Among Us

This is post 3 in my Coming Out series.

When I first started realizing that I was pan/bi/queer I wanted to write about it immediately.  I process feelings best by putting them down in text, particularly when I am shipping them out to the world.  However, I decided that I shouldn't make a big coming out post until I had actually, you know, had sex with a man.

I should make sure I actually know what I am talking about before I go and make a big scene about it, or so went the thinking at the time.

Trouble is, I started thinking about how I would go about having a first time, and that was stressful and felt bad.  It didn't seem like the right thing to do for some reason.

While I was wrestling with the right way to approach this situation I ended up watching the queer musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch.  When the movie ended I was awash in tears, struggling to contain the emotions swirling within me.  The base emotion was all about the queer men in the show, feeling connected to their story and struggle, feeling their fear and joy.

That base emotion led to a further emotion of tremendous vulnerability.  Now I have a trait that can reduce me to tears effortlessly, and make me weak to attack.  Now I can be more easily hurt, but honestly I am not worried about people coming after me for being queer.  What hit me hardest was that people could use that as a lever against those I protect.  A cornerstone of my identity is myself as guardian of those I love, and the feeling that now I am worse at that because of my vulnerability was a tough thing to cope with.  My loved ones deserve an invincible juggernaut holding the line, not a weepy mess.

I knew this vulnerability existed before, for other people.  I could have described it clearly.  There is a big difference between *knowing* a thing and *feeling* a thing though, no doubt about that.  I have spent my life having so much privilege, and having some of it suddenly vanish was quite a thing to adjust to.

The next feeling in the cascade was a terrible case of impostor syndrome.  Why do I deserve to claim this identity at all?  I haven't actually gone out and had sex with a man, I haven't been discriminated against because of queerness, how can I be having all these feelings when I don't really belong?  I felt like a ridiculous fraud, trying to be in a space I had no business occupying.

This feeling makes no sense logically.  When I was 19 I had never touched a woman in a sexual fashion, but I sure as hell knew I wanted to have sex with Gillian Anderson.  (Scully from the XFiles).  I didn't need to have sex with her to be sure!  I have friends who are bi/pan/queer who have only had sex with one sex/gender and I certainly accept their identity, because you don't have to have sex to have the attraction.  If someone tells me their orientation I accept it, I don't ask for pics as proof.

So why do I have such a harsh standard for myself, when I would never apply it to anyone else?  I know what I want and who I am, and that is all that is required.

Of course I can determine logically that my feelings are irrational, but that isn't exactly a ticket to not having feelings anymore.

What I can do though is decide that I should write a coming out post regardless of what I have or have not touched.  I can proclaim an identity that I couldn't prove in a court of law, but which I know to be valid and true.  I can also just accept that there is no need to rush, no benchmark that must be met.  I can run out and get it on if I want, or I can wait five years for just the right man to show up and rock my world.

I don't know where the path leads, but I am on it, 'qualified' or not.  Here I go. 

Fancy house

Shopping for a house was an enlightening experience.  My internal voice definitely yelled 

CLASSISM!!!

many, many times.  The most obvious culprit, I think, was the letter that we were asked to come up with the first time we put in a bid on a house.  We had only been actively looking for a week when an amazing house came on the market, priced way under its realistic value.  It had a ton of room, a basement I could stand up in with room to spare, and was right next to a subway.  We ended up in a bidding war with another potential buyer, and our agent asked us if we wanted to submit a letter to the owner to try to increase our chance of being accepted.

I have to give my agent credit here.  She made it clear that these letters have problems, and in some areas they are illegal, but she had an obligation to tell us our options.  She sent us some samples, and those samples made me angry and sad at the same time.

All the samples were staged photos with staged stories, all saying the same thing:  We are a conventional, attractive young couple, doing a conventional life, and we are so grateful for the opportunity to bid on your home.  The grovelling was the worst.

If I was being honest my letter would say "My spouse, child, and my girlfriend are moving in together.  We are making an unconventional sort of family that makes us really happy, and I think this house will give us a great place to do that."

Sending exactly the right letter can add significantly to the effective value of your bid.  Sending my honest letter could easily erase my bid entirely.  This is why these letters are not allowed some places, of course, because they often end up enabling bigotry.  White people who own houses preferentially sell to other white people.  Other privilege ends up working the same way, naturally, and since straight, conventional, etc. people own a disproportionate share of the houses, this puts another barrier in the way of people who aren't that.

In the end it didn't matter.  The seller and the buyer discovered that their mothers had the same name,  and that was enough to convince them it was fate, and we didn't get the house.  In the end, that was a good thing, as the house we did get was not as good (mostly because the basement is short), but the location is better and the price was far more manageable.  There was no second bidding war as we were the only bidders the second time around, so we didn't have to do face down the letter thing again.

I can see the angles.  I could have just made up the perfect letter, bought into the classist bullshit, and sold my ass off.  I know how to sell!  I know exactly what lies to tell, should I want to.  Instead, all I wanted to do was to write down "I am offering you a ton of money, take it or leave it, but don't expect me to grovel for your damnable charity, or pretend that your house is going to continue on being a bastion of your values."

