ANDREW: Alexander Hamilton’s cat was bisexual. How many presidents’ cats do you think were gay?
JASON: Most of them. Does light really not penetrate a potato?
ME: That doesn’t have anything to do with presidents.
JASON: I know. It has something to do with the other thing. I don’t know what it is yet.
ME: What if we did something about strange presidential facts?
SEAN: Calvin Coolidge had six fingers on one hand and couldn’t whistle.
ANDREW: William Howard Taft couldn’t be tickled.
JASON: Ronald Reagan was a ring-tailed lemur.
ANDREW: Of course light doesn’t penetrate a potato, Jason. Jesus.
10:15: Two hours in, and we don’t have any usable sketch ideas, but we still think the Great Wall of Pizza is a viable product idea.
10:49: We’re all watching a baby laugh hysterically at a dog eating popcorn on YouTube. Sean has ended up on a site called ToddleTales. It’s as if he’s gotten to the end of the internet—there were no more sites he could be on.
JASON: There should be a service for when you get to the end of the internet, called Internet Two. It’s where illegal things happen and people upload Xeroxed Cathy comics.
11:00: At the end of the night, Sean mentions that the comic-book character Iceman recently came out as gay. Jason has an idea for a sketch where other superheroes feel like they can tell their own truths: Aquaman’s a hoarder, Wonder Woman’s always dreamed of being an insurance adjuster, etc. After two and a half hours, it’s our only viable sketch idea. The boys leave, not really caring whether or not this has been successful because they are high and just had pizza.
All in all, I wouldn’t say it was a failed experiment, though we didn’t end up writing any of the stoned sketch ideas for the gonzo show.
It probably goes without saying that weed didn’t facilitate a creative epiphany for me. This was now the second OFW experiment (after the sensory-deprivation tank) where I was supposed to have a creative breakthrough and didn’t. Unless you consider the Great Wall of Pizza a breakthrough.
Maybe I was irredeemably blocked. Maybe I’d had a creative epiphany years before and didn’t know it, and this was as good as it got. Maybe I should’ve been an accountant. I obviously had an affinity for spreadsheets.
I still had to find a way to unstick myself creatively, and I had no idea how to go about doing that.
On the plus side, if the OFW Project was meant to test my boundaries, well, I’d found one. I was never smoking pot again, even though it didn’t have the calories of alcohol, which was always its biggest selling point for me. No high, no creative epiphany, no memorable story was worth risking the hell of a panic attack. I needed to start treating my brain with more care.
I also learned a lesson about repeating past mistakes, the lesson being that, y’know, you probably shouldn’t do it. If you think you’re different now or the world is different now or the bad thing won’t happen again even though it happened pretty dependably before: you’re not, it’s not, and it will.
This message brought to you by legal weed.
1 Weed is legal in Oregon now, and don’t think our entire state wasn’t filled with shame that Washington beat us to the marijuana-legalization punch. So humiliating.
2 Wenius isn’t really trademarked. Or a thing. At all.
3 He did not say this. He just told us which ones had the highest THC and how much to take to avoid freaking the fuck out. Which I appreciated and needed.
4 Note: I do not recommend this combination and, in general, do not recommend drinking in order to deal with anxiety. Cognitive-behavioral therapy, mindfulness, exercise, and prescribed medications have all proven successful in treating anxiety. I didn’t have a lot of these tools at the time, so I chose the “either this will work or I’ll end up choking on my own vomit” option. Not smart.
Dating the Polyamorous I
In Which I Develop an Aversion to Soccer Equipment
At this point, I was a few months and twenty first dates into my online-dating adventures, and since the beginning I’d noticed a lot of men who sent me messages described themselves as in a relationship or married in their profiles. Their missives almost always began with a disclaimer: Once you read my profile, you may not be interested, but… or A lot of women run screaming when they read my profile, but let me explain…
I’d had friends who’d been in polyamorous relationships, but it never seemed appealing to me. If you’re not familiar with polyamory, you’re about to be. All signs point to consensual nonmonogamous relationships being on the rise among people in their thirties and forties. Only about 5 percent of relationships are polyamorous right now, but since it’s pretty much the standard among college-age daters, we can look forward to seeing more of it.
