Many Love

by Sophie Lucido Johnson

  Zell-Ravenheart’s “polyamory” and the Urban Dictionary user’s definition are actually perfect opposites—just as “birding” and “bird-watching” can be. The key difference in each case, perhaps, has to do with control.

  Rosen writes, “Bird watching is really all about the quest for balance—between the curious animal at the near end of the binoculars and the wild animal at the far end; between the classifiable and the ineffably mysterious; between our killing, conquering urges and our impulse toward conservation.”3 It’s an unsteady road, because there’s no obvious indicator as to whether you’re veering too far one way or the other. Anapol writes, likewise, that “polyamory is not an identity that dictates having multiple partners but rather a fluid process of checking in with oneself to see what feels appropriate with a given person in a given situation.”4 This is a similarly unsure path. It asks that human beings behave like rivers—that is, moving forward and trusting the flow—and not like human beings. Humans like to control things. That’s why John James Audubon, perhaps the most celebrated birder of all time, killed hundreds of thousands of the birds he said he loved in order to categorize them, classify them, and paint them into place.

  Polyamory (the first definition) provides no answers; only more questions. You have to decide if that’s the kind of love life you want to have. Curiosity can actually be quite terrifying—especially when there aren’t any true answers. But then sometimes curiosity leads you to being knee-deep in rainwater watching a completely ridiculous, brilliant blue swirl of birds rise up before you.

  I didn’t see an indigo bunting again until almost three years later. Luke and I were in our Chicago apartment in the middle of May. My birthday had just passed; I’d completed graduate school, and my parents had come and gone to celebrate it all. Our apartment was finally quiet, and Luke had asked me a few weeks prior if I could reserve this particular Saturday for him; he said things had been so busy, and he just wanted to spend the day with me. In the morning, we drank coffee and gazed out the window at our bird feeder. In Chicago, early May is peak birding season (and, for us, peak bird-watching season). Migratory birds, on their way farther north, have a kind of spring break in Chicago before taking on Lake Michigan. Just as humans do on spring break, the birds have lots and lots of sex. Since they’re in sexy moods, the male birds (warblers, mostly) wear their migratory plumage—butter-yellows and apple-reds that seem to have come out of a child’s box of crayons. Mostly, the rarer birds don’t come to our feeder. We had the usual cast of house sparrows and mourning doves, with a goldfinch here and there. So it was pure magic that on this mid-May Saturday, an indigo bunting showed up at the feeder like it was no big thing at all.

  We sat and watched it for half an hour. It seemed like a sort of accident: how could one tiny bird be so blue? Luke said we should go out to the lakefront and see what other birds were out, so we rode our bikes to the lake. It had been raining for seven straight days, but this Saturday was sunny and warm, and the birds were apparently happy for a dry morning (with lots of post-rain bugs to eat). The birders were out en masse at the bird sanctuary near our house. They’d set up their ridiculous scopes and were whisper-yelling things to each other like “Oh my god, it’s a G-D mourning warbler” and “It’s either a yellow-rumped or a magnolia, but I can’t tell.” We didn’t need to name the birds, but we spent a few hours appreciating them from our distance. One woman said to us,

  We lingered longer than usual, because something about this day felt sort of enchanted. You know those dating montages in movies in which the in-love characters keep laughing and running around even when one of the characters spills their ice cream or it starts raining? It was a day like that. We sat on the lip of the lake and listened to an amateur saxophone player wail badly (but charmingly) into the wind. We watched him explain to a school-aged girl how the air moved into and out of the instrument; I let my ear rest on Luke’s shoulder. Just as I’d felt during my first kiss ever, I actively wished I could stop time. I felt so pleased that a clichéd, childish wish like that could still exist in my thirties.

  I daydreamed about eating tacos and napping the afternoon away as we biked home. But that was before I got to the front door of our apartment. Because when I got to the front door of our apartment, I understood that I wouldn’t remember this day for the saxophone player or the snobby birders, or even for the indigo bunting. Our plastic Mardi Gras cups were lined up on the doorstep, and someone had planted yellow daisies inside them. I don’t know about you, but yellow daisies make me think of just one thing: season one, episode twenty-one of Gilmore Girls.