When we sold the condo our agent told us that the bidder was a mathie of some sort or other.  My response was "I don't care in the slightest.  Show me the money."  It turns out that I am the sort of person that I want to deal with in real estate.  Who knew?

I am prettier now

Over the last 8 months I got two new tattoos.  They are a lot more obvious than the previous ones as they are located on my forearms, and like my previous arm tattoos they are a set.  This time the set theme is roots and wings.  Here is the first:

The blueberries are on my left arm and they represent my origins.  I have memories of picking blueberries with my family, especially when I climbed up to the rapids on the Kam river above Kakabeka Beach.  Walking across giant exposed hunks of Canadian Shield to find blueberries growing in little dips where the dirt accumulated is a powerful memory of mine, and I did this many times growing up.

We even had special machines my family built to clean and process the blueberries.  After a big berry picking session there would be coolers full of the berries to deal with, and we had specially built berry cleaning tools.  They were basically a ramp to pour the berries down with a bucket at the bottom to catch them.  Halfway down the ramp was a grate the berries would roll over, and a fan blowing through the grate would send all the sticks and leaves flying away, cleaning the berry haul.

The blueberries remind me of where I came from, the people that helped raise me, and the connection to the land and knowledge of nature that I still retain small pieces of.  It is where I came from - the family I was born into.

The other tattoo is where I chose to go.  It is an icosahedron, unfolded from a 3d shape into a 2d map on my arm.  The numbers come from a d20, a standard die used in roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons.  The d20 represents the games I love to play, the unfolding reflects my mathematical training.  I have told people that when I die I want it cut off my arm, folded into a die, stuffed, and put on a mantle somewhere.  Perhaps it can be rolled when a particular important skill check needs to be made, or when ogres attack.

The colours on this tattoo are a representation of the people who now surround me.  I am quite straight, unfortunately (I recognize that being queer is a struggle, but I have had a few exciting offers, and if I was bi I could have taken full advantage!) but there is a lot of queer in my house, and I wanted to have something on my body showing my support and solidarity.  In particular I wanted to send a message to Pinkie Pie that cannot be mistaken - I will put my effort and attention (and fury, should it ever come to that) into taking care of them no matter where on the rainbow they end up.

The rainbow d20 reminds me of what I have decided to do, the skills I have honed, and the family I have chosen.

A few things to say

I haven't blogged in quite a while.  I have mostly felt like there isn't much to say that isn't already being said better somewhere else - unless I spend a tremendous amount of time on a thing I might as well just post a link to someone who already wrote something similar but better.

However, my life recently underwent a huge change and during the change I found a lot of things that made me want to rant about classism, so to the internet I go!  I have a couple of posts I want to make, firstly just talking about what is up with me right now, and then the rants will follow.  I have no idea if this will mean I generally continue to blog or not.

I bought a house!  I am now living on the Danforth in Toronto, right near Pape subway station, on a quiet side street.  It is hard to take a good picture of it because of the cars and trees in front, but here it is:

There are many complicated feelings about the house.  I love what it is, and I think it will be a grand place for my family.  However, I have feelings about sustainability and good urban planning that put a damper on the celebrations.  In big cities having people all live in single family dwellings is a problem.  I would have preferred a large condo instead of a house.  Unfortunately there was simply no condo available that would work for us because people don't build big condos for families - they are built for couples/singles.  I needed 4 bedrooms, and that is a tall order for a condo.

The second big change, definitely related to the first, is that my family changed.  The Flautist moved in to the house with me, Wendy, and Pinkie Pie.  I have been polyamorous for ten years now, but my living situation always looked conventional, and now it doesn't.  That makes things complicated, because now when I meet the neighbours or Rogers installers they assume that The Flautist is my daughter.  This has led to some awkward (and sometimes hilarious) moments.

We were all happy to be building a new family, but it is complicated.  Other people have questions, and we have to thread the needle between being open and informative, and stonewalling questions that are invasive.  It isn't always easy to determine which category a given question belongs in.

I like my new life.  Houses are SO MUCH WORK though.  I don't know how I will ever get through my jobs.

Algorithms for horny middle aged men

Facebook has been sending me friend suggestions for lots of 20 something women.  It also sends me friend suggestions for other types of people, but I noticed many months ago that this demographic made up a big chunk of my suggestions so I paid close attention to see if it continued.  After monitoring it for a half year or so I can safely say that 75% of my friend suggestions are adult women much younger than me.  A few were sex workers or scammers, but the majority of them were real people with one or two friends in common with me.  

Facebook's motivation for doing this seems obvious; get the middle aged straight guy to click on profiles of young women he wants to have sex with and increase engagement metrics.  However, that might be me leaping to conclusions.  Maybe Facebook just sends young women to everyone in friend suggestions... I don't know.

If my initial assumption holds true, then it is a sad thing indeed.  Getting messaged and friended by some older man who just wants sex is not something younger women on social media want or need.  They can get an infinite supply of that trivially, if they are interested - they can even get paid.  It seems like Facebook is trying to get me to engage more by encouraging crappy behaviour.

