I don’t know happy birthday, all of these things…are mine.

I have been given the chance at a new life. Most of you never knew me when I was high. Will never know how far I fell. How desperate and scared and ugly it got. How fucking alone I was. How in those moments late at night I would have sold my soul for the life I have been given.

And then I remember: this is magic. I listen to a lot of people talking about how horrible the world is. How mean humans are. How terrible and ugly everything is. And I know: life is what I want it to be. Even as my mother dies she goes to book clubs and she has lunch with friends: even as she coughs up blood she tells jokes and makes dinners for the people she loves.

There can be so much ugliness and despair and hate. But all the things that seem to hurt so much are all the things I have loved so deeply.

A few days ago, driving down Fountain Avenue, I pulled over on the side of the road and began sobbing. My mother had been telling me about a book she was reading. I could see her there in her apartment, Don asleep, shadows surrounding her, it would be cold outside: and she would be both frail and endlessly strong: she would be this woman who was sick and old and she would be my mother, young and healthy and beautiful, a woman famous for the parties she threw, famous for the artists she knew, my mother standing on the banks of rivers conjuring ghosts. After we hung up I pulled over to the side of the road, alone, and sobbed. I screamed at God. Because if he existed he was a monster. My mother did not deserve to suffer like this: she did not deserve this ending to her life. She did not fucking deserve this pain. My mother did not deserve this and fuck God and the Universe and fuck everyone who lived on this miserable ugly planet.

And then my phone rang. It was my mom calling again. I picked up.

“I forgot to tell you!” she said, her voice raspy from coughing.

“What?” I asked, trying to hide the fact that I had just been crying.

“Just how grateful I am. You know, I’m not grateful I got cancer, but I am grateful for what it showed me. I keep thinking how every thing I’ve ever done in my life was selfish. I left you and your brother, I’ve cheated on so many men, I’ve been selfish and petty and yet tonight, all these women came over and made dinner with me and we watched Sherlock and then we laughed and gossiped till after midnight. I mean, think about that. And I am grateful for you. And for Damon. I don’t think I deserve the life I’ve gotten. I am the luckiest person I know.”

I do not think I deserve the life I have gotten. I have cheated and lied and betrayed those I love. I have squandered the gifts I have been given. I am rarely grateful and when I am it is usually a prelude to wanting more.

And if there is a God I’m still pretty sure I do not like him. Not one fucking bit.

“We are blessed, you know.” My mother said to me. “You and I. We have been blessed. Kissed by heaven. My whole life I’ve been giving God the finger. I’m glad he has been more tolerant of me than I have been of him.”

 

TRIAD LIVING PART SIX

Triad Living

No one can prepare you for the amount of fucking that goes on in Berlin. But I will get to that in a moment.

The thing people don’t seem to get, or that they struggle with, is that Jon is not our toy. He is not some thing we took for a period of time that we will one day send back into the world. He isn’t a solution to some problem we were having.   Jon is one third of the equation. An equal component. That’s the part most people don’t seem to really understand: that we are one relationship with three people.   Each person equal. Each person essential. In the beginning Alex and I were the “core relationship”. It had to be that way. We were bringing someone else in. We were the established couple. In the beginning “We” were dating Jon. But that isn’t sustainable, not in the long run, not in a real relationship. The structures had to be torn down and rebuilt. The way “We” did things had to change and grow to accept this new person. In some ways “We” were dissolving and the three of us were becoming.

And that is not easy.   We often fought against it. Sometimes we still do. Alex and I had to learn to allow parts of who we were to dissolve while maintaining the core of who “We” were. We still get to exist. We have been together for almost three years longer than we have known Jon. We have a whole life together. A whole world of shared events. And that doesn’t change. It doesn’t go away. And none of us, Jon included, want that to go away. It’s what helped draw Jon in. Our love, the way Alex and I loved each other, is part of what attracted Jon to us in the first place. We aren’t going to give that up.

Jon is not our puppy. He is not our boy. He is not our fuck toy (though to be honest, I kind of see both Alex and Jon as my fuck toys, but I think that’s okay. I think they like it). Jon is one of Us. Just like I am. Just like Alex is.

We are a family.

The other thing people don’t seem to understand is: just because we are a triad doesn’t mean we are sluts looking to fuck the world (though, sometimes, that might be true. Often it might be true. My point is: we have rules.) Just because I have two boyfriends (well, a husband and a boyfriend) does not mean I’m going to suck your dick in the bathroom. It doesn’t mean we are “open”. It doesn’t mean any of your fantasies about a Triad are true.

Now I’m sure some of you will throw this last paragraph back in my face when I get to Berlin and the endless asses and dicks we encountered there, and for that matter, all over Europe, during our honeymoon. I’m not pretending that we live a conventional kind of life, or that we want a conventional relationship…it’s just…some guys seem to think because I am in a Triad they can say and insinuate and do anything they want. It’s like they’ve watched so much porn they forget that we live in the real world with consequences and rules and feelings and that we still pay our bills and have to go to work and sometimes would rather stay home and watch TV and eat ice cream than go to your lame chem sex party at the Holiday Inn Express in Silverlake. To be honest, I’m pretty sure we’d always rather stay home than go to some random hotel sex party. But then again, who knows? I guess it depends on who’s throwing the party and who’s going.

We don’t like to be limited either.

Rules are the corner stone of our lives: it’s what makes all of this work. We aren’t free flowing sex liberals always on the hunt for our new lay. We aren’t burning sage all day long and chanting sex positive affirmations. We are just three dudes. And sometimes we can get really horny and go a little crazy. And other times we want to eat pizza and watch the Golden Girls. Sometimes we are dogs on the prowl and sometimes we are all emo wrapped in blankets and hiding out from the world.

I still role my eyes when I read posts on Facebook from guys who go on and on about how they don’t need just one person, they can love an endless amount of guys, and when one love is over they can let it go, easily, and move to the next. I want to say: if it’s so easy than maybe it isn’t love. Because losing Jon or Alex would be devastating: soul shaking: world destroying.

I’m not in this to love the world. I’m in this to share my life with these two very particular, very specific guys.

And that brings me to the word Poly. Alex is always telling me we aren’t Poly. I think, by default, because we are more than just two, we are Poly (polyamorous). According to the dictionary polyamory is: the practice or condition of participating simultaneously in more than one serious romantic or sexual relationship.