  In the episode, Lorelai tells her boyfriend, Max, that for a marriage proposal, “There should be a thousand yellow daisies.” Then one day she comes to work to find that someone’s delivered a thousand yellow daisies—they fill the room, and it’s totally startling. I love yellow, I love daisies, and I love Gilmore Girls. Even though Lorelai and Max don’t ultimately end up together, I’ve always agreed that for a marriage proposal, there should be a thousand yellow daisies.

  I unlocked the front door of the apartment and walked into the front hall. Yellow daisies lining the hallway. Yellow daisies on all the bookshelves. Yellow daisies on the hope chest and on the windowsill. And in the living room, huge pots of yellow daisies, joined with other flowers of every type: marigolds, foxgloves, pansies, forget-me-nots, the works. There weren’t just a thousand; there were thousands. When I turned around to look at Luke, he was on one knee, holding a little black box just like in all the rom-coms I’m supposed to hate.

  I always imagined how gracefully I’d say yes if anyone ever proposed to me. A single tear would trickle down my powdered cheek, and I’d nod vehemently before Prince Charming rose to his feet to lift me and twirl me around. In real life, I fell on top of Luke and sobbed with all the poise of a bridge troll. I snotted on his shirt. I wailed something about loving him so much and chewed on his nose in a dizzy stab at a kiss.

  We had sex as engaged people. People called us to say congratulations—his dad called while we were naked in bed, and Luke (ever the neophyte with technology) didn’t realize it was a Facetime call. We had brunch at our favorite neighborhood joint (I just call it “the mushroom restaurant” because they have many mushroom dishes). After the mushroom restaurant, we had sex again as engaged people.

  That night, Luke had one more surprise planned. He’d gotten tickets to see a Sarah Ruhl play called For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday, and he’d invited Meg and Tony to join us.

  Sarah Ruhl authored the first Off-Broadway play about polyamory. How to Transcend a Happy Marriage premiered at Lincoln Center in 2017; Luke and I flew to New York to see it.

  We sat in the front row, and afterward walked down the street to an all-night diner to talk. I was eager to tell this couple I loved about my engagement. It went without saying that the engagement wouldn’t change anything between us—except that now Luke and I wanted Meg and Tony to come to a party celebrating our love. I knew Meg and Tony wouldn’t need to ask the question that some of my family members would have: “So, if you’re polyamorous, why are you getting married?” The answer, to them, was as obvious as it was to us. We wanted to get married because we were committed to each other for life. It’s as simple as that.

  After the day was over, I lay in bed wondering how it was that I’d gotten so lucky. I mean, this man deeply understood the importance of sunstones and cheap tacos and bird-watching and so, so many other things. On a whim, just then, I decided to ask him why he liked bird-watching. His answer was as simple as they come.

  Acknowledgments

  Mackenzie Brady Watson is a literal superhuman who soared into my life and made it infinitely better in millions of ways. Obviously, this book would not exist without her. I would not be who I am without her. I love her.

  Jill Riddell was my graduate school advisor, who told me to “be brave” and “try a longer work,” which I had had no intention of ever doing. She read this book more times than I d
id, and when I was finished with it, she gave me zucchini bread. I love her.

  Cara Bedick and Lara Blackman were the two most patient editors I could possibly imagine working with. I’m not an easy person. Lara and Cara made calm cooing noises at me while simultaneously whipping this manuscript into shape. I love them.

  Alexis Gargagliano edited the earliest iterations of this text, and she shaped a lot of stray fragments into something at least marginally readable. I love her.

  Then there are the hordes of others upon whom I have forced pages. These people generously read the pages and gave gentle criticism, knowing that I’m extremely thin-skinned. I love every one of these people. Here are some of their names: Sam Alden, Ann Calcagno, Rachel Cromidas, Leah Fishbein, Mary Fons, Loretta Johnson, Alex Kerr, Rachel Lee, Jesse LeMon, Louisa Leontiades, Alan M., Peggy Macnamara, Ned Moore, Kim Neer, Eli Piatt, Derek Roguski, Hannah Sadtler, Mac Schubert, Hannah Sherrard, Jessica Thompson, Chuck Thurow, Bob Weisz, and Valerie White. There are definitely names I’m forgetting. I love all those people, too.