However, I would like to be sure that this is what is happening.  The four things that leap out to me that may be relevant are age, gender, sexual orientation, and relationship style.  Is this limited to men, middle aged people, straight people, or polyamorous people?  Perhaps some combination of all of the above.  Certainly Facebook knows I am in a relationship with a woman who is nine years younger than me as well as my spouse and perhaps that influences the algorithm's choices.

I would appreciate anyone replying here or on Facebook with your experiences in this.  Ideally include age, gender, orientation, and polyamorous or not, but if you don't want to include any of that just knowing if you have similar experiences to me would be useful.

I must find out the nature of our code overlords, and what they want they think of me.

Learning from disaster

The ongoing crisis has taught me some things.  While I hang out at home a lot, I apparently chafe at the requirement of staying home.  I suppose that isn't unusual, but present circumstances certainly bring it into stark relief.  I also discovered that while I support substantial restrictions on our collective behaviour to combat covid-19, some of them really grind on me.

Throughout my life a lot of things I try to do have been criticized by people under the umbrella of 'safety'.  Going barefoot, you can't do that because safety!  Polyamory, you can't do that, because safety!  Marijuana, you can't use that, because safety!

My usual response to this is to bristle with indignation and then swing back, hard.  I tend to go on about how those same people yelling about safety happily support all kinds of things that are drastically more dangerous, and argue that their real issue with my behaviour is simply that I am doing something different than they are used to, but they fall back on 'safety' when they have no real arguments.

Sometimes I don't have time for debating the topic and my response boils down to

FUCK YOU I DO WHAT I WANT.

It turns out the restrictions on behaviour because of Covid-19 push my buttons because of this.  I agree that I should stay at home, and I agree that we must endure inconvenience to make grocery shopping less likely to transmit diseases, and I agree with most the things we are doing.

But damn when authorities tell me how to live because 'safety' my instinct is to snarl and tell them to get bent.

Even though those arguments from safety are well grounded these days I have gotten so used to safety being thrown around as a catch all for 'I have no actual reasons or data' that it really winds me up.

This came up in regards to grocery store population caps.  Recently I was really grumpy after a grocery store visit where the security person enforcing store population sat on his phone ignoring everything and occasionally looked up and motioned a random bunch of people into the grocery store.  The cashiers were standing around bored because the security guard wasn't keeping enough people in the store, and the people waiting in the enormous line were standing close together, often chatting with one another.  Keeping us all in line was simply increasing the danger to all of us, not just wasting our time but also *increasing* our risk. 

It bothers me to restrict people's behaviour for no gain, but it *really* burns my bridge when regulations in the name of safety actually make things worse.  It is a tough thing to argue though, because I actually support greater safety measures that are effective, and if I argue against restrictions people will naturally assume I am in denial of some kind, or that I buy into the 'let all the old people die to save the stock market' thing.

While I don't think I will come out of this mess with new skills, I suspect I will end up at least learning a few things about myself.

To cheat, or not

I recently joined a facebook group called polyamory memes.  Mostly it is a bunch of people sharing meme pictures about how the world doesn't understand their relationships.  I get it, but I am ruthless about pruning my facebook feed until only the best stuff remains, so I will probably leave the group again shortly.

Today though there was a post there which got me thinking.

“Watching porn isn’t chea-“

Cheating is anything against the rules those in the relationship agreed to. In some relationships, porn is cheating. In some relationships, getting triple penetrated by strangers in a truck stop bathroom is totally ok.

The dishonesty and disrespect for your partner’s boundaries is what defines cheating. Not a list of actions."

Obviously the comments were a mess of people arguing for and against this position.  I think that this particular disagreement, like many disagreements, quickly falls apart once you correctly unpack the details.

People can have whatever agreements they want.  Certainly if you and your partner agree that watching porn is cheating, then for you, it is.  Fine.  Most of the time this is done for ridiculous reasons that reinforce sex negative cultural norms, but some people obviously have fair reasons for this sort of restriction.  Personally I would laugh at anyone who planned on policing my porn watching or masturbatory habits, but you do you.

The key is that when people say porn isn't cheating, they aren't generally talking about a relationship where one person lays out early that they have huge issues with porn, and can't abide a partner that watches it.  When people say porn isn't cheating, they mean that it shouldn't be taken as automatically cheating in the absence of a specific discussion on the matter.  Mostly the exact details of what constitutes cheating in a given relationship are never discussed.  Both people assume that the 'triple penetration in a truck stop by total strangers' scenario would be cheating, and that having sexual thoughts about someone other than your partner is not cheating, but many of the details in between are undefined.

'Watching porn isn't cheating' is designed for the situation where two people get together, don't talk about their expectations or limits, become exclusive, and then get to arguing about what their agreements should have been, long after those agreements were already in place.  In that situation people should not assume that porn is cheating - you have to define that specifically.  You should not, three years into an exclusive relatinship, tell your partner that by the way, you define porn as cheating, and if they watch it, they are cheating.  You have to get that kind of thing on the table right away.