That is us. Almost. Sort of. Are we polyamorous? I don’t feel like that is us. We are not participating in more than one serious romantic or sexual relationship (sure we have fucked a lot of other guys together, but I’d like to point out that word serious: none of them were serious. Some were seriously hot, but none of them went beyond fucking. A few of them might even be friends, but again: that word serious sounds pretty fucking serious, it has weight, meaning.).

Alex, Jon and I are participating in one serious romantic relationship: our relationship. The three of us. We are one. So maybe being in a Triad doesn’t make us Poly. Are we Poly because we sometimes go and fuck other guys? If that were the case than, whether people know it or admit it, most of us are poly. Cheating on your boyfriend or girlfriend makes you poly. The random blowjob at the gym or in the back of the car when drunk that you never intended to happen and doesn’t really mean anything about the person you happen to actually be in love with means you are poly. If I go by the idea that having sexual -relations with more than one person equals poly then the word becomes kind of irrelevant.

The urban dictionary adds a twist: it implies that everyone involved must know about the other sex or romantic partners. I guess that sort of sounds like us. But again, not really.

Maybe I believe that all of us, to one degree or another, have the ability to be Poly. I learned after we met Jon that my capacity for love is larger than I ever could have imagined: that it was not limited. I have learned that just because I fuck another guy, or Alex does, or Jon does, it doesn’t mean I don’t want the guys I am in a relationship with. It just means that my sexuality is large: it encompasses many things, and I am willing to explore that and be open to it.

I want to explore the boundaries of love and sexuality. I do not want any of us to be locked inside a box: a prison made out of societal constructs on what relationships and sexuality are: but I still am not sure that makes the three of us poly.

I am in one relationship with two guys. The three of us form one unit. Us.

And then there is Berlin, and that infamous Laboratory, and Barcelona with the sexy Columbian, and Madrid…Madrid and all those outrageously sexy guys. I guess those stories will have to wait.

But I don’t think any of that makes us Poly. I just think it makes us humans. With really big sexualities.

Or maybe I am just really against being defined by someone else’s words and the weight that comes with those words. Maybe I think we should all just be allowed to live our lives how we want: monogamy or open, couple or triad or in some communal love den, or single, building different alliances. In the end as long as we are loving it’s like a win-win situation, right? As long as we are taking care of someone else, holding them, loving them, while also taking care of ourselves, and allowing them to hold us, what’s the problem?

I love Alex. I love Jon. And I get to be loved by them. Before we leave the house we huddle up. We kiss each other. They are taller than me so I can look up when they are kissing and see them. Their eyes closed, the way they move in, close: the openness of it. There is something so endlessly beautiful in that moment: something that has captured me and made them mine.

And then we hold each other and I know we are safe. I know that we can go out into the world and that we will be okay.

Because they are my family.

 

TRIAD LIVING PART FIVE

Triad Living

Right now none of us are living in the same city.

Alex is in Spokane Washington working on Znation and is gone six months out of the year, Jon got a job as a reporter at a newspaper in Bakersfield and is only home on the weekends, and I am here, in LA, keeping our house safe for my men.

It is a strange time. It has offered me a lot of time to sit and think. To read and to write.

It has been unbearably hot in LA. The nights burn. The sun is inescapable in that cloudless, endlessly blue skied, LA way. I have found myself crying over things that people don’t cry over. Sometimes out of sadness, sometimes because I am so overwhelmed with joy: I can’t seem to make it all the way through a half hour TV show without crying at least two times. It’s become kind of embarrassing.

I have no idea why I am crying so much.

In November Alex and I are going on our honeymoon. We are spending three and a half weeks in Europe. Berlin, Paris, Barcelona and Madrid. Jon won’t be going with us. There are many reasons why this is true: it is our honeymoon, something we had planned before Jon, something that we all three feel Alex and I need to do: but also Jon got this new job. A good job. A job that is exactly what he wanted to be doing: this is something I realize now that makes the three of us very lucky: we each have found a way to do exactly what we’ve always wanted to do: we are each living the lives we wanted to be living.

I am going to miss Jon while we are gone. A lot. I am going to miss his strange and awkward facial expressions, his startlingly handsome smile: how he goes from total book geek to super model in a matter of seconds. A friend of mine recently said, “Jon is so unassuming, so quiet, that sometimes it’s like he isn’t there, and then he will say something or do something so small and charming, and he will smile, and you are taken aback by how handsome and gentle and beautiful he is.” This is true. This is exactly true.

Sometimes, when Jon is home and Alex is still away, in Spokane, I lay next to Jon, my hand on his back, feeling him breath, and I love him so much while simultaneously missing Alex to the point of it hurting.

I am amazed at how all these things can exist simultaneously. An infinite array of feelings happening at once. It makes me wonder about our complexities: about what it means to be human.

And while I will miss Jon, while I know there will be nights when I will lay in Alex’s arms and feel his love, the completeness of him surrounding me, I will also feel the loss of Jon: the pain of his not being there: and I will also be happy. I know that I will experience the amazing adventure with Alex and I will experience the pain of not having Jon by our side at the same time. Both will exist. Both will be true.

I recently had a dream. I am walking through a wide open field. It is dark out. The moon hangs low and full in the sky. A light fog moves over the ground, coming to my knees. In the distance I can see the sparkling lights of a large house: warm and bright: inviting. As I walk up the path to the front door I hear voices: a vast tapestry of the same voices all happening at the same time: each distinct, each it’s own pattern, it’s own story: a hundred different variations of three voices: and I knew what each one was saying: as if they were brightly lit before me, burning streams leading off into different directions.

Inside the house I walk through rooms: each a completely different world, a different experience: Jon and Alex and I, sitting on the floor, or at a table, or in bed, talking and laughing and fighting and fucking and cooking dinner and making plans: all of this happening in each room I entered: all of it happening at once: and I could taste the flavors of the emotions in the air, I could see the colors surrounding us, the beating of our hearts, the way the blood moved in our veins: the small lines carved into our skin, the maps of our existence: I could see the fullness and the depth: I could see it all.

When I woke up the next morning I felt something had been given to me: a gift that, while beautiful, I wouldn’t exactly be able to use: the kind of gift that is marvelous and perfect and yet strangely impractical.