Polyamory doesn’t just mean dating as many people at one time as you like, though it can mean that. How most poly couples define polyamory is that they have a primary relationship—a husband, wife, or husband- or wifelike partner—and then secondary, tertiary, and quaternary relationships depending on how ambitious/exhausted/STD-wary they are.
Up to this point, my only experience with polyamory was a couple I’d known about a decade ago, Kara and Tim, who were friends with my boyfriend at the time. They were straight out of Portland Central Casting—he was a tattooed nurse who dabbled in metallurgy and she was a sweet, Columbia Sportswear–covered brunette who worked in an after-school arts program. They were warm and funny and seemed very much in love. The first night I met them, they told me about their favorite hobby.
“We like to go to clubs together and pick out girls to play with,” Kara said, grinning at Tim.
“‘Play with’?” I said. “That sounds gross.”
“No—she’s just trying to be shocking,” Tim said, fiddling with his skull ring. “Everyone knows what’s what. We all get what we want out of it, including Kara.”
Tim added that in the beginning, Kara was even more enthusiastic about their hobby than he was. He said he was having a little trouble keeping up with her.
At one point, she even started going out on her own and picking up women. One night, she brought home a beautiful young blonde, and they both started sleeping with her.
Kara and Tim came over for dinner a few weeks later, and while the boys were out back smoking, Kara wiped away her tears with her dinner napkin while she told me that the young blonde had moved into their bed, and Kara had been sleeping on the couch.
“How does something like that happen?” I asked. “Don’t you have rules about that stuff?”
“I didn’t think we needed them,” she said. “I thought it was just understood.”
I tried to be sympathetic, but all I could think was There are way smarter gifts to bring home to your husband than a hot young blonde. Like a riding mower. Or an older Russian woman with a prominent ear mole. Anything but a hot young blonde, really.
Ultimately (spoiler alert!), Kara and Tim didn’t make it.
Watching this slo-mo train wreck, I concluded that polyamory was ridiculous and illogical. I was already overly anxious that my boyfriend would break up with me at any moment, either because I’d gained five pounds or because I didn’t know where Kazakhstan was. I didn’t need a beautiful bisexual blonde waiting in the wings for my latest fuckup. (I wasn’t very secure in that relationship, if you didn’t catch that.)
It also seemed impossible to me that a person wouldn’t eventually fall in love with one of the secondary relationships. Old love has a very hard time competing with new lust. In a cage match between Sandwich Night with your yoga-pants-clad wife and Three-Blow-Job Tuesday with your pencil-skirt-and-stiletto-clad mistress who has no faults yet, the latter will roundhouse-kick the former in the face every time. And stilettos hurt.
So, of course, based on my experience with Kara and Tim, I ignored the e-mails from poly people.
Then I thought about it. In the most significant relationship I’d had in my life, I’d a
llowed myself to fall so deeply that I almost didn’t survive when it ended. The pain of that loss floored me; it was, in some ways, worse than a death. At least when someone dies, you can’t visit his Facebook page and see pictures of him with all his new friends at the TGI Fridays in heaven.
I mourned that relationship for longer than I was in it. So now, I thought maybe if I dated someone I knew was taken, my brain wouldn’t allow me to get too attached and I would be protected from any possibility of reflooring.
The whole point of the OFW Project was to do things that I wouldn’t normally do, but with at least a couple first dates a month in addition to some second and third ones, dating had totally turned into something I’d normally do. If OkCupid had a punch-card program, by this time I would’ve collected at least ten free men in Dockers.
