“Tell me about your dream.”
“My husband sent me to polyamory camp!”
“Is that even a thing?”
“Well, there were arts and crafts.”
“What, like basket weaving for four people?”
“That wasn’t clear. It was a dream. My husband handed me my packed suitcase, hurried me to the bus station(!), and waved goodbye. And I was like, why did my husband send me to poly camp? I don’t belong here.”
“Was it all hot tubs and group sex?”
“No, it was more like a seminar. Or a recovery meeting. ‘Hello, my name is Sophie, and I am poly.’”
“Or an MLM recruitment meeting.”
“Sort of.”
“I guess it makes sense that you would have this dream. You and your husband have an open relationship. My partner and I have a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy, more or less. And here this comes along, this thing we have, very big and powerful. It’s natural to assess and affirm the pre-existing order of things.”
“Does this mean we are poly?”
“Well, I don’t know. I hope not. But…”
“Yeah, but.”
“I mean, I have this idea of what polyamory means, and I have the examples of various acquaintances over the years who have tried to make it work—”
“Not always impressive examples.”
“—and my head hurts when I think about doing that.”
“Getting out multiple day planners to organize date night.”
“Exactly.”
“I don’t think we’re swingers, either, though.”
“No, to me that’s like sex parties where you throw your keys in the bowl and have a brief random playmate and then go home with your partner.”
“This is neither brief nor random, Jamie.”
“So maybe it’s really about how we define the terms.”
“Or whether or not we care to accept a label.”
“Well, there’s that. I see the vanilla world over on one side, the monogamous cultural default, and then I see the polyamory community refusing to accept that default but still enjoying some aspects of it, such as stability and relative safety.”
“And we’re somewhere in the middle, looking at both groups from a distance.”
“So how did the dream end?”
“It didn’t really. It just sort of faded away, like a lazy song.”
“So no orgies.”
“No, not at all. And that’s one of my issues with poly, in my dream and in reality. So much talking. So much organizing. Where’s the fucking? Does it even happen?”
“Well, in terms of labels, we are definitely not vanilla, and we do seem to have some aspects of poly going on.”
“It’s so painful to hear that.”
“Yeah, in a way. I think maybe the trick for us is to avoid getting boxed in and just enjoy the moment for what it is.”
“And take care of our people.”
“Including each other.”
”Definitely.”
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