In September Alex came home for a three day weekend. His mother was here too. She had sold her house in Huntington Beach and was moving to New Mexico for a new job. This was the house Alex had grown up in. So many things were happening, it was layered and complex: his child hood home was being sold, his mother was moving away, Jon and I were here in LA, life was moving forward and he felt like it was all happening without him, away from him. The weekend was hard. For everybody. I can’t exactly put my finger on it: for me, I know, I am not good when people are sad or sick or scared. It terrifies me. I want to break things and rage: I want to destroy everything back to being okay.

This is not always a helpful approach. I know that.

When we brought Alex to the airport after the weekend, I sat in the car, watching him: he stood there, people moving past him, crying, looking at us as we drove away: lost. I have never known exactly that pain before. There was nothing I could. Nothing I could say. Nothing I could offer to make him feel any better.

I was just a witness to his life.

I think sometimes that is all any of us can be. Witnesses. To each other. To life.

A few nights ago I found myself sitting in the middle of my living room, our living room, alone: it was late, after two in the morning, and I was crying. I can’t tell you why. I just felt afraid. I felt lost.   I felt hopeless.

I felt powerless. Over everything. Again, I was a witness, only now it was to myself.

After a few minutes I stood up and I started talking, out loud, to the air and the house: to the room: to the future. I believe there are things that listen to us. I’m not sure there is anything they can do, but it is comforting to me. And after a while I went to sleep and when I woke up there was a stream of text messages in our threeway group chat. Stupid things, meaningless little things:

“Babies! Are you awake yet?”

“I’m awake! I don’t want to be! I want to be in bed with my loves!”

“You will be! Soon!”

“Do you promise!”

“I promise!!!”

“Baby what are you doing?”

“I’m at work.” A picture arrives of a prosthetic zombie body, painted to look bloodied and decaying.

“Baby! That is so cool! You have the coolest job ever!”

“No baby!”

“Yes baby. It’s true. You are the coolest ever.”

“What are you doing, baby?”

“I’m at work. I was given a new assignment today so I’m researching story leads. It’s hot here.”

And then me: “Babies!!!! I’ve awaken!”

“Baby that is so beautiful!”
“Shut up baby! You are so beautiful!”

And I get out of bed and I play with Paco and the cats and make coffee and I consider writing or reading, maybe the gym, reading texts from Alex and Jon, going through my day: a witness to our life.

I will miss Jon when we are gone. I have missed Alex every day for six months. And I will love being alone with my husband, traveling and having adventures, and I have loved the quiet times Jon and I have had together, watching TV and holding hands on the couch, and I will love the three of us, lying in bed, whispering to each other, our hands touching, my belly pressed into the small of Jon’s back, Alex’s hand wrapped over Jon and onto me.

It’s okay that we aren’t all together right now. Even in my loneliest moments I know that: because we are living our lives and we are encouraging each other to move forward, supporting each other. I want them both with me here always, but more than that I want them to live the biggest lives they can, even if it means I can’t have them next to me: even if it means I have to lose them for a while: because it is only temporary. It is only circumstantial.

And then we will all be home again. Together.

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THE STORY OF US PART FIVE: FAIRY TALES

The Story of Us

None of it was easy, not in the beginning, but looking back on it now I realize it was just life doing what life does: spinning endlessly and wildly: always a little too fast, a little too intense, so it was hard to catch up: hard to see what was happening. So many things had happened, so many changes and new additions to my life that I had no idea how to incorporate this new love, this whole new idea of who we were into that madly shifting existence.

I remember when I found out my mother had cancer. I was in the middle of my drug relapse. I was at a job in Hollywood and I walked out into the alley in the back, off Wilcox, just below Hollywood Blvd, standing a few feet away from a street actor dressed like Michael Jackson and a strange alien-esque looking Trannie in hot pink lycra pants and a silver top smoking a joint.

My mother’s voice was calm at first. And then it wasn’t.

It is a strange kind of heart break listening to your mother cry and know there is nothing you can do. You are powerless.

Life is barreling toward us: full speed: a train roaring through the night and we stand, star struck by some simmering light in the sky, unaware that we are about to be hit, smashed, destroyed and left behind.

And afterward we find a way to stand back up and climb our way back into some newly precarious situation: mesmerized again by some startling little piece of beauty, walking endlessly off the cliff.

I have said this before: Jon was supposed to be a trick. Just some sexy dude from Orange County who was going to come over and fuck me with my boyfriend and then go home.

Alex and I were excited. Finding tops is not easy in this town. Mostly Alex and I fucked other bottoms together. Jon was a rare and magical find: that second top.

We pre-met at the Faultline where I was working the door. We went into a small back dressing room and made out. It was sexy. I remember the way my heart beat, pounding inside my chest: nervous and excited. I had to help Jon walk through the crowd: it was busy, sweaty, half naked men everywhere: the music invasively loud: porn playing on video screens through out the large open space: I remember moving men out of the way for him. People know me there. They tend to move out of the way when I am coming through.

I like to look back at moments.   To see the truth of them. But of course, looking back at the moment and assigning truth is like telling a lie: creating a story: a fairy tale re-remembering through vastly different lenses then the ones we were looking through in the present. I like to think I fell in love instantly with Jon. That I knew, in that moment, somewhere in my pounding heart, that Jon was special.

Maybe I did. It’s possible. Or maybe, like most things in the present, I was so lost in the swirling chaos and the rabid fury of my thoughts that I noticed nothing: life seems to hold all it’s meaning in retrospect, never in the moment.

Here is what I do know: it is a fact, an actual truth: we made plans to meet again. I can’t say for sure if my motives were two dicks or potential love (though, for those of you who know me I’m sure you are all thinking the same thing: two dicks) but either way, we made a plan. David Bowie’s Cracked Actor Documentary and Pizza. And then Alex was going to show Jon our assortment of butt toys. And what he likes to do with them: to me.

I wonder, looking back and trying to find meaning, if everything had gone perfectly: if they had fucked me in that relentless fashion I was hoping for: holding me down and grounding me, centering me in that way that only seems to happen when you are being thoroughly fucked: if we had actually broken out the toys, if we had that hour and a half of porn quality fantasy inducing sex: would we have ever seen Jon again? Maybe it was the flaws: the nervous dicks, the anxious kisses, the awkward fumblings of three men trying to find a place for themselves on that bed: maybe it was the lack of “truly amazing” that first time that allowed the door to crack open onto something better: a glimpse at who we really were: strange and awkward and insecure, nervous and scared and hopeful: wanting and needing and funny. There was an energy there, a kind of crazy and creative magic that I do know I felt because each kiss burned bright in my mind: each time the three of us held hands, the taste of sweat, the overwhelming body heat: there was a kind of emotional intensity to each contact, each passing moment.

