Iām hunkered down inside my favorite coffee shop in Southeast Portland having a cup of black liquid love to recharge my body and mind due to me having to dodge a blitzkrieg from the flying commie bastards. The Cupids are a unique kind of chaos as they are technically survivors of a horrific nuclear accident that irradiated an entire Provence. You know the one Iām talking about, yāall won't stop posting screen-caps of the damn thing on tumblr clogging up my steady feed of nihilism and satanic teddy bears. These cupids where re-homed to Portland because the social worker was from Los Angeles and since it works for them and another hundred thousand overpaid yuppies they thought Southeast would be perfect for the bastards to rehab. So the main problem with this (other than rising rent costs) is that their brains got rewired and now do everything hell-bent for leather. So where I get involved with the soviet love bastards is that they got dropped into my neighborhood and there is a Ā sense that they have of loneliness and urgency for love that attracts them to a person and to help them scratch that itch. The problem is that sense is corrupted and given a slightly sadistic bent and they have started matchmaking and sending people that I am comically ill-suited for or in some cases homicidal, Cat eared woman would be an example. Love is a battlefield, Iām a veteran of this war and I got tired of pulling heart arrows out of my ass so weāve been fighting ever since but today is going to be a major encounter.You see I have a date in one hour and they started to fly around in attack formation as soon as I left the house firing toxic love arrows at me trying to get me to return to past modus operandi and self-sabotage this relationship that hasnāt even started yet. I dodge an arrow called ānew love energyā and panic at might bit at how close it came to hitting me. They canāt get into the coffee shop, the smell of burnt bagels and french roast causes them to enter a seizure state that takes days to recover from, honestly french roast has that effect on most people but Ā are too tired to give a fuck and just assume the annoying anaphylactic shock is just a morning caffeine detox. I already thinned the ranks a bit by blowing up a fully automatic bow, this monstrosity looks like a mad man combined a Roman ballista and church pipe organ that can fire arrows like the President throws out lies and is painted pink and violet with both Greek and Russian equivalents for ālove is a wet prophylacticā. I had left my own bows hanging at home since I was heading for a date and we agreed on melee combat for this round so I armed myself with only a bokken. I couldnāt reach the artillery positioned on the house across from me I had to do something and that something Ā set the bastards to full rage mode. I took a bag of cans and bottles from the recycling bin shook it good and violently like I did last night before bed while reading the new Warren Ellis comic and threw the bag at the little winged artillery battery. There was a moment of confusion Ā and I might have heard the Russian equivalent to āwhat the fuckā but then from all over 82nd Ave tweekers arose from under their rocks smelling of steel reserve and four dollar cigarettes and converged on the Cupids moaning about spare change and smokes. I felt bad about doing that but I was left with no choice! the Eros tribunal might clear me due to the circumstances or as a penance, they might require me to date a vanilla person who thinks beige is a proper color for everything and fucking lights on in doggy is kinky with āowā being a safe word. Wouldnāt be the first time but Iād rather join a monastery than do it again, I can only hear so many Cake songs before my psychotic side goes into Hulk mode.Between the Cupids dive-bombing the windows like some kind of Ā Russian kamikaze toddler pilots and rattling the hipsters enough that they had to go get a vegan vodka shot and this little crotch goblin bouncing around and getting into peopleās faces, I'm thinking about how this date is going to affect my partner and Iās relationship. Iām also wondering how my dateās spouse is going to handle things if we hit it off. Polyamory on paper sounds like a plot to a high production value hardcore porno but the truth is (mostly) different. You have to navigate multiple schedules, expectations, and multiple people's emotions and try to figure out how to get what you need without hiding pain, jealousy, and your own fears. Being poly also means being on the outskirts of society in away, there is a sense of resentment and fear from others that donāt get it but not nearly as the violent oppression that us in the LGBTQA+ have had to duck for a few hundred years.My partner and I donāt tell others that we are dating since there is a fear of them being disowned, I tell my family the type of relationships I have because they really canāt take anything away from me since I lost the ability to care about their thoughts on my life. Iām not completely happy with this situation where I feel like a secret but itās not just my life itās my partner and their spouseās lives that would be effected. Iām not saying that everyone in a poly or open relationship should go out with a megaphone and belt out a manifesto of why they decided to break their minds with more than one neurotic trauma victim at a time or telling what happened when you Ā tell a lovers wife that you pegged their husband with a strap on because the wife refused because she felt it was icky and has a lube phobia. What I am saying is that those of us in relationships should start a conversation about non monogamy with our partners and maybe others so we can hear their thoughts and help root out our own.Itās not Polygamy, lets get that one out of the way because I talked with a lot of very intelligent people (and at least one military mandated lobotomy survivor) and they all have said āOh like the thing Mormons do?