Of course we should get all of our stuff on the table in a hurry.  We should discuss monogamy or not, kink or not, 24/7 D/s or not, tickling feet or not, and all the other dealbreakers we have before anybody commits to a relatinship in a serious way.  

What we should be saying, rather than 'Watching porn isn't cheating' is 'No one gets to claim their partner is cheating or otherwise violating their trust just for watching porn unless that person agreed not to and violated that agreement.'  

It is absurd and destructive to decide that your personal relationship boundaries are going to be written simply by following cultural norms.  You can do better than that!  But if you are going to follow cultural norms and refuse to think for yourself, then don't go into a relationship and assume you can use that as leverage to prevent a partner from watching porn unless you get their enthusiastic buy in at the start.  (Even if you do get said buy in, get ready to be disappointed when they break that rule anyway.)

In the absence of a detailed discussion, porn should not be assumed to be cheating.  You should have that detailed discussion though, no matter what your expectations are.  If you then prohibit your partner from cheating and they accept that, ethically you are in a fine place, but you should definitely plan on what to do when they go ahead and break that rule anyhow.

Lastly, if you are going to rail against something on the internet, try not to strawman quite so hard, mkay?

Ratchet up the intolerance

Recently I stumbled upon a fascinating little bit of writing that got me riled up about relationship anarchy.  The piece I read is a summary of things that happened at a relationship anarchy conference.  For years I have identified myself as polyamorous, and while that is still technically correct, it isn't the best possible descriptor of how I view relationships.  Relationship anarchy is definitely a better box for me to be in.  Polyamory, in the sense of multiple loves, is definitely true... but it also doesn't cover just how much I want to change the way people do relationships.

I don't buy into everything the document says.  The writers have lots of views on economics that can be charitably viewed as highly optimistic, or realistically viewed as naive and absurd.  However, their views on the way monogamy is intertwined with consumerism, colonialism, and religious oppression are right on the mark.

As the years have gone by my attitude towards monogamy has continually shifted.  Initially I saw it as the only way to be, then as the most practical way to be, then as the easy default.  Eventually I stopped doing monogamy and I saw it as not my style, then as a troublesome concern, then as a disaster.  These days I largely see monogamy as simply wrong.

Don't misunderstand - I don't think anybody needs to love or have sex with lots of people.  Any number of partners is fine, from zero to all.  The problem is forcing someone else to have a specific number of partners.  The older I get the more angry and intolerant I get of doing that to anyone.

I have said it before and I will probably say it again - if you told someone they were not allowed to have other friends, or other relatives, or other people that have any sort of relationship, you would be widely viewed as abusive, delusional, evil, or all three.  The same would be true if a friend insisted that they had the right to dictate how many romantic/sexual partners you have.  Certainly people would agree that such demands should be ignored.  But society does the opposite for romantic/sexual relationships, for no good reason.  We by default grant one person power that nobody should have, and imagine that it is not only acceptable, but even necessary or virtuous.

There are reasons monogamy is so popular.  It is because the *&$@?* christian churches controlled Europe while Europe colonized and controlled most of the world.  The church wanted to make sure that the only way people could relate romantically or sexually was with one man owning one woman in a structure *controlled by the church*, and its influence on powerful states covered the world in a wretched pall, removing freedom and flexibility in pursuit of misogynistic ownership of humans.

That isn't a good reason.

Pushing back against this is fraught with issues.  There are all kinds of people I like who are monogamous, and I risk alienating them when I rant against their lifestyle choices.

But that worry is losing out to the worry that I might be wasting my opportunity to do the right thing.  I might be placating the monster when I ought to be taking up arms against it.  I have 45 years left in me, roughly speaking, and I don't want to get to the end of that and look back thinking that I didn't speak the truth.

I don't usually like the plans the anarchists come up with.  I do like their principles though, and placidly plodding along, accepting the status quo as inevitable though not ideal does not fit with those principles.

There are people out there who are going to be smacking their foreheads, thinking "Geez, he is going to get even more confrontational and nonconformist?" 

Yes.  Yes I am.

Poly Queer Love Ballad

This past weekend I went to a show called Poly Queer Love Ballad.  It is a two person play about a monogamous lesbian musician, a bisexual, polyamorous female poet, and their attempt at a relationship.

The basic idea is these two characters have a powerful, immediate attraction and try to start a relationship.  The central conflict is the the struggle with exclusivity - the polyamorous woman will not be exclusive, so the monogamous woman tries to cope with an open relationship.

I liked the show a lot.  The actors absolutely sold it, and the writing was obviously done by someone familiar with the poetry, music, polyamorous, and lesbian subcultures.  All the bits fit.

I struggled some with the way the relationship went though.  The characters made lots of foolish, disastrous decisions that made poly relationships look pretty messy, if you are a person who isn't particularly familiar with them.

That shouldn't be taken as a criticism though.  In shows people make stupid decisions of all kinds.  That is fundamental to storytelling - people creating problems through poor choices, and then trying to cope with those problems.  It is tough to watch though when you consider yourself an advocate for the thing that is being screwed up so badly.  I try to educate people about the options available in nonmonogamy and watching people do all the normal things that people do wrong makes me shudder.