We all came. And afterward we lay there, kind of stunned. I was trying to piece together what had just happened: empirically speaking it was not the best sex I had ever had, but those last few moments when the two of them were lying next to me, touching me and kissing me while I jerked off: I felt like I was on fire: burning through my life: lit up in flames and exploding.

There is a kind of sex that is for one night stands and there is a kind of sex that is for the building of love. One night stands are intense and brilliant because they stand alone: they are chemical: animal: they are connections without the burden. There is something beautiful and violent and magical about those experiences.   And then there is the kind of sex that builds: it grows and expands: it lives inside you even when you aren’t together: it merges into your daily thoughts and living: it is a slow burn, an expanding, growing kind of hunger.

I have laid in bed, Jon and Alex kneeling over me, kissing each other, their hands rubbing my belly, stroking me while I watch them, playing with me: and I am lost inside the two of them: the love I can see in those kisses, in the way they hold each other; when Alex is inside me and Jon holds me, kissing me, looking into my eyes: watching me: seeing me: pinning me there in that moment: that present that extends out beyond the three of us into some kind of eternity we can only catch glimpses of like flares shot over a dark and endless ocean or comets shooting through a vast and eternal night, disappearing faster than they appear: lighting up the whole world only to fade, leaving shadows and memory.

In those moments, when the two of them are inside me, I think I can see the whole of it: I can feel my skin, my body, my soul all collapsing.

And then there are times when I want to break it all. Because lets be real: I can be a fucking brat.

Recently Alex came home for the weekend from Spokane where he is working on a TV show, ZNation. Jon and I have been living alone. Seeing Alex for weekends once or twice a month. The three of us struggling to maintain the three of us: and mostly succeeding. Doing impossibly well considering that one third of us is gone six months out of the year.

There is a thing that I like to do. I love to give them both head while watching them make out. It drives me crazy. It is sexy beyond sexy. I can see everything in those moments: I can see the love and the passion and the desire: I can see it all in how they kiss each other.

But for some reason, that weekend, I was feeling insecure. I was angry. I was in my head: terrible deracinating thoughts about abandonment and failure and betrayal. I imagined all the ways they would leave me. I saw, in those kisses, while I was sucking their dicks: true love: more love than either of them could ever feel for me. I saw a passion I suddenly decided they didn’t have for me.

Now, if I were being rational, if I were thinking in any kind of sane way I would have seen how crazy this is: I am the bottom in my relationship to Jon and Alex. I am the object of desire. I am sucking their dicks. I am jumping on them and kissing them and they are always touching me and hugging me and saying sexy things to me: I am so loved it is almost unfair. And: I want them to be in love: I want them to feel all of those things for each other: without that: without all of us loving each other this can’t work. It can’t survive: it is essential.

But in that moment I wasn’t thinking rational. So when it was my turn to take my place between them, the two of them cuddling up to me, while I began to jerk off: I stopped and jumped out of the bed and said:

“Forget it. I’m not going to cum.” Then I looked at the two of them and said, “You know, I like when people kiss me too.”
What was I even talking about? I had been lying there for about three seconds, they were just beginning to touch me, just beginning recover from the blowjobs I had given them: if I had given them a few more seconds I know what would have happened: they would have kissed me and touched me and guided me and I would have had one of those amazing explosive orgasms that only seems to come when the three of us are all together.

But it wasn’t possible. Because I had allowed the thoughts to poison me way before we ever go to that moment. I had been pre-fighting with them for hours. This is a game I like to play: where I hold whole conversations and fights in my head: trying out every angle, every possible terrible outcome.

So even though we hadn’t fought, even though nothing was wrong: I felt like we had been fighting for hours: and in the end, that is how I reacted. Toward them.

That moment turned into one of those endless arguments were we broke up, I kicked Jon out, stood outside till sunrise not letting Jon leave until finally, exhausted, we all fell asleep.

Like I said: I can be a real brat.

I’d like to say this was a one time thing: but it isn’t. I’ve done this exact thing a few times. It’s what happens when I start pre-thinking. I think a lot about the power of our thoughts. I am pre-disposed to certain aspects of magical thinking. But what is undeniable to me, what I can not escape: the way I am thinking does effect the shifting contours of my life. If I had been thinking about love and how lucky I was to have these two guys then I would have gotten them off in one of my favorite ways possible, and then been able to get off with the two of them next to me, kissing me and touching me and it would have been hot and intense and amazing. Instead, the whole experience turned into a six hour fight and I never came.

There is real power to our thoughts. I have suffered whole days of terrible insidious jealousy and insecurity that if I had been thinking clearly I would have seen was not in any way backed up by the facts. But again, that is only knowable in retrospect: in the moment I am often too lost in the swirling chaos to have any idea what truth would even look like.

So here is what I would like to say: in that moment, in the small dressing room at the Faultline, when I first saw Alex and Jon kiss, when I first kissed Jon while Alex held my hand, when the three of us pulled in tight, into our circle, hands held, eyes closed, breathing each other’s breath: taking turns kissing: I would like to say I knew that this moment was a foretelling: it was a prediction of something beautiful, something wonderful: and in my mind that is the truth: that is what I know. I mean, what else is the truth than what I remember it to be? If you were to show me a picture of that moment I know this is how it would look: the three of us connected, eyes half closed, hands holding on, pushing into each other, safe. Real.

And yet I know there is another truth: a darker truth, and yet no less beautiful: that I was scared. That I am still scared. Because I have no idea what any of it means. That there are no guarantees.

My mother didn’t die of cancer like they said she would. She fought. She didn’t beat it but she’s held it at bay, its chopping gnashing teeth just inches from her face: never gone, always there, but not destroying her.

Life is relentless like that. It is beautiful and violent and it is kind and terrifying and it holds secrets that we can catch only vague shadowy glimpses of: candles blowing out in a discordant wind, flares across a broken sky, in the way we kiss and hold each other, the sweat off his back pressed against my chest, the way he cries in front of us, the palm of his hand over his face trying to hide: knowing that we can see him.

