WIDE UNOPEN SPACES

Recently I was going through my bookshelf marveling at how many books a person could own and yet still not have read when I came across this little gem: The Lesbian Polyamory Reader – Open Relationships, Non-Monogamy, and Casual Sex.

It’s basically a how–to guide on sleeping around. I attempted to read this book on numerous occasions but the overwhelming ’70s sentiment and poetry with lines like “waking the lotus bud of want” meant that finishing it was generally made impossible.

Open relationships were a favourite topic of mine once. I loved espousing the joys of sleeping around and telling myself it was a carefree existence that embraced just one great guilt-free time after another, but was that really true? I gallivanted along on my high horse of sex-positive diatribe and had so much third-wave The Exorcist feminist rhetoric spewing from my mouth I was reminiscent of Linda Blair in, only instead of being possessed by the devil I had been overtaken by the riot grrl movement.

I still believe in these things in theory, but the key word here is believe. Belief is fine and good but it’s never as reassuring as other words, other words like fact for example. Fact is the true enemy of belief and whilst I can confuse fact and belief just as easily as I can confuse love and lust, after numerous attempts of testing my faith in open relationships I have to admit I never had one that worked. The closest it came to success was when the other person and I were really not that into each other and as much as I would like to, I don’t think I can consider a relationship based on mutual disdain as successful.

If the open relationship can work I am certainly no example of it, but maybe if I had armed myself with more than an industrial size box of gloves and dental dams and actually read the book from cover to cover instead of just laughing at the cover (a picture of three women who I couldn’t believe could get one woman let alone several), then maybe I could have avoided the mess that ensued for great chunks of my relationship career.

The Lesbian Polyamory Reader does instill doubt with chapter titles such as, ‘Too Many Women Too Little Time’, and ‘Living the Dream’, but there is some sound advice for tackling jealousy in the form of a questionnaire.

The authors recommend that each time one of you sleeps with someone you fill out a questionnaire and then hand it into your partner for analysis. One of the questions is, ‘How would you rate the experience’, with multiple choice answers that range from, ‘It sucked’ to ‘It blew my mind’, and ‘How would you rate this person’, with choices such as ‘Serial killer’, and ‘Can imagine falling in love with them’.

The idea is that if you have all the information your jealousy will not be fuelled with obsessive mind ramblings over the unknown. However sometimes the unknown is a place of deep joy. If I was looking over a questionnaire that presented me with a review that included the words, ‘It blew my mind and I can imagine falling in love with them’, I may attempt to take it all in my stride, but my suspicion is that I’d really just want to kick some heads in. Is that wrong?

Rachel Cook

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