Fundamentally the characters had an incompatibility that they couldn't resolve - they wanted different relationship styles.  They tried a bunch of strategies and rules that were doomed to failure, and eventually failure arrived, as it was always going to do.

The story felt real.  The results were predictable, but not in a bad way.  It wasn't about 'will this relationship last forever?' but rather 'how exactly will this relationship go?' and I am on board with that.  I love that poly relationships are out there in media and this one was a fair representation.

I want more than fair!

But if you are making art you have to make the art, not just do some pure advocacy thing.  Just its existence needs to be advocacy enough.

But damn I sure went "Aaargh.  No, don't do it!  Not like this!" in my head a LOT during that show.

A big meeting

This Christmas The Flautist is going up to spend four days with my parents along with me, Wendy, and Pinkie Pie for the first time.  Having my girlfriend and wife both be part of family holidays is a thing I have wanted for a long time.  It is partly that I want that to be a normal and accepted thing to do, but this isn't just a move for the sake of advocacy; I actually think that everyone will have a good time together and get along well.

I know a number of people in nonstandard relationships who have tried this sort of thing and usually it has not gone well.  Mostly this was due simply to family members refusing to acknowledge or respect the relationships in question rather than any real incompatibility.  I don't think this is likely to be an issue for me though as my family ranges from wholly supportive to uncertain and concerned, but I expect everyone to conclude that the best thing to do is just grin and carry on.

After all, they all know that telling me not to do this is going to accomplish exactly nothing aside from making me grumpy, so might as well just accept it.  My parents have never made even the slightest attempt to control who I am involved with and I don't expect that to change now that I am on the latter side of 40!  This is something I really appreciate, as even though they noticed that Wendy was a great fit for me long before I did they said nothing and waited for me to figure it out.

I will never forget when I told them "So, yeah, Wendy, who I am renting a room from, and who just got divorced two months ago... she and I are dating now, while her ex husband, my buddy, is also living in the same house."  I figured I was going to get a lecture, and instead the reply was "What took you so long?" 

The funniest bit so far was when I mentioned this to a friend and she asked why I would do this at all.  I started explaining about poly dynamics and treating partners well and she cut me off with "No, no, I get that, but why would you inflict your family on someone you like?"

I actually like both my girlfriend *and* my family!  I enjoy family Christmas!  I guess this is not something everyone assumes is true.

Honestly I think the trickiest part is just going to be food.  The Flautist is a vegetarian with gluten intolerance, and that means that 90% of the meals at my parents' place won't work.  It is going to take a bit of adjustment, no doubt about that.

Really though, if the hardest part of the whole thing is that I have to cook a lot to make sure the meals all work for everyone, that is a pretty small challenge to overcome, all things considered.

Not made of steel, apparently

10 days ago I was working out in the gym and I damaged myself.  Weight lifting is a pretty safe exercise regimen, assuming you don't do anything really foolish, but I managed to injure my body anyway.  The exercise that got me?  Leg raises.

I have done thousands of leg raises at this machine, but 10 days ago I got distracted or something and brought my feet up wrong, catching the left one on the little metal peg you see in the picture.  It hurt pretty bad at the time but I kept on with my routine and finished everything just fine.  That night I was moving around on crutches, it was swollen 3 cm above usual size, and I was in agony.  But over the next couple of days it seemed to get better so I figured on just waiting till it healed.  I could stand on the balls of my feet easily enough, so I was confident it was only a terrible bruise, not a bone break.

That discolouration you see is all bruising, no dirt or bad lighting.  This photo was taken a week after the damage, and I was still limping around really bad and feeling a lot of pain.  It was bad enough that I even skipped out on helping Naked Man move furniture - and it takes quite a bit of damage to keep me from honouring a commitment to move a heavy object.

I was on course to just ignore it but Wendy and The Flautist were not on board with that.  They both kept fussing at me to go to the doctor, and while I wasn't into that plan, eventually I succumbed to the pressure and went in.  I got an xray, and lo and behold I was right and it is purely meat damage.  The only cure is to take it easy and wait.

So now I am sitting around home all day waiting for my stupid foot to fix itself.  I have managed, so far at least, to avoid saying "I told you so!" directly to either Wendy or the Flautist, but I did decide to crow about it on the internet.

I have spent many years imagining what getting doubled teamed by my wife and my girlfriend on my birthday would be like.  Those dreams didn't include quite so much "Book a doctor's appointment you doorknob, you aren't actually made of steel." or "Sit down and let somebody else do that, or you are never going to get better."  and instead had .... other characteristics.  This, I think, is a great example of polyamory as it actually is, instead of how people think it is.  Outsiders mostly seem to think it is about nonstop orgies, when mostly it is just about coping with the random junk life throws in your way, just like it is for everybody else.

Is it just me?

