When you’ve got more than one sex partner available for your pleasure on any given night, HOW do you decide which one you’re going to favor with your favors?
People ask me this question. They really do. Multiple-choice is apparently a real mind-bender. I’d wager that it’s also a favorite fantasy for a fair number of folks: you’re the sultan or sultana, and your entire harem is there at your beck and call, a hundred beautiful specimens lounging around with just one thought in their heads: you.
I hate to disappoint you, but that’s not the way it really works.
From what I gather, in situations where three or more sexually intimate adults live together, there’s usually some kind of schedule. Not terribly romantic, but probably necessary.
In my own situation, it isn’t often that anything like a “decision” presents itself. I live with Parker, and therefore I sleep with him, unless I have planned in advance to be elsewhere. These days, I generally spend one or two nights a week at Travis’s house. In other words, there’s a schedule.
Back when Scott and I were together, he ended up sleeping at my house probably once or twice a month – it was an hour-plus drive between his place and the house I shared with my family, so he’d often elect to stay rather than drive home late at night. On evenings when there were no specific plans, Scott would typically join us for a family dinner. Then we’d put Denali to bed, after which Scott and I would often announce that we were “going out for tea,” which was a total euphemism, since what it meant was that we were off to find somewhere to have sex (e.g., the park, my office, the church parking lot, an abandoned barn at the edge of town). When we returned from our shenanigans, wherever they happened to take place (it’s a miracle we were never caught), Parker would usually be asleep. I'd tuck Scott into bed (a mattress in the living room), then I’d pad off down the hall to join Parker, since I didn’t want Denali to wake up and find me sleeping somewhere other than where I always slept.
(It wasn’t that I was concerned about my child knowing that I sometimes slept with Scott, but that I thought it was important for Denali to be able to predict my whereabouts. So, if Parker and I were both at home, we would eventually end up in bed together, regardless of whether Scott was there or not. If Parker was gone for the night, and Scott was visiting me, Scott slept in my bed. If Denali accompanied me for a weekend visit to Scott’s, I slept in Scott’s bed, and Denali slept on the couch in the living room.)
There have been a few instances of “make the call on the spur of the moment,” though.
Once, Scott joined me and my family on a skiing vacation to Tahoe. We were all broke, so we just reserved one big hotel room. None of us knew exactly how to handle the sleeping situation, but we figured it didn’t matter much. Denali was going to be sleeping in the same room, after all, which nixed adult naughtiness, whatever the configuration.
During our après-ski dinner – it was a delicious pizza with white bean sauce, brie, roasted fennel, and apples – some opportunity arose for the placing of bets, I forget what, but I do remember Scott saying to Parker, “Winner gets to sleep with Viny.” I was kind of tickled. Parker smiled and said magnanimously, “You can sleep with her – you get to sleep with her less often.”
I thought of that moment a year or two later, when the shoe was on the other foot, and Scott was less than gracious about it.
Parker and I were living in Denmark for a semester abroad, and in the middle of that time, Scott came for an extended visit. For the first week Scott was there, Parker was away on an architectural tour. When Parker returned, I was really happy to see him. I’d missed him, and I wanted a chance to reconnect, especially since Scott and I would be leaving the next day for a trip to Amsterdam. I told Scott I wanted to spend the night with Parker, and Scott grudgingly acceded to my wishes. The next morning, though, he was a little shit about it: “I didn’t sleep all night,” he complained, “Did you have to torture me? Why were you having sex at 3 in the morning?” Never mind that Parker and I’d had sex quietly at 11, and were both sound asleep when Scott was spinning stories about every noise he thought he heard emanating from the bedroom.
One more “musical beds” story, and I’ll call it quits for today.
Last summer, Lilianna and I attended a conference together in San Francisco, and we shared a hotel room with one double bed. For the last two nights of our stay, Parker, Denali, and Sienna joined us at the hotel, and the room Parker’d reserved had two double beds. So there were a total of three adults, two children, and three double beds. It was like a GRE logic question.
It was pretty obvious that the kids would be in the bigger room, with Denali in his own bed and Sienna in her little travel crib. Parker and I could have taken the other double bed in that room, but what actually ended up happening was that I slept in the room with the kids, while Parker slept with Lilianna in her room.
Here’s how that decision was made.
The kids were asleep in their room, two doors down. Parker and Lilianna were in the room I had been sharing with her, talking -- which meant they were lying on the bed, since there wasn’t space to be anywhere else. I was out in the lobby having a fraught conversation on the phone with my mother. It had recently come to her attention that I’d found out about certain less-than-accepting comments she'd made to Parker's mother -- namely, that I was a relationship “addict” of some sort, and that my whole situation made it “toxic” to be around me. I guess she must have figured out that this was why I’d been a little chillier to her than normal. She had called me to apologize – not for her opinions about me, but for having expressed her thoughts aloud to Parker’s mother.
After I finished talking to my mother, I joined Parker and Lilianna in bed. Parker was lying in the middle, with an arm around each of us. We had a good conversation about all the things that were stressing me out – my recent visit with Travis, followed by my visit with Scott, which had upset Travis, and now this thing with my mother. It was dark. We were sleepy. The bed was small. I didn’t want Sienna, then two and a half, to wake up without one of her parents in the room. So I said, “How about I go sleep in the room with the kids?”
So, the short answer to Poly FAQ #3: People are natural problem solvers. However complex the situation, a solution will emerge that makes some kind of sense. And once you've figured out your partner(s) and your location, the sex -- or the sleeping, or the tossing around fitfully, whatever -- can begin!
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