Whether I knew it or not in that small dressing room: destiny was occurring: regardless of my fear, of my insecurities, regardless of all the fights and the despair: something beautiful happened in those moments: something that would grow in spite of us: because of us: through us.

I am predisposed towards optimism. I am predisposed to believe my life will always turn out well. And I can’t help but think that is a kind of magick all its own.

TRIAD LIVING PART FOUR

Triad Living

My Best friend, Andrea, is a successful journalist. She writes for places like the New York Times and Huff Post and other big name venues. She gave me one piece of advice when I told her about my Vice article, “Don’t respond to the trolls who are going to attack you in the comments section. Read it if you want. Read all of it if you want. But don’t respond.” She told me to stay out of the conversations that were going to arise. On Facebook and elsewhere. If someone wrote me personally, or on Twitter, and they were being nice, or at least trying to be nice, respond. “But ignore the assholes. They aren’t talking to you anyway.” Andrea has a lot of experience in this. She’s waded into some pretty controversial territory. I trusted her.

And she was right. There have been some assholes. People who want to tell me why my relationship with Alex and Jon can’t work. Why it is wrong. Some talk about Christianity, some talk about exploiting gay marriage. Everyone has an opinion and they feel those opinions intensely.

When I wrote the piece for Vice my goal was not controversy. I was naïve. It didn’t even really occur to me that this piece, about love and friendship: about learning to be happy could possibly be controversial to anyone. I mean fine, besides the gay aspect, which is always controversial to someone, I just didn’t think most people would care.

I was wrong.

There was one scathing comment from a gay guy who lives in LA, someone I kind of know indirectly, who told me I was being selfish. That it was hard enough for him to find one decent gay guy in LA to date (he’s single) and that here I was taking two, and in the process ruining my marriage because there was no way this could work, as well as ruining his chances at finding true love. He told me my whole article was just selfish justification. Another woman said that no one will take gays seriously now. I was proving everyone right: that we were over sexualised, promiscuous, etc. Some people wrote, Ewww, or just Gross.

I was surprised at how mostly these people didn’t bother me. I felt sorry for the gay guy. He seemed really sad. I thought it was strange that he made my being happy about his being sad. But I could almost understand what he was saying. He was lonely. And the woman: well, I don’t really know what to say to her. Yes, I have fucked a lot of guys. Yes, the three of us have fucked A LOT of guys and honestly, I hope we fuck a hell of a lot more guys. Fucking is fun. I don’t know why anyone should feel ashamed of enjoying sex. It’s one of those rare win-win situations as far as I can tell. I’m also not a fan of slut shaming. If you want to be a slut, go be the best fucking slut in the whole world. I am incredibly grateful to some of the sluts I’ve met. I’ve really enjoyed them.

Monogamy is not bad. Trying to build that kind of deep, intimate, relationship is amazing. And I support that. I’m just not sure it’s right for me. I have been in enough relationships where I failed at it, or the guy I was with failed at it, and we all felt betrayed and sad and it hurt. We lied to each other. I became someone I didn’t want to be.

I’ve decided I’m no longer willing to be that person. I know who I am and I can accept that and be happy with it.

When Alex and I first started talking about all this stuff, he said to me, “I really want to honor your sexuality. I don’t want to make you be something you aren’t. I want to share in it.” And that is what we did. We aren’t open. Necessarily. Our goal is a version of monogamy. We fuck other guys together. We have fun. We share our sexuality, the three of us now, together. We explore together. Sometimes, based on circumstances, the rules are looser and sometimes they are tighter. We are fluid. We try to take everyone’s needs into consideration.

Sometimes this is easy.  Sometimes it is fraught with peril.  But mostly we have  found it works, for us.

What amazed me about the negative comments wasn’t that they disagreed with me, or that they were uncomfortable with my choices, but that they were so sure I was wrong. They wanted to hurt me. Tell me we would fail. That I was gross. That my choices, Jon’s and Alex’s choices, weren’t acceptable.

Instead they could have just been happy because we were happy. They could have just believed what they believed but hoped for a better outcome.

But we are all fragile and hurt. We are all scared. Life has a way of breaking us down.

At first I was mad at the comments. Hurt. I thought, shit, if this upsets them wait till I write about being HIV positive, I’m going to prove them all right: Slut gets AIDS. Than I thought, this isn’t about me. What they are saying isn’t about me. I’m happy. This is my life. And look at how amazing it’s turned out. I got to marry the man of my dreams. I got to date this awesome fucking brilliant guy. The three of us get to live together in this amazing home in this amazing city and we get to share each other’s lives and be best friends and lovers and to explore the world and to grow together, not to cage each other, but to really support each other.

I suddenly realized: I am the luckiest fucking guy in the world.

And I got to do what I love best: I got to write and get paid for it and thousands of people read it. And the most amazing thing, besides the few negative comments, was the outpouring of love and acceptance and wonder. I woke up this morning to 57 emails thanking me and congratulating Alex and Jon and I. Asking me questions. Telling me their stories. Yesterday was 196! On twitter my account has 234 notifications at this moment. These are all wonderful, amazing stories, people saying the most incredible things.

A whole world of other happy people!

I am completely blown away. Straight people, gay people, young , old, people from all over the world. I met a triad who’s been together 11 years. Another who met in high school, all three of them, and they are still together 8 years later. They’ve shared their stories with me, their experiences and their truth: that this does work. That love does actually win if you want it to.

There is so much to hate in the world. And there is a lot of fucking pain and misery. It’s amazing to read these emails and think, Look, these people have found happiness, they found joy, they found a way to carve out a life of their own. Because this is our life. This is fucking it. And man, terrible things will happen. I talk to my mother, who has stage IV Cancer every day, and every day I get off the phone I sob. I literally sit there and cry almost hysterically. It isn’t fair, I think. That this amazing woman, this beautiful person, should suffer.

And then I think about all the amazing friends she has. About her partner, and all the people who come together and visit her and take her to lunch. All the love she has in her life. My mother would never say that it wasn’t fair. She says she’s lucky. That her life has been filled with love and friends and happiness.

She loves to ask me questions about Jon and Alex. My mother has no problem asking me intensely personal questions about our sex lives. She likes to hear me tell stories.