In my experience dating various people while being polyamorous I have found meeting metamours to be a challenge.  (Metamours being people who are dating someone I am dating.)  In the early going there were a couple of times that I definitely felt intimidated by a metamour, but only prior to actually meeting them.  The millionaire pilot who was also taller than me was a stand out example of this - I never actually met him, but I felt that insecurity, no doubt about it.

But every time I have met someone I always ended up feeling a sense of comfort and relief upon realizing that this isn't some superhero, just a person.  Someone who has strong points and weaknesses, stuff that is pretty and stuff that is not.  No need to be worried!

When people have met me in this situation though there has been a consistent reaction including some combination of insecurity, jealousy, and fear.  I have been mulling it over the past little while and I just don't know if this sort of thing is universal, mostly just among straight / bi guys, or if it is particular to me.

In theory people don't need to treat this like a competition.  I have lots of friends of widely varying looks, skills, attitudes, and personalities.  There is no need for a friend of mine to be worried about me meeting a new better friend and leaving them behind!  Romantic or sexual relationships could be just the same... but they don't generally seem to be.  I blame culture, mostly, and our instinctive reactions that treat attraction like it exists in a environment of scarcity rather than abundance.

I don't have the experience to judge if this sort of thing pans out the same way amongst women or nonbinary people.  That isn't my life!  My guess is that it is worse among men, in large part because of the way online dating works these days, with women bombarded with offers and men desperately seeking any response at all.  I don't have data to back that hunch though.

I also can't tell how much of it is me, or even what parts of me might be contributing to other people's struggles.  It is easy to see how you could describe me in ways that would contribute to insecurity - "Hey, I am dating a new guy, he is a tall, musclebound weightlifter who studied math in university and designs his own games.  Also he has the sex drive and self confidence normally associated with mythological deities!"  That is a recipe for creating insecurity, and while it does not paint a really accurate picture, it is close enough to the truth to be a problem.

A significant part of it is the emphasis that men place on height and strength, I think.  It doesn't even have to be conscious to be there, a deep primal worry that if you get in a fight with this person, they will crush you.  Tell people that this is a silly thing to worry about all you want, it won't stop them thinking about it.  Thing is, I know that size matters in the creation of insecurity and jealousy, but I don't know how much it actually affects the final outcome.  Do people just find something to be insecure about, no matter how innocuous the person they are considering?

My guess is that insecurity, worry, and jealousy before meeting or at an early meeting is worse among men than among non men, and I further guess that it is worst among straight men.  Also me being big probably makes that even more so in my specific case.  But there isn't anything I can do about it, really.  I already don't have any intention of stealing anybody from anybody, but that rational assessment has jack to do with how people end up feeling.  I wish I didn't create such feelings in other people, but there is no way to achieve that.

A lot may just come down to feeling like you are enough.  If you feel that, truly believe it, you have little to fear.  Even if a person decides they aren't going to be around you any more, there are other people.  Life goes on.

If you don't think you are enough, then you are probably doomed to be insecure no matter what sort of people are involved, and there is no way I can make you feel like you are enough.

I don't want to be different - I am fine with the way I am.  I do wish though that I didn't create these unpleasant waves in the world around me just by existing. 

A good role model

I struggle sometimes with talking about polyamory and relationship anarchy when they happen to be combined with problems I have.  When you are part of a marginalized group there is tremendous pressure to present the best possible face to the world, to convince them that there is nothing wrong with you.  When a monogamous person says they are sad because of a breakup, for example, they have no worries at all that people will say "Well, this is what you get when you are monogamous.  Your own fault, really."  People in other relationship structures hear this kind of thing all the time, because people love to find excuses to punish those who do not conform.

The same sort of thing applies to all kinds of people, of course.  Disabled people, queer people, the list goes on.  The pressure to provide a 'perfect' front so as to avoid criticism is real.

I read a blog post today by a well known poly blogger talking about this subject as it relates to their struggles with anxiety.  I liked it because it felt like it mirrored my own experience with being told that I have to shut up because telling my truth in my own space was somehow dangerous to other people.  Really it is just dangerous to the current social order but quite frankly the current social order can use some shaking up so that is an upside to me, not a downside.

When I am pushed to shut up, to hide, to lie, to cover up, it makes me furious.  Director is willing to blend, to bend, to accommodate, but Passion lights up with incandescent rage at the idea.  When I am asked to stop talking to spare other people's feelings about my life Passion just wants to paint my words on the side of a skyscraper instead.  You don't like reading about my life?  Then don't.  You want me to shove myself into a corner so my life is more acceptable to you?  Get used to disappointment or leave, either way.

I am lucky though.  I have tons of privilege so people are mostly not willing to have that fight with me.  Also the people in my life are largely aware that trying to control me like that will lead to nothing good so they generally don't bother.

It is good to read about other people in the same situation.  It helps provide some extra certainty that I am doing the right thing, and some days I need that.

A sad song

I broke up with The Flautist recently.  I haven't been blogging much here in part because that has been occupying my mind a lot and I wasn't sure how to talk about it.  It is difficult and sad, but it was the right thing to do for me.  I have some guilt, for sure, about the hurt I am causing.  Despite that though, not doing so would just make a bigger mess for later, so I won't do that.

