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Patients Rights DOA
A bill favored by insurance companies and managed care providers wins in the Senate.
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[07/16/99]

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Spin doctoring
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Urge
Episode 2: The just-in-time orgasm
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[07/15/99]

A thing of beauty
Should we flush our colons or leave them alone?
By Jon Bowen
[07/14/99]

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One chilly Sunday afternoon in Greenwich Village, a dozen and a half people shuffle into a back room of the Cafe Figaro. They're mostly in their 40s and 50s -- earth mothers and fathers in jeans, flannel shirts, bandannas and love beads. It could be a board meeting of Ben & Jerry's, rather than the monthly conclave of the Tri-State Poly discussion group.

Joel Spector, a short, bearded man with a dry wit and leprechaun-ish mien, founded the group in 1994. He's the only one present who lets me use his real name. Joel's married to Christina and involved with Tracey, a married woman from West Virginia whose female lover will soon move in with her and her husband. Marie, a young woman with a black skullcap-like hat and a minister in training, is "married" to Suzanne and involved with Ray. John says he's with several women and is a private investigator, a "freedom freak" and into S&M.

The topic is "What is polyamory?" and it inevitably leads to a critique of monogamy. A woman named Paula -- whose husband George is involved with a woman he met at a Loving More conference -- asserts that "monogamy is fueled by fear and low self-esteem." A late-arriving woman announces, "The way most monogamy is practiced -- with everybody cheating -- is just a dishonest version of polyamory."

In contrast, polys claim that the bedrock of their faith is "radical honesty," and the group discusses how far to take it. Bob, a white-haired, avuncular type, says, "My wife doesn't want to hear the details of my sex life." Others ask: Is she insecure? Is she bored? Bob doesn't know.

The polyphony continues, engaged but mellow -- until I'm asked to identify myself, and the group suddenly turns paranoid and threatens to turn me into fish food. Many want me to leave. Marie questions my journalistic ethics, while Spector (who invited me without telling the others) defends my presence. An uneasy truce is reached -- I have to put my notebook down -- and, afterward, I learn the source of their outrage: a fear of being outed.

They may have good reason, based on a recent court decision in Tennessee. Last December, MTV broadcast a documentary about polyamory and interviewed April and Shane Divilbiss and Chris Littrell, who lived together in a male-female-male triad. April Divilbiss had a 3-year-old child, who was not mentioned on the show. The day after the show aired, the child's paternal grandmother, Donna Olswing, showed a judge a tape of the show and had the child taken into state custody due to the mother's "immoral" lifestyle. The mother is contesting the decision, and Loving More -- with a feeling that the Divilbiss case may be the polyamorists' Stonewall -- has set up a defense fund.

Despite the risk, some polys court publicity in an attempt to promote their cause. Nearing has appeared on daytime talk shows such as Geraldo Rivera's and Sally Jesse Raphael's, only to be castigated. "Geraldo attacked me for being indecent even though he's had a kid out of wedlock and been divorced three times," she says. Raphael blamed polys for the AIDS epidemic.

In the face of such hysteria, most polys stay fairly closeted, which might be just as well; they have enough to do just keeping track. You see, polys devote a LOT of time to what Wolfe calls "processing drama," the often-exhaustive hashing out of relationship mechanics.

A poly family is like marriage squared; the more people involved, the more complex the issues. "Let's say you're in a triad," Nearing posits. "You might get along with persons A and B, but A isn't getting along with B. A might want to spend more time with you than B. B won't like that. All this brings disharmony to your relationship circle, and you have to discuss it." (Don't feel bad if you're confused; to help clarify matters, people such as Nearing have taken to diagramming poly formations that resemble John Madden's depiction of the nickel defense.)

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