When I found out I was HIV Positive my friend Kevin drove me straight to Alex. I walked into the house and before I could even speak I was sobbing. I had no idea what was going to happen to me. To him. To us. To the world. And he held me. He wrapped me in those big arms of his and just held on, keeping me safe. And he cried with me. And he told me, over and over, “This is okay. We will be okay. We can do this. Together.” And he was right. We did. He went with me to my doctors appointments. He reminds me to take my meds. And he still loves me. I was safe. Even in all that fear about what was going to happen now: I was safe and he was with me, and together we were going to be fine.

There are no guarantees in this life. Life is exactly what it is. Maybe I just got a bigger, sweeter piece of the pie. Maybe Alex is right and I am eternally optimistic.

But one thing I do know, it’s something my mother once said, “You can’t control the shit storm that life is, so you might as well have as much fun as possible while dancing in the middle of it.”

I am definitely having fun. I got the biggest, sweetest piece of pie ever. And I have two fucking incredible men to share it with. And this whole thing, all of you out there, have just reaffirmed that for me.

Thank you for all the amazing emails and letters and comments. You have made my life just that much better. We are all fucking awesome.

THE STORY OF US PART THREE

The Story of Us

The day I found out I was HIV Positive I was working security at the Faultline for a Sunday Beer Bust. It was October 13, 2013. I’m sure there is some kind of numerological magic to the date. A testing truck was parked in the parking lot. I don’t know what made me think to get tested. It just seemed like the thing to do. The tester was bored. He wanted to be inside getting drunk. He looked at the results and then at me and he said,

“Oh, I’m really sorry.” Then he looked outside and waved to someone in the parking lot.

“Excuse me?” I said. Looking back, I’m not sure why I was so surprised. There had been clues. Choices made that should have made this less of a surprise, but still…I just didn’t think I would find something like that out from such an uninterested asshole in the parking lot of the Faultline.

I think it was the banality that upset me more than anything else. And the fact that he was so unattractive. It just didn’t seem fair.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and kind of shrugged. “The results are positive. Would you like me to make you an appointment with someone?”

“Other than you? Yes. Please.”

I made up some excuse to leave work. I think I said that the sink exploded at the house, or that Alex had set himself on fire, something outrageous. I had to get home. Away. Just for a few minutes. I had to see Alex.

If I could just see Alex than maybe this might make some kind of sense.

And I had to know if he would still love me.

We had guests staying at the house. I told Alex I needed him to come outside. I needed to talk to him. And I stood there, on our front porch, and I looked at him and my heart broke. I burst into tears. He wrapped his arms around me, holding on to me and he kept saying,

“Baby, what is it? What’s wrong?”

I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to answer. I just wanted to stay like that, wrapped in his gigantic arms, forever, safe.

But if I have learned anything in life, it is that the world will keep going: life will keep flowing, and that we are never safe from the inevitable. When I found out that my mother had cancer I learned about inevitabilities: everything I love, everything I hold dear, everything that I find beautiful and wonderful will one day die. That is inevitable. It is a rule of life. When I found out I was HIV Positive I learned that I too will die. Like everything else. One day I will die.

But I also learned something else. I learned that Alex did not pull away from me, he did not tell me to leave, he didn’t yell at me and he did not reject me: instead he held me tighter, and he cried with me, and then he said,

“Okay. We will be okay. We will take care of this.”

And we did. We found me a doctor. We learned that HIV never really leaves the body, it just hides out, in the belly or the brain, always vigilant, so I have to be vigilant too. Every day I have to take my pills. Every day at two Alex sends me a text to remind me. He has been doing this for a year and a half. Together we are vigilant. Together we stand guard.

And I made a decision: that day, October 13, 2013, will have power for me. It will have meaning for me. This thing that lives inside me: it will matter. I will let it change me. I will let it affect me and alter who I am: I will take my inevitable death and I will do something with it: because what is not inevitable is happiness, or success, or beauty: I could fail. It is possible to lose everything. To end up alone. I might relapse, shoot dope, become homeless: these things are all possible with a man like me. But I decided that the world would be different for me: even if I failed I was going to try, I was going to succeed in the doing: my life would have meaning because I was going to give it meaning.

I hear a lot that being HIV positive in this day and age doesn’t mean anything: it’s manageable, it’s not important: it doesn’t mean I will die or get sick, not anymore, and they are right. I am healthy. I am strong. I am not sick, and for today, I am not dying.

But it does mean something. It is like a sign along the way: a reminder: none of this is forever. My mother will die. Alex will die. Jon will die. You will die. Everyone will die. It sounds like such an obvious thing. Of course. But feel it. Really know it. And it changes you. At least it changed me.

I am lucky. I have always been lucky. I have a beautiful life. I am surrounded by love.   I’m happy. Happiness is one of those things that comes easily to me. I want to be happy. I like it. It feels good.

Recently, when the three of us are all together: Alex is gone right now, in Spokane, working on season two of the TV show he is on: But when we are all together I like to lay in bed and listen to the two of them while they sleep. Their breathing encases me, it wraps me in warmth and love. There is a magic in those moments, a power, that is another one of those signs along the way: Yes, you will die, but you will also live. This is living. This is it. Right now.

Sometimes all we are doing is watching TV. Sometimes I am sitting at the desk writing and they are on the couch showing each other stupid tumblr cat gifs and giggling: they do that a lot: look at cat gifs and giggle, sometimes we are arguing or we are fucking, sometimes we are eating ice cream and pop tarts till we are sick, sometimes we are cleaning up cat piss or dog puke or stressing the fuck out or going for a walk: sometimes we are doing nothing and I will see them, or I will catch the light as it falls across them, and I will think: I am the luckiest man alive.

This life is a kind of magic. It is a spell: we are like magicians: conjurers. My mother once told me, you have two choices in life: You either believe in magic or you don’t. It doesn’t matter if it is real. Just choose. Which seems more interesting to you?

Three weeks before we got married we asked Jon to move in. This, in retrospect, seems like a strange choice. Maybe we should have waited a few months, let married life settle in: not just for us but for our families. But things were moving: life was moving. So we kept going with it.

We decided that we would introduce Jon to our families at our wedding. This made a kind of sense at the time: I wonder though, if maybe a pizza night before hand would have been easier. I can still see Jon, in a corner, surrounded by all our family and friends, a little lost, so handsome, and people asking him, “How do you know Jeff? How do you know Alex?” And he would say, “I’m Jon. I’m their boyfriend.”

