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Urge
Three's company; so is four or five
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[07/17/99]

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Urge
Episode 2: The just-in-time orgasm
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By Tracy Quan
[07/15/99]

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Gaia Consort was a partner duo consisting of a man, a woman, a guitar, and lots of lyrics about polyamory.

"Mama's got a girlfriend, Mama loves the ladies. Daddy has a boyfriend, Daddy is a man's man."

"Papa has a girlfriend, And mama loves her too, And they all have a heart that they can cling to, And we're all happy in a different kind of family."

During the break, I walked outside to call both my new lover and my boyfriend, and reaffirmed to myself that I had something to learn here. Next I had to choose a workshop.

In an effort to be brave, I decided to attend "Loving the Ones You're With and Others, Too: a Puja." First the women were asked to form a circle inside of and facing the men, who were asked to make a circle outside of the women, and facing in. This arrangement allowed for one full quickie rotation of eye-gazing with approximately 50 strangers. Now, moments such as these can be beautiful if you allow yourself to open to universal love, so I tried, but in this particular eye-gazing scenario, I was mostly on the receiving end of universal lust. Not totally, just mostly. To facilitate or rather confuse the already loaded situation, the workshop leader, Sasha, yelled out a different suggestion with each partner switch, such as, "Who's this? Could I be attracted to this person?", or "Show this person your compassion," or "Now show your openness" Yes, I did see openness and compassion, along with loneliness and confusion and quite a bit of horniness, but also total fear and anger from this one guy who seemed like he would have liked to dissect me with a paring knife. At some point Sasha yelled, "Now make an animal sound," so I squeaked like a mouse. I guess I was getting scared.

Then Sasha had to go and instruct us to rub noses. Why, Sasha, why? This is the point where my capacity for universal love became a bit strained. I began to feel like one of Dr. Evil's fembots at an Austin Powers soiree. This, at least, was a better feeling than the one from being the last person chosen for a team in gym class, which was the plight of the unpaired men for the next exercise. This is how at least one of them felt, because he later shared it with the group.

It went on from there, but let it suffice to say that one of the main goals of this workshop, (besides meeting other like-minded souls), was to help people overcome that ugly, self-sabotaging emotion: jealousy. If they can vanquish jealousy then they aspire to "compersion." Compersion is their word for the pleasure of watching your lover having pleasure with someone else. Yes, I have experienced compersion in my own experimental day, and yes, it felt beatific. As a matter of fact, it was probably the most enlightened feeling I've ever enjoyed, but it sure was fleeting. Oh, well. Enough of the workshops. I couldn't wait to get out of there.

The next day I skipped the workshops and met with two members of the Ravenheart family, an open polyamorous group marriage who are among the matriarchs and patriarchs of this embryonic movement. Although I had had my fill of stranger-love, and was beginning to question the validity of organizing polyamorists into a "community," I was happily surprised by this family, who actually seemed like examples of evolved consciousness.

At age 51, Morning Glory Zell Ravenheart is natural, beautiful and sexy -- one of those rare, sweet, voluptuous earth mamas who feels so incredible to hug that something in me silently peeped, "Mommy?!" She coined the term "polyamory" in 1991, defining it as "a peaceful and ethical lovestyle." She calls her own family of five "a conspiracy of hearts' desires," but for the uninitiated it's also something of a mindbender. Here is how it works.

Next page | You don't have to be lovers, but you've got to be friends