Calling It As You See It — In This Moment, At Least

By Maria Padhila

What do you call yourself? What do you call your relationship? Are you genderqueer, cis, non-cis, femme, bi, poly, gay? Are you sure? That must be lovely. Do you give a name and label to the structure of your relationship? Write in to the comments if you can — it would be interesting to get some perspectives on these labels.

Obviously, I feel like people should call themselves whatever they feel like. With that needs to come the acceptance that not everyone is going to get what your label ‘means’, and that they might attribute all kinds of motives to your choices there.

There are plenty of people whose only exercise consists in getting huffy, and they’ll be happy to take you to the mat and call a news conference because you happened to refer to their V as a triad.

There are just as many who won’t, and disdain all labels. In last week’s Polyamory Weekly podcast, for instance, the commentating couple had a running joke about the group in Showtime’s Polyamory: Married and Dating reality show, and how their discussion of “The Triad” sounded like a superhero series just barely worthy of viewing over a bowl of Lucky Charms. You could indeed make a drinking game out of the returns to phrases like “we must defend The Triad,” and “you are not being responsible to The Triad.”

But an unrelieved cynicism in the end is as dull as unenlightened earnestness, so I have to check myself for the former. Besides, we have to call ourselves something.

For someone as fluid as myself, though, it can be a tough call. What’s the label for ‘like this, sometimes, unless’? Gemini, maybe?

I saw a discussion the other day of whether a relationship portrayed was a triad or a V. Some said it was a V, where all two partners have in common are the ‘hinge’ person, because the other two didn’t have sex. Others said the deep friendship between the two other partners “qualified” the group as a triad, sex or no sex.

I know for sure I’m in a V. I used to get the odd sense that I should be striving for triad ‘status’; quite a challenge for many reasons not the least of which is that I’m involved with two of the most heterosexual males in the DMV (what we call DC-Maryland-Virginia, for the international readers). I know I’m enormously happy on the rare occasions when the three of us spend time together, instead of just me and a guy. I like looking at them and listening to them and interacting with them separately, so when they’re together those pleasures increase exponentially. And like most people, I like it when my friends get along.

But there’s more to it than that. It’s as if we’re in some ego-reduction exercise when we’re together. Isaac and I do a lot of physical endurance activities together, and Chris and I do intense spiritual work. But processing what goes on in the simplest interactions with the three of us is like psychological boot camp — and it trims and tones your expectations, your assumptions, and your projections.

Even though we don’t talk about deep-feeling processing or analyze our statements to each other, we’re aware of needing to keep the balance and stay open when we three interact. They have to shut down the primal reactions of suspicion and jealousy, this sense of an interloper, and simply see this man as another person.

I have to breathe through the primal sense of caution (don’t get the menfolk riled up) or the other heady breath of competition — something we as women have in our genes as something to enjoy, because, as with a lot of other things, our survival once depended on it. My survival doesn’t depend on the man with the toughest genes winning some fight. In fact, our survival all depends now on us all getting along. This trips the other ‘female’ instinct, that conciliatory sense, the urge to pat and stroke and soothe them all into calm. Trimming this and going with honesty is another result of this boot camp. It’s not easy, but I never regret the attempts (and neither do they, I believe).

Right now, I’m nodding off over a laptop on a plane, because I was up all night with the two of them. Isaac and I had a very early flight to a family gathering, and Chris was taking us to the airport. We get back at an even more ungodly hour in a week or so, and Chris is going to pick us up, and then I’ll give him a ride to another airport, because he’s leaving to be part of the early setup crew at Burning Man.

All three of us have been working overtime recently, with Isaac on one of his late-night work stretches. But yesterday I left work a few hours early. Chris met me at my house, and we talked while I made a quick dinner as well as some playlists for his journey. We went to see the acupuncturist, then came back and did some more packing and cleaning. Isaac got home around midnight and we hung out talking while we finished packing. I really like it when they talk together — even though they aren’t long-lost brothers, they get along.

Isaac had just finished reading Savages and had lent our copy to a friend who has been working the Olympics for weeks and needed some diverting mental candy. I noticed Chris rubbing at his shoulder, in pain, and I started rubbing his back, telling Isaac that I’d get him later. In these times when they’re together, it strikes me that how they look, feel, smell, see and express themselves is so very different. Just feeling their backs brings it home: Chris is strong, but sinewy and lanky; Isaac has more densely packed layers of muscle from athletics, though by adding yoga in the past year he’s avoiding the overtight look (and feel — and its propensity for injury) many jocks get.

We eat some of the bread Chris brought over; Isaac has a beer; I have the finger of wine that is about the most I can tolerate nowadays; I begin to dismantle a couple of overused travel bags from the past few months and it starts to look like a truck carrying trial sizes exploded in the room. Eventually, we decide to simply stay up all night. Isaac makes some coffee and I take a shower. At 4:30, we take the suitcases to the car and ready for departure. It’s all a very ordinary night on the surface of things. But these are two extraordinary men.