…TO BE CONTINUED

Triad Living #1

Triad Living

I read an interesting post on facebook recently about poly-relationships and how this person feels we are moving away from monogamy, and traditional love, and false ideas of soul mates into more polyamorous relationships.  This person described what he would like: a loosely defined group of guys who come together  based on friendship and shared values, and who are also intimate and sexual with each other.  He said that as he gets older he realizes that romantic love and all its entanglements is an illusion: a made up fantasy.  He wrote that he felt moving away from romantic love and traditional coupling was part of society’s natural evolution, and that monogamy and traditional marriage are a part of our past: cages that enslave our sexuality.  I feel pretty strongly about this: meaning, I think it is bullshit.  I am in a triad. I started out in a traditional, monogamous-ish relationship with my now husband (monogamous-ish is what we called our relationship, meaning we could fuck anyone we wanted as long as we did it together: three, four, six, whatever.  We were in it together and enjoyed it together.  This, for me, has allowed us to have a pretty amazing sex life: there is nothing hotter to me than watching my man fuck another guy, suddenly the man I’m living with and paying bills with and dealing with all the small little aspects of domestic life with is this huge stud.  It changes him.  Makes him more than just my partner: we become sexual beings to each other.).  We met Jon two and a half years into our relationship (you can read all about it in my continuing story “The Story of Us”).   What has amazed me about being in this kind of a relationship is the way love expands, it grows, it does not feel limited in its ability to be expressed or to be felt.  And that is beautiful.  What is also beautiful is watching my husband, Alex, fall in love with our boyfriend.  Watching Jon fall in love with Alex.  Watching them kiss.  Make love.  All these  things are sexy and hot and beautiful.  And sometimes they are painful and full of jealousy and things that must be worked through.  But none of them negate romantic love.  None of this negates the idea of a “soul mate”.  It does, as far as I can tell, quite the opposite: it expands these ideas, enlarges them.  I believe in true love.  I believe in a huge, romantic, spiritual kind of love.  For me this has taken on a poly-triad aspect.  For others it appears as a coupling in a monogamous relationship.  Neither is more evolved than the other.  Being open is not more evolved than being monogamous.  Both have challenges and both have freedoms the other doesn’t.  I believe a truly evolved or enlightened person would allow for all aspects and all angles: instead of imposing their way as THE way.  Relationships are hard.  Whether they are between two people or ten people.  There is a lot that is amazing and wonderful about my relationship with these two amazing men: and there is a lot that is really hard about it.  I still struggle to find my self and my space and my own identity within this.  I still struggle with jealousy and insecurity.  And I find an amazing love and wonder and friendship.  I have no idea where this adventure will end up.  But I do not believe that a poly-relationship is more evolved or more enlightened than a more “traditional” couple.  I do not  think any of that matters: what matters is that we find love, and find a way to express love.  I am lucky.  I feel that I have found an amazing support in these two men to help me through life: that is what, in the end, I always wanted from a  relationship (that and really hot sex! I’m not kidding.  I think sex matters.  A lot.  I think having sex with the person/s you are in a relationship with matters.  I think a lot guys give up on this.  It takes work, and we have to find ways to keep it hot, but so far we’ve been successful.).  Life is hard alone.  I don’t have to do it alone.  But that takes sacrifice.  And it takes work.  But the pay off is amazing.

The Story of Us (Part One)

The Story of Us

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Lately there have been articles all over the internet, on Vice, or in the New York Times, about Poly-relationships.

“Polyamory is the practice, desire, or acceptance of intimate relationships that are not exclusive with respect to other sexual or intimate relationships, with knowledge and consent of everyone involved.” Wikipedia.

Polygamy makes me think of Mormons, or rich old white guys with a hundred adolescent wives: the word sounds so ugly, so unglamorous, so unlike what I am involved in.

I am in a triad. I have a husband and we have a boyfriend and the three of us all live together in our tiny yellow Craftsman in Hollywood with our three cats and dog and our roommate Rene and somehow, against everything I believed in, we have, and are in the process of, falling in love.

This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I have been against the idea of this kind of a relationship ever since I first heard of them. I’m not the guy who can handle an open relationship. Threeways took a while for me to warm up to. I get jealous. I’m controlling. I want all the love and all the affection. I want everything to be mine always. I don’t share well. I never have. I am volatile and competitive and basically, if I’m not careful, an all around fucking nightmare.

I’ve been in relationships where we had threeways. I’ve had lovers spend the night with me and my boyfriend. I’ve enjoyed waking up to my boyfriend blowing me and some dude we invited over to spend the night. It was hot watching the guy I love get off on some other guy. I even  remember once having to drive the guy we were fucking back to Tustin in Orange County, and having my boyfriend at the time, get in the back seat and make out with him. The two of them ended up fucking while I drove him home. I almost killed us all; I couldn’t stop looking in the rear view mirror.

But then we would fight. And I would get jealous: that ugly kind of jealousy that turns your whole world black.

Or some guy would want him more than me, or me more than him. It was hard to find the perfect match. And I always wanted reassurance. That I was the one loved, that it was me he wanted, that they all wanted.

When I met Alex a lot of that changed. I’ve always felt safe with him. Loved by him. I’ve always known that he wanted me. We had threeways. Lots of threeways. We’ve picked guys up in bars and fucked them in the bathroom. We’ve gone to bathhouses and made out with rosy-cheeked Canadian boys in Vancouver hot tubs, we’ve fucked around with other couples. We’ve done a lot together. We’ve had some amazing adventures as a couple. And mostly it’s gone really well. And sometimes it hasn’t. Sometimes it’s gone really weird (there was that guy on the way to Sedona who wanted us to fart on him, or the dude who turned out to be homeless….even though, honestly, he was super cute, and times when I got mad or he got mad or times when it just didn’t happen, didn’t work out), but mostly it’s been fun. A lot of fun. And now I can’t imagine my life without those adventures.

We aren’t open. We’ve never been open. We have very clear rules. We are allowed to do whatever we want together. Once I sent him to fuck this fuck-buddy of ours without me, but he had to tell me all about it, so it was like I was there. Because I initiated it, I am in control of the situation. He wasn’t just fucking some guy. He was fucking a guy I picked out, a guy I arranged. He was living out my fantasy.

