Incognito

Recently Chloe and I have attended a couple of really enjoyable local lesbian Meetup events -- Red doesn't seem to mind us running off together, especially if it coincides with broadcasts of multiple baseball games, which he then gets to watch guilt-free. Win-win-win!

Chloe and I do wonder whether this will one day be something Red gets worried about. But we keep taking his temperature, and so far no cause for alarm. It would be fun to bring him along to some of these, we keep thinking, but it doesn't seem socially appropriate. The one time Chloe tried to explain our situation to one of the women we met, it just didn't seem to compute in that person's head. Maybe it would make the women we're meeting uncomfortable, and that's not polite, especially in new company.

But the thing Red jokes about actually is a real, little bitty, niggling fear. "Don't tell them you're bisexual," he warns theatrically, "or they'll kick you out of the club!"

This is not, of course, a new issue. (See several previous posts here, and a truckload of articles and arguments in the LGBTQ world, for evidence.) But it's becoming a more concrete one for me and Chloe. The other day, since we were one of only two couples in a crowd of about 15 ladies, it was natural for someone to ask us "So, how long have you been together? How did you meet?" ... We exchanged glances and managed to tell pieces of the tale, along with a couple of "it's a reaaallly long story" interjections, without contradicting each other. Later we wondered if we should have a canned script ready for such moments.

And what's the worst that could happen? We get socially rejected? Probably only by some individuals, not all the people we've met (who seem pretty cool on the whole). We put someone a little out of their comfort zone? That's already happened plenty with our straight friends and family. I guess the gay guys have been so low-key, and there were already so many more of those in our lives than gay women, that we're not sure whether the girls are gonna be like "right on!" or back away like "hey, this space here is for actual lesbians". Chloe observed that the category in question is "girls who like girls", and in that respect we fit right in. Even if the number of girls each of us has ever liked is less than or equal to 2.

So do I get to embrace the subculture of not-straight women? Or do I have an asterisk? Should I be nervous about being found out as a poseur* or a fraud? For now I think I'll grab Chloe's hand, run to the beach for that barbecue, and come back to Red's fuzzy face to celebrate our growing circle of friends.


*The nerd in me is forced to observe that as a female person I am actually "incognita", and a "poseuse". Carry on.

NEVER MIND.

FORGET EVERYTHING I EVER SAID ABOUT NOT ENOUGH SEX.

Quality over quantity, right?

Man I love these people.

Home Alone

There was a time when I didn't like being at Red & Missy's house without them.  After all, I have my own place, it has all of MY stuff - their house was not comfortable to me unless they were there.  As a matter of fact, I felt downright awkward, surrounded by their shag carpet, chilly leather furniture, celery-green walls, and sticky cereal bowls left on the counter from the kids rushing out the door to school.  My apartment is dark and cavey, full of browns and burgundy and my own clutter.  I don't feel guilty cranking up the heat or the air conditioning to extreme levels, and the crusty dishes on the counter were left there by me!

Things have changed.

Kids have been around so infrequently that I have been spending more and more time at Red & Missy's (dog in tow, of course), and the things I was so uncomfortable with have somewhat faded into the background.  Family crises have also helped put things into perspective - nothing like a good ol' health crisis to force you to realize you were WAY too concerned with the color of the walls.

Also, I suppose we have entered that comfortable stage in a relationship where you don't have to fill every moment with conversation, or spend all of your non-work hours together.  Sometimes one or both of them need to be gone in the evening, and occasionally even I have a event that takes me off the couch, and we all survive.  I have learned to enjoy my time there alone.  Old movies and cozy blankets have become close friends.  I can always find popcorn, ice cream, and Doritos in the kitchen, and I love the bunnies in their yard, the sound of the palm trees in the wind, and the chirping birds (my apartment has upstairs gymnast neighbors, and a dumpster nearby - yuck).

The Red/Missy home has become a safe haven  - a place to relax and forget that there's any other place on earth I need to be.  Now if a walk-in closet would magically appear in their bedroom, and another 1500 square feet of floor space in the rest of the house...

V is for Vertex

Long long ago, in a Trifecta newly born, it felt to me like we were in a mostly-constant state of emotional triangle, and sexual mostly-V. With Red at the vertex. Not that this is news to any faithful reader -- back in the early posts, we observed how there were three relationships, no wait actually FOUR, and the bonds were very strong on each axis of the triangle, etc. ... and at the same time how Chloe and I were just starting to learn about how to be intimate. We still feel kind of like newbies (each of us more or less so at different times), but we're waaaaay more comfortable with the girl-girl lovin' than we used to be.

Over time, I realized that the emotional triangle varies a LOT.

Any two of us might feel closer to each other than the third does to either, and the distance might get prettttty long between any two points. And then shorten up, all of a sudden. Hard to predict. Sometimes, it feels downright equilateral.

Meanwhile the sex -- which has, under the strain of family illness as previously mentioned, been way way way down in frequency -- has been looking more V-like. I dunno whether those two things are related, but there they are. A nice piece is, any jealousy about who does what / with whom / when has pretty much evaporated. So I don't mind at all if Red and Chloe get it on when I'm not around, or when I'm asleep (OK maybe I'm mildly perturbed if it's preventing me from sleeping when I want to, but sometimes I actually don't wake up). This seems to be true all round. Sometimes we find ourselves in what was originally the default scenario, where two people are doin' stuff and the third gets credited with an assist. But mostly, these days, it's Chloe-and-Red or Chloe-and-me. Look at that! Chloe has become the vertex.

I'm still turned on by Red (and him by me, as far as I can tell). And though times are tough in other arenas, I don't feel any less emotionally close to him. Just ... the emotions and the bodies sometimes configure independently. And that feels just fine to me.