A challenge has been the way I think about breakups.  I often say that people don't change, and you shouldn't be in a relationship expecting them to.  Accept that how they are is how they will be.  That isn't exactly true, of course, as people do change.  But if they generally changed for the better, then old people would be paragons in relationships.  They would fulfill their partners and communicate flawlessly and make it all wonderful.  We all know that old people are bad at relationships the same way that young people are though, so clearly there isn't a big trend towards improvement.  While partners may change, they will as likely change in ways you don't like as ways you do.

This way of thinking creates its own problems.  I don't yell and scream and demand my partner do things differently.  I say what I want and how I feel, but it isn't a big mess.  That is usually appreciated, but it can fail to get my message across when I really don't like something.  I can't be in a relationship that requires me to have emotional explosions to communicate how I feel, but when many or even most people are used to communicating that way, my messages get lost.  If my partner is doing things that hurt me, I either decide I can deal with it, or I leave.  No explosions or ultimatums.  Not my style.

I am really not interested in assigning blame.  I find that many people love to hate their exes, and I don't hate any of mine.  My attitudes range from fondness (even love) to indifference, but no anger is to be found.  Surely there is fault in everyone, no one is without error, and trying to cast all the blame on one person (whether or not it is yourself, or the other person) is usually just a sign of insecurity, not reflective of fact.

I prefer to think of it like this:  It was good.  Until it wasn't.  And now that it isn't good any more, it is time to be away from it.  That doesn't mean the relationship can never be rekindled, but it does mean at a minimum that space apart is needed to approach a new beginning cleanly.

There is one particular song that speaks powerfully to me when I am feeling this way:

Falseness

The messages our culture sends about female sexuality are a mess.  In large part they are completely wrong, and they almost universally assume that our cultural norms are universal instead of arbitrary.  For example, the idea that straight women just want a man who is a good provider, steady, and reliable while straight men want a woman who is young and attractive is wildly off base.  Women aren't really in it for the sex, we often hear, they just put up with the sex in order to get the other benefits of relationships like security and support.

I bought into these stereotypes when I was young.  They came cloaked in 'science' and a Darwinian understanding of nature.

But then I had sex with a bunch of women, and talked with a bunch of women, and noted that these stereotypes did not well explain the women who were desperately horny, the women who had male partners who weren't interested in sex, and the women who wanted all kinds of wild, kinky sexy stuff that had nothing to do with safety or sustenance.

Plenty of women want sex, (though obviously some do not, which is true of any and all genders) and the myth that women are mostly asexual is just another consequence of patriarchy.

I read Untrue recently and it ably covered the reasons to think that women's sexuality is wildly misunderstood, and happily smashed most of the standard stereotypes to bits.

Wednesday Martin attacks the issue from multiple angles.  She includes lots of science and interviews with experts to bolster her credentials but also talks about her personal experiences with infidelity and desire.  She goes to polyamory conferences to discuss open relationships, attends sex parties for mostly straight women who want to try out sex with women, and otherwise pushes her own boundaries surrounding her monogamous commitment to her husband.

One of the core theories in the book is the idea that the plough and how its development and use affected women's sexual liberation and general autonomy.  It turns out that societies that used ploughs relegated women to a much lower status that societies that did not, probably because of the high upper body strength requirements and issues with child rearing that came along with use of the plough.  The issue is probably more complicated than Martin makes it out to be, but I completely buy into the general thesis that specific styles of agriculture changed society in ways that were bad for women and the problems that those styles of agriculture created remain tenacious to this day.

If you are interested in understanding the history of women's sexuality and examining what science tells us about it, I highly recommend this book.  It is accessible and easy to read while be well researched and informative.  I like the line it walks between trying to be fun and provocative while being strict about the truth.

There is one thing that bothered me though, and it isn't specific to Untrue.  So often in conversations about relationships and sexuality people seem desperate to bring primate behaviour into the mix.  We seem to need to talk about bonobos and their orgies, bisexuality, and promiscuity to justify such behaviours in humans.  A large part of Untrue is dedicated to studies of primate behaviour that strongly support the idea that female sexuality in other species is NOT passive, straight, monogamous, or secondary to male sexuality.  However, this whole thing about primates is just a diversion from the key facts:

1.  Humans having relationship structures that aren't straight, monogamous, or vanilla isn't a problem for other people.

2.  People doing stuff that isn't a problem for other people should be left to do their stuff without interference or harassment.

We don't need to justify our relationships or sexuality by proving it is 'natural' because other primates do it.  We don't need to prove that we aren't the only species that wants to do all these things, because even if we were the only species that had orgies or queer sexualities it would still be fine for us to do it.

If some fool tries to tell people that women shouldn't be promiscuous because females don't do that in nature you can be all scientific and tell them 'LOL wrong!' or you can just circumvent that argument entirely and say 'so the fuck what?'  It is false, but even if it were true it wouldn't be relevant.

It is all well and good to study primates, but let us not think that we need primate behaviour to tell us how we ought to treat one another, or what the range of acceptable human behaviour should be.

