My dad was polyamorous before it was cool. Or moderately accepted. Definitely before there was a Fet. Before there was a Collarme. Heck, before there was even Internet (and not just the AOL version, I mean before the Al Gore version.)
Before me.
Before my mother.
He may have been poly before computers. I know for sure he was poly when he built his first computer.
Before me.
Before my mother.
He may have been poly before computers. I know for sure he was poly when he built his first computer.
Today he is dying.
He has had heart disease for 20+ years, perfectly timing his first heart attack to coincide with his final attempt at monogamy (my mother) falling apart when I was 13. The family suspects that the two were not unrelated.
Over the last several years his health has dwindled, though he remained the independent nudist dad I grew up loving till just over 40 days ago. In the last couple of years he has, in his failing health, started a moderately successful Plein Air life drawing club, run a nude Plein Air drawing class, and (of course) gotten another new girlfriend.
This is to say, he has always been poly.
I remember when he and my mom broke up. He was monogamous with her, removing all his girlfriends to simple friendships when he married her. I found out, after their divorce, that she was always jealous of his loving friendships with the women in his life. Though she dabbled with polyandry before I was around, mom is terribly traditionally vanilla and had a monogamous heart.
It was probably 10 years after their divorce that he talked to me about his girlfriends. I was teasing him about one, asking about the nature of their relationship one summer when I was home from college, and I asked what had happened with another. Had they broken up?
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| A tattoo I am considering |
So, you have lots of girlfriends?
Of course, why limit yourself? He answered.
Do they know about each other?
Yes.
And...?
And what?
And what nothing. That was the end. Love is bigger, so much bigger, than the understandings society teaches us.
Over the next ten years I got to know the constellations in his love Galaxy. The ways in which the different elements interacted. How they overlapped and pulled at him. How they fit into the larger picture of our family.
It wasn't until I became active in the kink lifestyle that I began to put a name on how my dad loved. Polyamorous.
It seems too big a word, to academic, to explain the reality.
The reality is this:
Love looks different every time it is expressed, but when done purely, no one expression in anyway diminishes the others.
Love looks different every time it is expressed, but when done purely, no one expression in anyway diminishes the others.
I have in no way appreciated it as much as I have during this time. As the family 'communicator' I have been the one making the calls and tracking down the people important to him. And they have come. All of them however they could, have come. By phone, and Skype, and car.
The mothers of his children, who he only admitted to me three months ago number three not two. Those who he calls out for and worries about and who lament not just his passing for their own selves but for the hole it will leave in our family.
The lovers of his body, who knew him when he was young and virile and they were nubile young nude models, who have continued to love him as both his and their bodies have failed, and who now sit and hold hands in a level of physical intimacy that makes me weep to see.The lovers of his mind, who sit and speak to him in beautiful words of days sitting under the sun, and call fourth like Ferdinand the beauty of the out of doors. Who spun games with words and beat him at cards, now holding the space for his mind which floats mostly free of this place.
And yes, even the lovers of his old age. Who never knew him when his heart and body were whole or his mind untinged by the beginning encroachment of dementia. Who love his soul, for the way it shines and the way he loved them back.
I have watched them.
As each one connects those final times, in her own unique way.
He was Poly before Poly was a thing.
For him it was only ever love.
Love, overflowing.