  My mom is more incredible than I’ve let on in these pages. Throughout this process, she’s been vulnerable, honest, and accepting. If I grow up to be just like her, I will have exceeded my wildest expectations for myself. I love her. My dad, despite his relative absence from this text, is pretty awesome, too. I also love him.

  My sister, Alexis, is my greatest life love. It’s strange, in some ways, that in a book called Many Love she would not come up more. The love I share with my sister is sacred and deserves its own book. Nevertheless, Alexis has put up with a lot of whining and complaining while I’ve written this one. I love her.

  And finally: I never imagined I would meet a human like Luke Hoar de Galvan. He is just as thoughtful, kind, gracious, intelligent, and generally wonderful as I’ve tried to portray. He took me out for vegan doughnuts every time something went wrong with this book—and I’ll just say that there were a lot of vegan doughnuts. Luke listened dutifully to all my grievances and stayed up late into the night with me while I inked illustrations until my hands hurt. He cleaned up after me, he cooked for me, and he championed me. He is an actual earth angel. I love him more than I have words for.

  About the Author

  Sophie Lucido Johnson is a writer, illustrator, and comedian. She has been published in The New Yorker, Guernica, the Guardian, Vice, Catapult, Dame, McSweeney’s, Jezebel, The Hairpin, The Nation, and Rookie, among others, with much of her writing on the subject of open relationships. She holds an MFAW at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Many Love is her first book.

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  Notes

  FAQ

  1 Alan M., “Deborah Taj Anapol, 1951–2015,” Polyamory in the News!, August 19, 2015, http://polyinthemedia.blogspot.com/2015/08/deborah-taj-anapol-1951-2015.html.

  2 Deborah Anapol, Polyamory in the 21st Century: Love and Intimacy with Multiple Partners (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010), 206.

  Chapter 1: Happily Ever After?

  1 Cindy Hazan and Phillip R. Shaver, “Attachment as an Organizational Framework for Research on Close Relationships,” Psychological Inquiry 5, no. 1 (1994): 1–22.

  2 Wyndol Furman, “The Emerging Field of Adolescent Romantic Relationships,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 11, no. 5 (October 2002): 177–80.

  3 Rachel Martin, “Sorting Through the Numbers on Infidelity,” NPR, July 26, 2015, https://www.npr.org/2015/07/26/426434619/sorting-through-the-numbers-on-infidelity.

  4 “Why People Cheat: ‘The Normal Bar’ Reveals Infidelity Causes,” Huffington Post, January 22, 2013, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/22/why-people-cheat_n_2483371.html.

  5 Martin, “Sorting Through the Numbers on Infidelity.”

  6 University of Guelph, “Sexual Anxiety, Personality Predictors of Infidelity, Study Says,” ScienceDaily, July 26, 2011, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110725123411.htm.

  7 Peggy Orenstein, Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape (New York: HarperCollins, 2016), 73.

  8 “Box Office History for Romantic Comedy,” The Numbers, https://www.the-numbers.com/market/genre/Romantic-Comedy.

  9 Natalie Angier, “The Changing American Family,” New York Times, November 25, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/26/health/families.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.

  10 Amy Davidson Sorkin, “A Guide to Guerrilla Parenting,” The New Yorker, August 1, 2016, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/08/01/parenting-in-an-age-of-economic-anxiety.

  Chapter 2: “Just” “Friends”

  1 Julie Beck, “How Friendships Change in Adulthood,” The Atlantic, October 22, 2015.

  2 Randy Newman, “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” Toy Story, Walt Disney Records, 1995, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy4uiiy0qgA.

  3 Plato, Symposium, trans. Benjamin Jowett, http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/symposium.html.

  4 “Fair Youth Sonnets,” Hudson Shakespeare Company, http://hudsonshakespeare.org/Shakespeare%20Library/Poetry/Young%20Man%20sonnets.htm.