ā No, more love, openness, and freedom less magic boxers and misogyny. Ā With poly all relationships there are going to have vastly different dynamic from person to person where Bob and Tim are more open and each can have a person to have casual relationships with and sometimes they both have that dynamic with another person. Karen and Jess now are in several relationships that run casual, serious and potential for a marriage. Stacy, Jim, and Jared are in a closed trifecta where Jim and Jared being straight and not with each other they only have relationships with Stacy who only wants to have a relationship with Jim and Jared.Honestly the only thing that all these relationships have in common is communication and the bad poly relationships are non communicative, half truths, full lies, or worse one sided. I've heard the stories where on person would be dating (fucking) someone new every month but their partner was told to be monogamous and not date outside or they would be dumped, to add to this they lived together and the other partner canāt afford to live on their own. So basically one person was a Controlling , cheating waste of mommy and daddies quicky and the other was borderline being mentally and emotionally abused. Predators and halfwits will be part of every aspect of life and will find a way to manipulate or destroy said aspects of life given enough time and opportunity.Nothing is Idiot proof, nothing is safe so get your life set up how you want it and be prepared to guard this fortress against predators. When (not if) the halfwit comes stumbling in like a newborn colt on ice and manages to destroys your life because the dumb fuck is trying to help or by removing the wrong brick in the wall because it was shiny and itās now their favorite red rock thingy, you better have a plan B to rebuild. The good news is that you now have enough bricks laying Ā on the ground Ā to stone the halfwit to death, Iām a silver lining kinda guy.The Little crotch goblin in the shop is now skipping to a fro all while Ā chanting what I think I recognized as the ritual to raise an evil elder thing that resembles a puppet from some children's program and then banging their fucking little fist on bookshelves. Iāve ordered a hot chocolate for the little bastard and added a bit of full spectrum oil so the crotch goblin will either soon enter torpor or start seeing a god in whatever app the frazzled parent downloaded and handed off to the kid to try and quite the goblin down. I can write now without the music blasting through my headphones Ā being drowned out but I did check to see how the goblin is doing, they passed out on a couch, maybe pissed themselves or just spilled water on the floor hard to say . My date shows up and we talk about ourselves or I talk too much and have to stop myself to ask them a question, after both realizing that the online interaction , attraction, and communication is also very present in a real life situation we agree it was time for the duel . We meet via social media site that specializes in the way of the Gaijin and us weebs must prove our saiyan power rankings so we walk outside and I unravel the sacred condom of holy audience and stop the Cupids dive bombing Ā us while each and every one of these sawed off Kalashnikovs are humming ārock you like a hurricaneā. The cupids form a half circle around us and since the invoking of the spirit of The holy Pope Ā Ruth Westhimer the Cupids agree to not interfere and will also leave me alone until after I get off work the next day.Later that night after coming home bloodied , bruised and then the injuries I sustained during the duel I think about the date and how good it went. Talking about our partners, wants, needs and what we can and can not provide for each other, we hold off on saying we are in a relationship, we decided weāre in a trial relationship pending approval from our respective partners. Important to remember that our other partners can be affected by what we do and the clear communication transfers (or it SHOULD) to the other partners. Poly is not easy it can be worth it or as Iāve found utterly heartbreaking at times but Iām not built to be monogamous so my options are to be lonely the rest of my life, be constrained in a monogamous relationship that I may or at least fight like hell not to cheat in or I can just be honest and say this is who I am, you can stay or go. I find a dead mouse on my front porch with a note stating they were worried I hadnāt been eating, one day Iām going to spay this cat eared woman with a soldering iron.
