Last month I broke up with D, my partner of two years. It has been among the most difficult things I've ever done, because I still love him dearly, and he is in many ways exactly the person with whom I could settle down. In all our time together, we resolved most disagreements without fighting. Complex plans often came together easily. We traveled well together, literally and figuratively. But now our roads have begun to diverge.

For perhaps half our time together, we have been deliberately non-monogamous. Monogamy has tended to bring out my worst tendencies in relationships - jealousy, dependence, and insecurity. Monogamist models have been very bad for my self-esteem, which has been bad for my love relationships. I've never been jealous of anyone D has been with; I simply think they have great taste. After all, if I had a really great chocolate cake, I'd surely want to share it with folks who would truly appreciate such things, right?

I found it interesting that as it became apparent we had touched and gone our separate ways, people around me told stories about how they knew non-monogamous couples, but they did not last. Their relationships always appeared to somehow fail. I rapidly began to lose patience with such stories, especially from fellow queers, because these dismissals have the same flavor as those of straight people who grimace at broken gay or lesbian relationships as if they can never last, either. The assumption seems to be that our refusal of monogamy prevents the two of us from being life partners.

And perhaps it is, but not necessarily because of jealousy or insecurity, but because under the lens of non-monogamy, we should really reassess what we mean when we talk about "life partners." D will always be a part of my life, but that doesn't mean we have to color-coordinate our "ze" and "hir" handtowels. Unfortunately, we do not have many names to describe our relationship now - something more than friends, and something different than partners. We don't have many road signs to clearly define where our relationship is headed, and that is a scary fact. The up side is we get to become the models we seek. As a queer feminist anarchist transsexual, you'd think I'd be used to traveling relatively unpaved roads by now, but my cigarette bill suggests otherwise.

For a lot of folks practicing non-monogamy, aka polyamory, a book called The Ethical Slut functions as a kind of bible. As soon as I broke up with D, I went to said bible for advice, only to find very little about relationships which break up. Could this be because non-monogamy is just a way to never have to break up a relationship? Perhaps, but I think it's more accurate to think of non-monogamy as a way for us to reconsider intimate relations, and also to reconsider what happens when an intimate relationship changes character. So long as we continue to desire traditional relationship models, informed by heteronormativity, monogamy, and capitalism (amongst other things), we will never see an intimate revolution. The oppressions we re-enact in our bedrooms will manifest themselves in all of our political dealings.

My transsexual body is the place where my intimate revolution begins. I no longer desire my body to work like a "normal"gendered body, so why should I aspire to relationships which work like "normal" relationships? Even while I was with D, terms like boyfriend, girlfriend, sister, brother, husband and wife all seemed inaccurate and inadequate. Like little US flags on the moon, the terms seemed superfluous to the territory, claims staked in a futile attempt to legitimate "us." My love for D, then as now, is not diminished by the fact that we are not boyfriend-girlfriend.

My existentialist side keeps reminding me that regardless of how much I think I am in love, I'm still going to die alone. And since I will, why should I spend the time I do have pining after what I once had when I could be using all of my critical skills - not to mention all the tricks I can do with my tongue - to expand the boundaries of love and partnership to include a whole army of lovers? We are always already alone in this life, and this is the beauty of our struggle - to figure out how we can be fulfilled together, alone.

Sex, Etc.

Michel Foucault wrote, in the The History of Sexuality Volume 1, that Western culture has focused on creating a "Scientia Sexualis" rather than an "Ars Erotica." My oversimplification of this point: we have apparently been more interested in the taxonomy and classification of sex than we have been in the experience of it - the science rather than the art. I have a great personal investment in destroying binary models whenever possible - female and male, teacher and student, apples and oranges - and so it dismays me that I'm the one who has to get off her ass and create an Ars Erotica for all of Western culture, especially since there are still things I apparently do not know, and I believe that the division between the art and science of anything is completely illusory. Nevertheless, here's your Ars Erotica, and if you don't like it, just blame Foucault. Everyone in the university does.