This was my year to be bold and brave and not date only coders who took salsa lessons. My year to catch up. To do all the stupid shit other people got to do in their twenties. To date guys named Bodhi and learn how boring tantric sex is.1
Polyamory was something I couldn’t picture myself doing long term, but I was definitely curious about what it would be like to be with someone who was already in a relationship. I felt like with polyamory, the pressure would be off me—there was a built-in easy out with these people, and the stakes were so much lower than in traditional dating. I could meet lots of people without getting all in my head with questions like Where is this going? and Is he the one? and Where’s a good place to store all my faults so he’ll fall in love with me?
If I was ever going to try polyamory, now was the time.
I’d gotten a few messages from a polyamorous married man who had seen me onstage at Live Wire!. His face was pixelated in his profile, since he was an IP lawyer for a very prominent startup and hadn’t told anyone about his “lifestyle choice.” I’d never dated anyone pixelated before, but I was willing to try. Discrimination is wrong, you guys.
He’d sent me a couple messages about how much he enjoyed Live Wire! but didn’t make any obvious allusions to dating me, so I assumed he was just a fan of the show. This was good. Since I wasn’t sure I was ready to date a polyamorous person and was merely poly-curious, I asked if he might be willing to have what I termed an “informational interview” about polyamory with me. I was shocked when he agreed.
I’m very open about all this, he wrote in an e-mail. I mean, except with my co-workers and friends and family, but other than that…
We agreed to meet at a pie shop in the Alberta Arts District. My favorite thing was to get a piece of banana cream and a piece of chocolate cream so I could have half of each in every bite. And since this wasn’t technically a date, I could indulge in my genius pie-eating technique/gluttony at will.
Jeremy was a handsome guy—he was in his late thirties, probably six foot three, dark-haired, and very thin. He resembled Clive Owen if Clive had unnecessarily gone to Weight Watchers. He showed up looking very lawyerly in a suit, and we decided to sit outside since it was a rare sunny day.
I asked him when he and his wife had decided to become polyamorous.
“I think about…four years ago?” he answered. “We were on vacation in Thailand and we saw someone we were both interested in. I think we came to the conclusion that we should try polyamory at almost exactly the same time.”
They’d tried various iterations of the poly lifestyle: they swinged (swang? swung?)2 with other couples and tried group sex, and each had had secondary and sometimes tertiary relationships.
He was on OkCupid because his last secondary relationship had just broken up. His wife, however, had a second who was working out just fine.
“So are you just not a jealous person?” I asked.
I couldn’t imagine not caring that the person I loved was in a relationship with another person. Just thinking about it made my stomach hurt. Although that could’ve been the pie(s).
“I’ve never been particularly jealous, no,” he answered. “But it’s not really that.”
“So what is it?”
He thought about it for a second.
“It’s that I’m absolutely positive that there’s no one out there who loves her as much as I do, and she’s absolutely positive that there’s no one out there who loves me as much as she does.”
“So you can cheat on each other because you love each other so much?” I asked.
“It’s not cheating if you agree to it,” he said. “And yes. There’s no reason for me to be jealous of men who have no chance of being what I am to her.”
How foreign. And strangely romantic.
It seemed like Jeremy’s biggest issue was finding the right mix in a second. A secondary relationship for him was just that—secondary. But it wasn’t just about sex. He wanted real intimacy; it just needed to take up less time and mental space than his primary relationship. The problem was that once he and a second got involved emotionally, she would inevitably become dissatisfied with sharing him and want him to leave his wife. This had happened to him three times already.
This is the cost, I imagine, of being on the bleeding edge of relationship technology. His brain had grown accustomed to the new rules, but he kept meeting women who either hadn’t yet acclimated to them or had agreed to the terms and conditions without asking themselves if they were truly prepared for the consequences. (Those of us with Apple products who received a forced U2 song can relate.)
“I’d probably respond the same way if I became emotionally involved with someone,” I said. “I’m not sure I’d be very good at the poly thing.”
