[āOn our very first date, which I didnāt really understand was a date until we were making out in my rental car, Ishai made the most exceptional request of me. He said: āTell me about your constellation of intimate people.ā
I had never been asked that before. People had, over the years, frequently asked me āHow many people are you involved with, exactly?ā based on my relatively public life as a polyamorous person, but they usually turned out to be asking only one of two things. Either they wanted to know if there was any room on my dance card for them, or they wanted to know just how big a slut I really was. Sometimes, both.
Ishaiās request, like a lot of the other early indicators about him, was a breath of fresh air. I loved it because it acknowledged and put (thoughtful and lyrical) words to the thing I constantly wrestled with when people asked me questions about my relationships. Namely, that there were people with whom I was very intimately engaged, and people with whom I sometimes had sex, and people who were both, but that sex did not necessarily equal Important Life Person. In fact, over the course of my adult life, my constellation of intimates has been fairly evenly split between people who are or have been lovers and people with whom I have never gone to bed or even come close. I typically had to go the long way around in explaining this, first stating my values around monogamy, friendship and friend networks, and community enmeshment before eventuallyāif the poor sucker was still listeningātalking about my entanglements and intimacies. I never stopped finding it odd that even the most vocal proponents of non-traditional relationship structures typically listed only their lovers as people with whom they were āin a relationship.ā In retrospect, though, the difficulties of language really do impose themselves on that conversation and a lot of these others: we know to say āthis is my husband,ā and even āthis is my husbandās girlfriend,ā but whateverās not culturally valued doesnāt get its own words (which is, in some ways, the theme of this whole collection).
So this new, charmingly phrased, and quite sincerely stated request both startled and soothed me. I found myself talking animatedly about the people of whom I am so fond; my boyfriend Bobby and inimitable femme friend Hanne, my partner-in-crime Turner and my good boy Zev, and Kate, my longest love. He didnāt ask which of them I was getting naked with, and I donāt think I elaborated. I just happily chattered on about how much I liked them and why. Then, when I was finished, I asked the same of him in return. It was a great pleasure (and, I would like to say for the record, was a significant contributing factor to the making-out that shortly followed).
Iām reminded of this conversation every time someone asks me to tell them about my family. This happens to me all the time and for assorted reasons, but most often itās related to my public work. Frequently, the questioner is fishing a little to see if I have any difficult stories about being queer or trans within my family of origin, since thatās the most common trope of media coverage of trans people: the terrible part. When I start waxing rhapsodic about the wonderful people in whose orbit I happily make my homes, they interrupt me. āNo,ā they say, looking chagrined. āI, uh ... I meant your real family.ā When this happens, I prompt them with the phrase āfamily of origin,ā and they nod and repeat it gratefully, but honestly, Iāve already soured on them. Iām tired of the pity narrative, and I lose patience quickly when itās all someone can think to ask about.
Sometimes, though, the question-asking comes from the flipside. These folks are often the parents of young trans or gender-independent kids, and they are spiky with fear and anxiety that their children wonāt have the kind of life that those of us who are parents envision for our children; ones with gainful employment, a sweetheart, friends. Some constructions of this future are incredibly rigid and some are tender and flexible, but they all seem to feature the same basic components: belonging, being loved, feeling successful. For these people, my long digression on the wonders of my chosen familyāboth the closest people and also the folks who are family to me even if weāre less often in touchāfeel as reassuring to them as they are satisfying to me.ā]
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