And for us, this has always been monogamy-ish. For us this has been the truest way to honor our own individual sexualities and yet still remain a couple, involved in each other’s sexuality. I never wanted Alex to just go fuck some guy and not know about it. I want to know. I want to fantasize about it, to play with it in my head. I love watching Alex with another man. It turns me on so much. I love watching him kiss another guy. Suddenly, in that moment, he isn’t just my boyfriend: he is more than what I think he is: suddenly he is himself. He is this sexy man, and I get to watch, I get to participate, I get to be there and see who he is with someone else. And that really is the amazing thing: I get to see him in ways most of us never allow the ones we love to be.

He’s different with me, not in any way I can express clearly in words: it’s just something I feel, something I know. Alex is different when he is fucking me. But, and this is key: he is a stud when he is fucking someone else. Three years in and I still think my boyfriend (Now husband) is a stud. Because I’ve seen him. The way he fucks another bottom. Alex is the kind of top who wants his bottoms to love it. He wants them to beg. He wants them to get off on it.

When we met Jon I don’t think any of us saw the changes that were coming. Jon was supposed to just be another adventure, a threeway with a guy we could eat pizza with and watch a movie with. Maybe a friend. We decided early on Jon wouldn’t sleep over. If it moved to “far”, if we began to have feelings, we would end it. Those were the rules we had. If we wanted to negotiate them we could. I think maybe we made those rules because we knew: this was different. And if we continued it would change everything.

The first day we met Jon I was working at the Faultline Bar in East Hollywood. It was a Sunday Beer Bust. The bar was packed. He pulled up in his silver Volkswagon Bug. I remember watching him get out of his car. The way he moved, his shoulders slightly hunched, kind of lost looking, beard and hair writerly unkempt, his lopsided smile when he saw me waiting for him, his off centered crooked nose I learned later was like that because he had broken it.

Alex was bartending at the time.

Jon was so shockingly handsome I wanted to kiss him right then and there, but I knew I had to go get Alex so I did. This was just supposed to be a quick “hi nice to meet you” hug. Jon was driving back to Orange County from his mom’s house in Bakersfield. Hollywood was basically on the way.

We took him into the green room (that’s the room where the strippers prepare themselves) and took turns kissing him. It was all very quick. Alex had to get back to the bar and I was in charge of security. And Jon had to get home to his ex-boyfriend and his cat, Dorian.   We made plans to meet later in the week to watch a David Bowie Documentary, Cracked Actor, and eat pizza, than the two of them were going to fuck me.

I proposed to Alex in May of 2014. We had taken a day trip to Laguna to go for a walk along the coast and then have dinner. Sitting in the middle of town, on a bench at a cross section, I said,

“Look, I know we’ve talked about this a lot, and I don’t know…I love you. And I’ve been thinking off all these ways to ask you this, and honestly, now seems as good of a time as any, right? So maybe…what do you think about getting married?”

I had had all these romantic ideas about how I was going to ask him to marry me. Huge and elaborate plans. Filled with poetry and beauty, but suddenly, there in that Laguna cross section, a fog rolling in off the Pacific, traffic building up around us, I suddenly understood something: I was in love. Deeply and truly. Spiritually. I was awesomely and completely in love and I suddenly knew that I couldn’t wait one more second, I couldn’t wait for that perfect moment because every moment with him was perfect and I wanted him to know, in his fucking bones, how much I loved him.

He laughed at me. And he said, “I’ve been waiting for you to put a ring on it.”

I didn’t have a ring. I hadn’t even thought about rings. I had once given my mother’s wedding ring (she gave it to me when she thought she was dying of cancer) to a boyfriend of mine, and had asked him to marry me, only to later, in a fight, throw it into the middle of Santa Monica Boulevard, losing my mother’s dying (she didn’t end up dying) gift. I was drinking back then and a mess, and throwing my sick mother’s wedding ring into the middle of a busy street was just the kind of thing I would do to punish my boyfriend.

“I’ll get you a ring. I’ll get you whatever you want. I just…I fucking love you.” In retrospect I must have sounded like an idiot. I should have at least waited till dinner. Or till we were on the cliffs over looking the ocean. Or somewhere more romantic than a busy Laguna intersection: Paris or Rome, or maybe on one of those arched bridges over some forgotten Venice canal that my mother and I used to find ourselves on, talking about the future and the past, she would always channel her spirit guides out there, staring into those darkly flowing waters: her face changing in strange ways, her voice growing deeper: Venice made her darker somehow; but like I said, I didn’t think I could make it one more second. It was that kind of a moment. Most moments are like that for me. Urgent. Impossible to withstand.

I am continuously aware of my impending death. And of the death of those I love. These things happen. Guns shots and cancer and car accidents: at any moment one of those Laguna BMW’s could have driven wildly toward us, hitting Alex and killing him while I stood there, helpless, or maybe he would be struck by an aneurism, or a comet would appear in the sky, or an earthquake, the big one finally taking out Southern California and I would not have asked him. Any moment could be our death. Death is like that.

And I would have rather died knowing I had asked him than not.

It was that kind of fucking moment.

When I was a child there was a tree that grew outside my bedroom window. At night, if I opened the window, I could reach out and touch the branches. I once dreamt of a little old man who lived inside that childhood tree. He knocked on my bedroom window, three soft raps. My room was exactly as it had been as a child: bunk bed, purple rug on the floor, my stuffed zebra, the only thing not the same was me: in my dream I am grown, my legs to long for the child-size bed, my feet hanging over the edges. The window glass is cold, frozen with frost. The little old man was dressed in a navy-blue suit and an orange tie, red shoes and a yellow fedora. His ears were pointed and his eyes were slanted like a cats.

I opened the window and stuck my head out into the cold darkness of the night. And the little old man told me a secret. He predicted the outcome of my life only he did it in a language that made sense only in my dream. When I woke up I had no idea what any of the words meant, and I found it impossible to recollect the visions that flew through my mind as he spoke to me.

But I do remember clearly the feeling I had as I struggled back to consciousness, sleep fading away: I had the sense of possibility, that the world was open to me in ways I had never imagined: and I was excited.

This is exactly what I felt the first time I met Alex in person, as if he were the prediction made to me in my dream: as if here the manifestation of all my dreams.

TO BE CONTINUED….