  5 Jen Kim, “Sorry, But This Is Why You Can’t Be Friends with Your Ex,” Psychology Today, https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/valley-girl-brain/201211/sorry-is-why-you-can-t-be-friends-your-ex.

  6 Amy L. Busboom, Dawn M. Collins, Michelle D. Givertz, and Lauren A. Levin, “Can We Still Be Friends? Resources and Barriers to Friendship Quality after Romantic Relationship Dissolution,” Personal Relationships 9, no. 2 (June 2002): 215–23.

  7 Sandra Metts, William R. Cupach, and Richard A. Bejlovec, “ ‘I Love You Too Much to Ever Start Liking You’: Redefining Romantic Relationships,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 6, no. 3 (August 1, 1989): 259–74.

  8 Susan Song, “Polyamory and Queer Anarchism: Infinite Possibilities for Resistance,” in C. B. Daring, J. Rogue, Deric Shannon, and Abbey Volcano, eds., Queering Anarchism: Essays on Gender, Power, and Desire (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2012), http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/susan-song-polyamory-and-queer-anarchism-infinite-possibilities-for-resistance.

  9 Anapol, Polyamory in the 21st Century, 61.

  10 Andie Nordgren, The Short Instructional Manifesto for Relationship Anarchy, Anarchist Library, 2006, https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/andie-nordgren-the-short-instructional-manifesto-for-relationship-anarchy.

  11 Dean Spade, “For Lovers and Fighters,” in Melody Berger, ed., We Don’t Need Another Wave: Dispatches from the Next Generation of Feminists (New York: Seal Press, 2006), http://www.makezine.enoughenough.org/newpoly2.html.

  12 Anapol, Polyamory in the 21st Century, 5.

  13 Ibid., 10.

  14 Jean Baker Miller, PhD, and Irene Pierce Stiver, PhD, The Healing Connection: How Women Form Relationships in Therapy and in Life (Boston: Beacon Press, 2015), 35.

  15 Ibid., 36.

  16 Deborah Anapol, “Polyamory without Tears,” Psychology Today, November 1, 2011, https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/love-without-limits/201111/polyamory-without-tears.

  Chapter 3: Casual Love

  1 Kelly Cooper, “A Woman’s Advantage,” OkCupid, March 5, 2015, www.okcupid.com/deep-end/a-womans-advantage.

  Chapter 4: Let’s Talk about Sex

  1 Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy, The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships & Other Adventures, 2nd
ed. (Berkeley, CA: Celestial Arts, 2009), 4.

  2 Peggy Orenstein, Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape (New York: HarperCollins, 2016), 2.

  3 Zoe Ruderman, “15 Women Describe What an Orgasm Feels Like to Them,” Cosmopolitan, June 19, 2017, http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/advice/g1551/what-an-orgasm-feels-like/.

  4 Dan Savage, “Savage Love: Basics, Bitches,” The Stranger, November 20, 2013, https://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=18262632.

  5 Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), “A History of Federal Funding for Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs,” http://www.siecus.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=page.viewpage&pageid=1340&nodeid=1.

  6 Nancy Jo Sales, “Tinder and the Dawn of the ‘Dating Apocalypse,’ ” Vanity Fair, August 6, 2015, https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/08/tinder-hook-up-culture-end-of-dating.

  7 Karley Sciortino, “Breathless: In Defense of Hookup Culture,” Vogue, September 9, 2015, https://www.vogue.com/article/breathless-karley-sciortino-hookup-culture-casual-sex.

  Chapter 5: Many Love

  1 Sophie Lucido Johnson, “TOUR Day 7—Los Angeles and Polyamory,” Sophie Lucido Johnson (blog), August 8, 2014, http://www.sophielucidojohnson.com/blogblog/2014/8/8/tour-day-7-los-angeles-and-polyamory?rq=polyamory.

  Chapter 6: Jealousy

  1 David M. Buss, PhD, The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex (New York: Free Press, 2000), 206.