“Maybe not.” He smiled. “But it’s working out pretty well for me.”
We talked for a little longer while he finished his lunch and I pretended not to be able to finish my two pieces of pie. (Acting!)
When we parted, he practically speed-walked away from the table. Clearly he wasn’t interested in actually dating me, which was probably for the best since I had my doubts about how well I’d do as a second.
Then, a few days later, I ran across Joe’s profile. He was adorable and seemed to have a sense of humor, which was rare on OkCupid. After lots of hovering over his Like button, I finally clicked it, and he wrote me the standard disclaimer. I assume you’ve read my profile, but just to be sure, I need you to know I’m in a pretty unique situation…
I knew.
After a few e-mails back and forth, Joe (aka first date #21) and I met for drinks at a pool hall. Dressed in cargo shorts and a T-shirt (the summer uniform for Portland dads), he was taller and more muscular than he looked in his pictures, which was the opposite of how things usually worked. He was probably about six feet, two hundred and twenty pounds, with a healthy tan and a sweet, boyish face. He was Canadian, which I found adorable due to either my love for Justin Trudeau or my affinity for tuques. We played a couple of games, then went to an Irish pub for more cocktails.
He got a text.
“Do you have to go?” I asked. I didn’t know what the rules were.
“Oh, no,” he said. “She’s at home with someone, so I have to be out for at least another couple hours or so.”
“Cool,” I said nonchalantly so he wouldn’t know that inside I was totally Holy shit–ing.
If I were part of a polyamorous couple, there would be no dates in our shared house. I don’t want some basic bitch’s butt on the midcentury couch we picked out together at that little shop on Hawthorne, the one with the store cat. That was a good day and her ass ruined it. (Reason #836 that I’m probably not cut out for polyamory.)
“So how long have you been doing this poly thing?” I asked.
“I think a few months now?” he said. “It was my wife’s suggestion.”
“Wow,” I said.
“Is that surprising?” he asked.
“I think I have this idea that a lot of husbands cajole their wives into swinging,” I said.
“Nah,” he said. “It was all her. She’s younger than me. I think there are still oats she wants to sow.”
/>
“And you’re cool with that?”
“I think it’ll be good for us,” he said.
“In what way?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I think if she meets a lot of guys, it’ll make her realize that everyone has faults, not just me. Maybe she’ll love me more.”
It was the sweetest reason to agree to allow your wife to sleep with a lot of men I’d ever heard.
He said the poly life had been going well for them. Exceptionally well for her, fairly well for him. This was, apparently, a trend. He and his wife knew a few other poly couples, and almost across the board, the women got significantly more action than the men.
“That makes sense to me,” I said.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because men are generally happy to get sex however it comes, whereas women would tend not to trust a man who says he’s in an open marriage.”
“Huh,” he said. “Do you trust me?”
“I do,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because you just told me that your wife gets way more action than you,” I said. “If you were lying, you’d say the opposite.”
We sat and talked until he was cleared to go home. Continuing the dating trend I’d been experiencing for about six months, we didn’t have a lot of shared interests—he worked in medical IT and liked to camp (super-ick), and I’m reasonably sure he golfed. But he was cute and refreshingly unassuming and I enjoyed spending time with him. If he hadn’t been married, he would’ve fit into the category of People I Should Sleep With for a While Until One of Us Starts Getting Too Attached, at Which Point the Other Will Quietly Disappear. But since he was married, he fit into the category of People I Should Sleep With for a While Until…Their Wives Say They Can’t Anymore? I Don’t Know How This Works.
I assumed he’d tell me.
At the end of the date, he walked me to my car and we leaned on my Civic and kissed. I don’t kiss on a lot of first dates, but when you’re auditioning to be someone’s second or third, things tend to move faster. There’s no reason to go through the regular dating rigmarole since this is not going to be a story you tell your grandkids.
Okay Fine Whatever Page 12