I put the "tit" in "competition"

I've developed two new fun games I like to play when I'm out in straight society.

Well, actually three, but one of them is currently in development. I'll still tell you about it, but it takes a bit more involvement than the first two. 

The first game is played by listening to one side of a person's phone conversation and interpreting their half of the conversation in the most sexual way possible. It's especially helpful if you imagine that the person on the other end is being as disgustingly ribald as possible, so the person who's conversation your overhearing is really struggling to keep things rated G because they know you're within earshot. Simple things like, "Yes." "That works for me." "5 today." "Yes." can become incredibly interesting when you think about the other half of the exchange going something like this: "Did you remember not to wear panties today?" (Yes) "I'm going to fuck you until you pass out when you get home today." (That works for me.) "How many times have you jerked off thinking about me?" (5 today.) "You'll give yourself one more orgasm before you get home?" (Yes.)

The second game is called: Guess Who's Really on a Poly Date? This one can be played pretty much anywhere. You never really know if said people are actually on a poly date or not, but it's still fun just for the sake of conjecture. For example, any grouping of people with more than 3 individuals that aren't obviously a family might possibly be 3 adults on a poly date. Maybe it's a couple trying to woo a single. Maybe it's 3 singles all getting together for something freaky. The more people in the group, the more fun the game becomes. This one is a bit of me being excessively optimistic about how many nonmonogamous people there actually are in the world. Mostly the people I imagine on a poly date are actually work colleagues or neighbors or something else equally boring. It's still sort of an amusing game to play.

The third game Now-hubby and I are working on putting together. I call it Platitudes Bingo. The basic gist is I'm going to create a bingo card of the most commonly said things among straight people. For example, there will be squares devoted to "Stereotypes about the opposite gender," "Bragging about sexual exploits," "Remarks about how 'wasted' somebody was," "Sexual shaming," "That one guy who only speaks in Family Guy quotes," and "Did you see that thing on Facebook?" Then, whenever I get a Bingo I'm going to throw glitter all over the person. There was a part of me that wanted to make this a drinking game, but even my liver couldn't handle that amount of abuse.

Work it out

It's taken an incredibly long time for me to get my head around how standard relationships work; I'm still not completely sure I understand them. To be fair, I've never really been in one, so the only basis I have for how they work is friends of mine and portrayals in TV shows/films. Completely second-hand, totally inauthentic experiences. I seriously do not understand how it works beyond these 3 rote steps: 1. Two people meet. 2. Two people decide they want to be "exclusive" with only each other. 3. Perpetual happiness or complete disillusion/dissolution. (I thought of both words, both are appropriate, so just deal with it people.)

I know there has to be other steps in there - phases where the two people discuss things about the relationship. But my friends tend not to tell me about those phases. Mostly because I am an intolerable bitch and am bored by other people's philosophical relationship problems. "But what do you think he meant when he said that?"

TV shows/films don't really focus on "let's talk about our relationship" because that's not cinematically riveting compared to all the other dramatic shit.

Which is not to say that I didn't go through similarly esoteric steps when getting together with Frisbee and Now-hubby. There are a lot of similarities between standard relationships and poly/open/what have you relationships. The big curiosity for me, I guess, is step 2. How people make the decision that one other person will be the only one they touch genitals with for however long the exclusivity winds up lasting. That's just...such an odd idea for me.  

I'd like to take a small moment and reassure everyone, though, that just because my relationship allows me to touch a whole bunch of wieners and have awesome sexy times with lots of interesting people, things are not always sunny. I still need to do all those awkward relationship-y type compromise things with Frisbee and Now-hubby. I strongly recommend the whole "monthly meetings" thing. It's an awesome way to have a regular check-in with each other, although it can't always anticipate every possible scenario.

I was thinking the other day about how people in relationships argue about stupid little things. How the towels get folded, how often the dishes get done, etc. They're menial things, really, but if you've established any kind of life as a single person before getting involved with somebody else, they can feel like an essential part of who you are.

When the possibility of sexual activity and/or relationship attraction to other people gets added in, I find myself falling into those same feelings as finding out somebody likes to fold their pants in half instead of in thirds. 

Sometimes I'll play a game with people I know. It's called "Would you hit that?" It's a simple, "yes/no" type game, and you play it by saying yes or no to whether you would have sex with other people around in the place where you're playing the game. Playing this game with acquaintances can be fun, and a neat way to learn about particular things they might be into that I wasn't aware of previously. 

Play the game with Frisbee or Now-hubby, though, and it's like a fucking land mine field of, "why don't we have more in common in regards to the people we're attracted to?" I once asked my bestie about this phenomenon, and she explained it in the best way that only a bestie can. To paraphrase: I want a transitive property of love. I love this person, therefore they will love all the other things I do as well. It doesn't quite work out like that, and I'm working on being okay with it.

Label Maker

We got into a discussion at work today about person-first language. For anybody unfamiliar with special education or disability awareness, the idea is to always put the person ahead of the diagnosis.
To not focus on the different ability level of the person, but instead emphasize the commonality of personhood. i.e. "A person with Autism" vs. "The autistic person." The former shows person-first language.  (There is great disagreement about Deaf, as it's considered a cultural identifier, especially when it's got the capital D. I tend to default to using both - "A person who's Deaf.") 

One of my most favorite podcasts, Poly Weekly, recently did an episode about being introverted and also polyamorous. It got me thinking about person-first language because the entire episode was chock full of people saying sentences that started like this: "As an introvert..."

Side note: I am completely in love with Capaldi as the new Doctor Who. I keep hoping Frisbee or Now-hubby will start watching it with me and be all, "omg this is fantastic" and then Capaldi can be their Eccelston.

Anyway. Sentences that begin, "As a so-and-so..." are definitely not using person-first language. But my cringe-face goes beyond just that. I have sort of a love/hate relationship with labels. On the one hand, I think they're useful to establish baselines in conversations and give people an idea of where you're coming from when you're talking about a subject. On the other hand, I don't think any label can exist on it's own without at least a bit of discussion i.e. "Oh, that's what you mean when you use the word, 'bisexual.' Here's what I mean when I use that word." Because words are tricky and the human experience is variable. 

My second big problem with labels is that they can sometimes become an easy scape-goat for behavior. Not in the sense that, "I'm making out with this woman because I identify as a lesbian and for me that means I find other women sexually attractive." Whatever people. Get your respective freaks on. You don't need to justify it to me.

I'm not talking about excusing sexual behaviors. I'm talking about scape-goating general personality traits. It sometimes feels as though there has to be a label tacked onto everything; it's not enough to just simply observe that something happened. Something happened because of a particular personality trait or characterization of the people involved. Labels can remove the responsibility to analyze and process one's own behavior. A given event occurs and because of a given personality label the expected given outcome is reached. c follows b which in turn followed a. Nice and easy, lemon squeezy. Life becomes less about thought and more about finding the appropriate noun to stick over all the messy stuff.