IUD

So it's been about a week since getting the ol' IUD. Here is my little list of pros and cons:

Pros:

• Can have unprotected sex with hubby again. Hurrah.
• Will last 10 years
• 99.9% effective
• There is both a hormonal and non-hormonal option, depending on what your circumstances may be. Both are as effective and last as long.
• Cost (this is a tie-breaker with a con - depending on your insurance these can be freaking expensive. I wound up paying about $750 for mine (insurance did not cover). But if you think about it, if you even use it for 5 years that is only about $12 bucks a month, which is about what you'd pay for a box of condoms anyway.)
• Short office visit (whole thing took about 15 minutes to do)
• After first few days, fairly undetectable

Cons:

• Pain. Perhaps this is different for women who have had children before. I don't know. This thing hurt like a motherfucker going in. (For those of you who need an anatomy lesson you can find it here.) My gynecologist explained it would hurt in 3 places - pushing the IUD past the cervix, and then pushing the "arms" into each fallopian tube. In my experience, the fallopian tubes were the worst part. I was told to take 3 ibuprofen both the night before and morning of, as well as a pill (inserted vaginally) that softened my cervix. Getting it past the cervix was mildly uncomfortable, kind of like a slight pinch. Getting the "arms" of the IUD into the fallopian tubes actually made my ass lift off the table and my lungs forget how to breathe; it hurt that much. Afterward, I cramped pretty bad for the next 3 days or so. Sort of like I had been punched in the stomach/had the stomach flu/was having the worst period of my life. All at the same time together.
• Timing. You have to get this done while you are on your period. If you are squeamish at all about the visit from Aunt Flo, it can be awkward.
• Heavier periods in general. I have been told this, haven't actually experienced it. I was on blood thinners for 6 months, and my periods were monstrous. So we'll see how they compare. Stay tuned for what I'm sure will be exciting updates about my menstrual cycle. (Joking.)

Answering questions, Part II

So, I have decided after the previous post that I would like to post a general question to the monogamous population.

Why?

I realize this is severely relevant:

But I am genuinely curious. Also, how?

Why do you have to define each relationship by specific criteria?

Why can you be jealous just because your significant other is talking to another person?

How do you justify every interaction you have vs. the "relationship" that you are in?

There are many more questions, and they tend to increase the drunker I get. I'm just saying. You assholes are the confusing ones.

Answering questions

I went out to lunch yesterday with a group of people that, for the most part, didn't know me. The only context being that I was friends with one of the people that they were also friends with. As one does when meeting new people, you have the perfunctory "getting to know a new person" discussion. i.e. Where is someone from? What do they do for a living? How do they know said mutual acquaintance?

In this case, I knew said mutual acquaintance from a gang bang party. Which...is not really something that people say in polite company, is it? It wasn't the last time I hung out with this particular person. That time I just knew him from "around." (Fabulously awkward and nondescript place, that "around.") He had told me his other friends knew about the parties, but latent trust issues also led me to believe this could possibly be a lie, and so "around" it was.

This time, I kept in mind my resolution to start being more honest about who I am if the situation calls for it. As in, not shaking somebody's hand and saying, "Hello, I am a sort-of polyamorist who is also involved in the kink scene. I am married, but it is an open marriage. Also, I am sexually attracted to all sorts of different genders." That is a bit much. More, if somebody asks a particular question and I have the opportunity to answer it honestly (example: "Where do you know our mutual acquaintance from?"), I am going to do so. This is not a New Years resolution, or even a resolution entirely. I think it's just a type of exposure therapy. Where people who are afraid of snakes use exposure to snakes to get over that fear, I am taking my fear of trusting others and slowly making myself just be honest and try to accept that not everybody will use the information they have on you against you.

So keeping that resolution in mind, I answered the question honestly. Well, I didn't use the word "gang bang," but I did say, "I know him from the parties," which caused the people at the table to make a thoughtful face, and then a sort of, "oooo I get it" face. (This is also part of the resolution - to find a middle-ground somewhere where I am not talking about getting facials from other boyfriends (you know, the kind without scrubbing loofas or cucumbers), but also not just saying that I did "nothing.")

Then come the questions.

This is honestly a part that I don't ever really mind. I realized even before volunteering for the LGBT panel experience in college that "the majority" has questions. Now that I am more of a freelance panelist (i.e. I still live an "alternative" lifestyle, but organizations are not signing me up to come and sit behind a table and field questions, I am just meeting everyday people who have questions), there are still the two main fields of questions. There are the genuine interest questions, à la, "This is different from anything I've heard of/experienced before. Tell me more about it." Then there are the obnoxious, "What you are doing is wrong and I would like to ask you circular logic type questions to try and get you to understand how wrong you are about it." Being a freelance panelist now is nice, because I can politely tell the latter type of question askers to fuck themselves.

Shadows

I was walking home just now, listening to a mix on my iPod made by a special somebody a few years back. (The mix itself was not specifically put on the iPod a few years ago. I believe it was actually on a CD that I then transferred to the iPod. CDs. Oh, what a world.) It was late, so my shadow was everywhere in streetlights as I walked. I have always liked shadows. They are completely monochrome, and physically inconstant.

The "gay" thing

Before we begin, since labels are important to some people, let it be known that I identify as queer for all intents and purposes (one of those "the word doesn't quite fit, but it's there, so I'll use it" sort of thing).

Recently some friends from college visited and we got on the topic of "recruitment," or the idea that scary sexual predators go out into the world and "create" gay people. Also the idea that gayness is somehow something that you can "catch" or "become." I made the joke that a few weekends ago I went to the mall and sneezed and suddenly man-on-man blowjobs just occurred spontaneously all around me. Well, we don't know. Some of those men might have been only bi-curious. Maybe I wasn't carrying the full-on gay bug at that point.

