I’m spending the morning alone, in Travis’s empty house. The space is both mine and not-mine. The time is all mine. It’s luxurious.
I’m enjoying an almond croissant I bought at the French bakery, a cup of Travis’s tea, and Pandora playing ATB on Travis’s computer. I’m wearing my writing sweater and my cozy slippers. I get to write whatever the hell I please.
As much as I like my business-as-usual life, it’s nice to have a break from it every once in a while. I’m glad Travis has his own place, and that he doesn’t mind me using it as an occasional retreat.
Which brings me to our topic du jour. It’s hard to distill into one catch-phrase, because it’s a bunch of discrete but related ideas. And the previous sentence basically enacts, and therefore encapsulates, the conundrum I’m getting at: what to do with multiple-but-related?
Another way of putting it: How close is too close? And when does separation result in too much distance?
Let’s say we’re talking about people. Do they all live in the same country, the same city, the same house? Do they all sleep in the same bed? If so, do they sleep together every night? How much of their time do they spend together, anyway?
There are culturally sanctioned answers for these questions in the case of a traditional couple. In our culture, the default assumption is that a married couple shares pretty much everything: house, bed, meals, finances, child-rearing responsibilities. Some couples also share the same workplace, the same circle of friends, and the same hobbies. But we’d probably look askance at the couple who shared the same underwear, and not just because of gender norms.
To a lesser extent, there are also cultural expectations for extended families. In WASP culture, for example, children over 25 generally don’t live with their parents, and elderly parents don’t usually live with their grown children. In more collectivistic cultures, one often finds three or four family generations living in the same house together, along with the occasional aunt/uncle/third-cousin-twice-removed.
However, there are no cultural guidelines for expanded intimate networks. If you’re poly, you’re on your own: it’s up to you – and your partners – to create a situation that will work for all of you. And the more of you there are, the more difficult that task is going to be.
I remember talking to Lilianna back in the early days of our acquaintance, when she was flush with the possibilities presented by poly-in-theory. Her dream scenario was to live in one huge house, with a separate bedroom for each adult, some spaces for parents and children in the same nuclear family to share, and some common spaces that would be shared by everyone.
I like Lilianna’s dream house. It was a nice place for a mental visit, and, had it existed, it would have been a nice place for the occasional real-life sleepover. But I didn’t want to live there then, and I wouldn’t want to live there now.
For starters, I don’t want my own bedroom. I like sleeping with someone. If the bed were big enough, I’d be cool with sleeping with several someones on a regular basis, provided that everyone’s sleep schedule was a rough match.
However, the idea of a communal kitchen strikes terror into my heart. I don’t want to share a kitchen with any group of adults, no matter how much I might adore each of them. Truth be told, I don’t like sharing a kitchen with Parker: he clutters the countertops with his batik supplies, spills wax on the stovetop, and splashes dye everywhere.
Ideally, I’d like to have my very own kitchen: my own pretty plates, my own cheerful teapot, my own vase of fragrant freesias in a patch of sunshine on my spic-n-span countertop.
Since I can’t have my own kitchen, though, I content myself with cooking in other people’s kitchens every once in a while. Georgia has the freesias, Cate has the clean countertop, and Travis has the skylight. Lilianna & Rick have that cool thing for rolling out pastry, along with the best collection of cookbooks ever.
I guess what I am trying to say, in a roundabout way, is that the appeal of multiplicity, for me, lies in difference. Since we’re hanging out in the metaphorical kitchen of my dream house, I guess you could say I prefer the smorgasbord approach: enjoying a variety of choices, getting to savor distinct flavors, trying unusual combinations, going back for seconds and thirds of my favorite dishes. Yeah, you could also take all those different foods and put them in a blender. You could then drink the same 100-ingredient shake morning, noon, and night – but why would you want to?
On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to separate a chocolate chip cookie into its constituent components. Pinch of plain baking soda, anyone?
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