Poly Media Mashup for Cold (or Hot) Nights

Maria Padhila

I began writing this as I was making some chocolate chip cookies, because that’s how polyamory works — when it’s one guy’s birthday, the other one gets chocolate chip cookies, too, even when the other one says, no, no, I don’t need those things, I’m supposed to be in training. Cookies for the house, and whiskey for the horses!

It’s pretty cold out, in case you hadn’t noticed, so I thought I’d share some of the media I’ve enjoyed over recent months. If you have the time and the access, these are great to curl up with.

First, stop the presses ’cause I don’t know how it escaped me until now that (graphic novel writer and more) Neil Gaiman and (musician and more) Amanda Palmer have an open marriage. Here’s an interview from late last year that goes into some of it, including how they deal with trolls.

They have a refreshingly offhand attitude toward their relationship structure, but also acknowledge that it takes a lot of talk and honesty.

Question: Being polyamorous I’m often curious how others arrive at opening their relationships. How did you two breach the subject of an open marriage and was it a result of rigorous tour schedules or have all your relationships been open?

NG: We both came from closed relationships (although Amanda had tried all sorts of relationships before that one). We both wanted to be with each other, but also we wanted more than that. From the very beginning of the relationship, in early 2009, possibly even before we started actually going out, we knew we wanted to be free to be with other people when we were away, and that we wanted to build the kind of a relationship in which that would bring us closer. So far it’s working pretty well.

I don’t know. It works okay currently because we have people we can kiss all over the world. If we both lived in a small town and never left, we might decide it was easier to have a closed relationship. Or we might not.”

And speaking of comic books! If you’re poly or have poly friends, you’ll get a kick out of this one. There’s most likely a character in her multiverse you can relate to. She reminds me of the early Allison Bechdel.

Frankness and honesty is something there is not much of in some of the other pieces I liked from the past year — or at least, the honesty is hard won after a struggle. But that’s what makes for drama (and often, comedy as well). The Masters of Sex series on Showtime, a fictional drama based on the Masters and Johnson sex researchers, has a lot to recommend it, starting with the acting. What stands out for me is the portrayal of women — it goes far deeper into the Mad Men territory, using women in early second-wave feminism as surrogates for feminist challenges today.

Lizzy Caplan as Virginia Johnson pulls at your heart and your mind. Allison Janney as a neglected wife who discovers her husband is gay and takes a stand for her own happiness is also worth the watching, as is Helene Yorke as a chirpy blend of Marilyn Monroe and Doris Day, achingly idealistic about helping with the groundbreaking sex research. A scene over an academic office lunch with Dr. Masters, not-Dr. Johnson, some researchers and Dr. Master’s mother is just one priceless moment. “And what do you do in the study?” asks the be-hatted matron. “I masturbate,” she smiles proudly, and takes a bite of her sandwich.

A New Yorker piece is just one lately that looks at the truth behind the show. It’s good that it’s had that effect of re-opening the truly brave and revolutionary nature of this research — and revealing all that was flawed about it, as well.

[The real] Johnson died earlier this year, at the age of eighty-eight. She was no longer going by the name she’d used professionally for her forty-odd years in sex research. Instead, she was “Mary Masters,” another old woman in a nursing home with a story that only a few people listened to. Her tale is laced with regrets. As she’d tell the writer Thomas Maier, whose book Masters of Sex the series is based on, “I can remember saying out loud — and I’m appalled as I remember it — being very pleased that I could be anything any man wanted me to be. … In retrospect, I ask myself, ‘Geez, did I lose myself that totally?’”

Some of her guilt was the ordinary kind, familiar to any working woman. She worried that she’d missed her kids growing up. She was so busy working as Masters’s associate on his sex research that she never got the imprimatur of a university degree, an honorific that might seem ceremonial in retrospect but which meant a great deal to her personally. Most relevant, to those who have been watching the show, is how Mary seemed to regret her involvement with Bill Masters.

Again, that’s where the drama comes from.

The film Don Jon (from first time writer-director but well-known actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt), is about a character who, paradoxically, cannot lose himself — even as he’s busy being the person he believes everyone wants him to be. Reviewer Trie on The Rainbow Hub website traces the paradox of this young alpha male in this review:

Our title character is Jon, who is so prolific with women that his friends call him “The Don,” and Jon’s like some sort of weird reject from Jersey Shore with all the problems and stereotypes therein.

Actually, forget stereotype; Jon is a pastiche: he something recognizable as non-reality but a true media-created reality.

Jon is a simulacrum.

And, that’s so interesting.

Because — for those that aren’t actually paying attention — Don Jon is easily just an indictment of the porn industry and how it’s destroying masculinity and contributing to misogyny.

And, this isn’t a wrong assessment; it’s just an incomplete assessment.

Don Jon is totally an indictment of the porn industry and its viewers, but more [it] is the “we’ve done our jobs so well that there isn’t this realization by our [viewers] that porn isn’t reality,” and that Lack of Reality leads to unrealistic expectations everywhere — for everyone: male, female, and everyone in between and not on the spectrum.

This film is also an indictment of Men’s Culture — as represented by hyper-masculinity and porn and This Is How To Be A Real Man that’s, like, from some handbook from the 50s — and Women’s Culture — as represented by sexual manipulation bordering upon coercion and abuse and romantic comedies and If A Man Really Loves You, He’ll Give Up Everything For You. …

Yeah, you can go and see Don Jon and have something funny and filled with second-hand embarrassment and with a heart-warming ending.

But, I think you might be doing yourself a disservice.

I didn’t get around to seeing Design For Living (1933), the original triad comedy of manners, in its 80th anniversary year. It’s said to define racy and witty, and I’m not going to contradict that. Plus, Paris.

I did see The Sessions. People say the remarkable thing about it is that it’s about a sex surrogate. I think what’s remarkable is that it’s about a poet. And spirituality. I recommend it to everyone.

Another excellent cold-weather warmer is 2004’s 9 Songs, by Michael Winterbottom, which Eric has written about in the past; it’s a story of a love affair with a trajectory that’s not often traced. It’s got my favorite music in it.

If you’re looking for more poly, LGBT, non-monogamous and/or just plain sexy and thoughtful movie suggestions, I’d recommend checking out the reviews on polyamory writer Joreth’s blog; they’re really well written and on-target. Stay warm, or cool if you’re in Australia.