Which brought to mind another one of my favorite arguments to get into with straight people. How "sexualized" Pride parades are. This usually centers around the leather Daddies, or any of the various sparkly men in hot pants. For a little grammatical side argument, I dislike people who use the word "but" as a conjunction unless they are using it in agreement, i.e. "I like chocolate, but peanut butter is also awesome." So whenever somebody says, "I support gay people, but..." I usually just wind up telling them that they either do or they do not. It's the same as saying, "I don't mean to be a bitch, but..." Then don't be a bitch! Just don't say whatever it is you're about to say. Or say it anyway, but don't try to qualify it beforehand like you are little Susie Sweetheart. So when you have to put that conjunction on the end of your sentence, you either support them/us/me/whoever, or you don't.

Anyway. My argument. Pride. Fantastic time of the year. Parades, music, community, etc. That includes all the semi-naked people that are out and about. My main point about Pride is it is one day (well, sometimes a weekend) where we can get out and about and actually express this sexuality. Yes, being gay is about more than just sex. (Speaking of, I threw my shoulder out a few days ago, which you would think my overwhelming lust for other women's vaginas would be able to overcome. Not so. There is life to being gay besides the sex, Virginia.) But being gay is also about the majority of the time not expressing that sexuality. And not seeing that sexuality expressed, or really even ever spoken positively about. So yes, maybe sometimes we go a bit over the top during Pride. Maybe we explode all the glitter and put on all the hot pants and dance to all the techno music. It's only so that come Monday we can go back into our humdrum little lives and continue to tell people about our "roommates" and want to stab our eyes out that the straight people we work around can describe their sexual escapades without anybody having stupid questions about it.

Jealousy

There is a specific human behavior that is a large factor of why I'm open. In short, it is that moment when a very good friend of mine will give me the "speech" about how I can't hang out with them anymore because their "significant other" isn't comfortable with it. This has happened to me whether or not the very good friend and myself have any type of sexual relationship. People enter the "relationship" and then I have to go away.

When I started thinking of how I wanted to conduct my own "relationships," I decided it was bullshit to try and tell the person I was going to be with who they could or could not hang out with. I mean, saying, "hey, that person who has all the human body parts stacked in their freezer? Maybe not the best person to spend your weekends with" is very different than just saying, "that super cool person who you have lots of fun with? They make me feel threatened, and therefore I need them to go away."

That's the first seed of jealousy, isn't it? Not, "you fucked that other person and now I'm angry." More, "you spent some time laughing and smiling with that other person. And that's something that I feel only I should get from you."

Question and answer time

Back in the ol' college days, I participated in a little "question and answer" LGBT group that would go around to other college campuses and basically be a token sample of the LGBT population to answer questions for classes, campus safety presentations, general human resource type stuff. You get the idea. Example, "If I am doing a group project for a class, and get paired with a lesbian, am I allowed to use the word 'dyke' to describe her?" (Blanket answer to that question: no.)

I was the representative "bisexual" member of the group, although I would always get flack for also mentioning the fact that I was in an open relationship. Not just from the question askers, but from the panel members themselves. I was apparently representing a stereotype that was unhelpful and counterproductive to the mission of the panel. Which, in retrospect, was probably more about whether or not Leviticus specifically says men can't stick their penises in other mens' asses (seriously, we got that quoted at us every single time) than about the fact that regardless of sexual preference, you are allowed to be in whatever type of relationship you want, as long as all members of said relationship are consenting adults.

Eventually I stopped mentioning it during panels, and it was the beginning of a mindset that despite already being part of a minority, I was also a minority within that minority. "Don't let anybody know that you're sexually attracted to women. But don't tell anyone you don't play by the monogamous game board."

Polyandry

I've recently decided to start being more honest with people at work. No, this does not mean that when they ask how my weekend went I am saying things like, "awesome! I went to a gang bang on Saturday." It means more that I am finding a happy medium between that and just saying I didn't do much. I will save you all the extremely metaphysical discussions I've been having recently about "authentic self" and just give you the tl;dr version. Things I am doing outside of work are making me excessively happy, and then having to lie by omission about them while at work is sort of making me not as happy, and I have decided that I like being happy more than I like worrying about what people are going to think about me.

All that being said, I've started telling people at work when I spend time with "my other boyfriends." (For any of them that are actually reading this, yes, I know that's a bit more committed than we actually are. Don't worry. I'm not pushing for that terminology. It just happens to be a term I've found that makes straight people's forehead's wrinkle less than things like "fuck buddy" or "friends with benefits" or "guy I occasionally date/have sex with." And since I am also a fan of brevity, I go with what words are already there.)

For example, if I'm sending texts with one of said other boyfriends and somebody asks me what I'm smiling about, I'll say, "oh, just one of my other boyfriends saying something funny." It's a momentary pause where they try to figure out whether I'm being serious or facetious (it's honestly a fine line sometimes with me, I can be quite the smart-ass), but then usually there are no follow-up questions, no awkward "but you're also married! That can't be possible" type discussions. Just, "oh, you have other boyfriends" and then move on. I don't know if it's just the place I work - maybe I'm extremely lucky. Or maybe it's just because I've stopped the bullshit "oh, ermmm...yeah, it's this other guy...uh...I don't know how to explain this" crap and just admitted to myself what it is and am more comfortable talking about it. "I spent time this weekend with one of my other boyfriends. It was awesome." Enough said.