The luckiest man alive

At a wedding this past weekend I had some interesting times trying to explain my relationships to people.  You see, I took my girlfriend to my wife's exhusband's wedding.  Like a lot of my current relationship status it makes perfect sense when you look at how it came about, but the one sentence summary boggles people's minds.

I ended up talking about that with a couple of different people at the wedding and I got the usual sorts of reactions.  Some assumed they had misheard and couldn't believe what was going on.  Some pretended to be okay with it but had no idea what to say.  Others leapt to conclusions that just aren't true.  The last one decided I must be some kind of superhero with magical powers of seduction.

The reactions to my polyamorous relationship web are massively charged with gendered assumptions.  People don't suddenly think "Wow, Sky's wife and girlfriend and other lovers are super lucky!"  They always leap to "Wow, Sky is the luckiest bastard alive!"  I can only assume a lot of them are assuming I have done something nefarious to manage to be in this situation.  What they don't do is assume that the other people I am involved with have much in the way of agency, or that they get anything out of it.

It just always seems to revolve around the expectation that the men involved in open relationships finally get to bang whoever they like, and the women put up with it for some inexplicable reason.  Obviously this stuff comes from common social assumptions about men and women, it isn't a mystery, but every time it smacks me in the face I get grumpy and try to push back against it.  I know lots of women who are in relationships where they want all the sex and their partners do not, and they struggle mightily with their desires to have more partners or more variety.  The baseline cultural assumption that they *don't* want those things also makes it extra hard.

The reaction that an open relationship is a windfall for me but a burden to the women I am involved with at the moment makes me angry.  It takes away agency from them and makes me out to be someone who is just taking advantage.  It puts me at the centre of it all, and my partners on the periphery.

I want my relationships, no matter the structure, to be something that works for everyone and makes all the participants happy.  It is important to me that the way I structure how I live is desired for everyone, not a burden to be borne because of the inevitability of my wandering eye.

I don't want to be seen as that lucky bastard who sold a bunch of women into grudging acceptance of his unending lust.  I want to be seen as a guy who works hard to make his relationships bring happiness to everyone involved, no matter if that means being conventional or not.

Just one more reason to storm the barricades yelling "Down with the patriarchy!" as if I needed more reasons for that.

Like a shoe

This past summer I had my first experience of having sex with a male.  I had big plans for a blog post after the experiment, figuring I could talk about how much or how little the label bisexual applied to me now.  How bi am I? seemed like an appropriate title.

The answer to the question is:  Basically not at all.

Afterwards I described the experience as being similar to having had sex with a shoe.  I don't personally eroticize shoes at all, they are just an object, and this was similar.  It wasn't horrifying or bad, and no internalized homophobia manifested.  It just didn't do it for me.

This should not be read as though anything said male partners did was wrong.  Honestly the experience for me had little to do with what they did, because the physical sensations were perfectly good and expected.  I don't think of them as objects in other ways, but as far as sex with me goes, the magic thing that normally happens just wasn't there, in the same way it wouldn't be there with any other thing I don't eroticize, like say my own hand.  Apparently I have a strict hierarchy of experiences:  On top is sex with females, then masturbation, then sex with males.  Masturbation is superior to sex with males because I can quit when I want and I don't need to be concerned with anyone else's needs, which is convenient, though it does sound ruthless and selfish.

It turns out that all my years of double takes at exposed cleavage and open mouthed awe at wide, curvy hips really did indicate that female bodies are the thing that launch my boat.  I wasn't really doubting that, but I figured there might be a little bit more flexibility in my orientation if I gave it a try, and now having tried it I am forced to conclude that I am really quite straight.  Heteroflexible is a reasonable term since it would be fine if I had sex with a male, but I don't see much reason to pursue that.

All of which is too bad because I really liked the idea of being bisexual.  I know it is hard for lots of people and there is plenty of bigotry out there, but given who I am and how my life is I expect it would be an upgrade for me.  Turns out, that ain't happening.

I am glad to have given this a try though.  Learning is fun!

One odd consequence of this is that I cannot legally donate blood in Canada now.  Men who have had sex with men are banned from doing that.  That rule goes away after one year, presuming I stop having sex with men completely.  It is perfectly safe though if I have lots of sex with lots of women... or so goes the theory.  I haven't ever donated blood anyway, (which I should have done, really) but this ruleset is still troubling to me.

Not a word of a lie

I often end up thinking about when people have an obligation to disclose information to others about relationships.  This is a thing that comes up with non monogamous dating from time to time - when you first start seeing someone, when do you have a moral obligation to tell them you are already involved with other people?

I have gotten myself into some real arguments about this.  The crux of the matter seems to be what people are entitled to assume.  Most people assume that anyone they date is monogamous, and statistically speaking that is reasonable.  Statistically speaking you should also assume they will cheat on you, but people tend to gloss over this and look at idealized behaviour. 

However, it isn't reasonable to put the entire burden of coming out on marginalized people.  Saying that all the monogamous people are allowed to assume everyone is like them and that everyone else must immediately disclose puts extra problems in the hands of people who already face discrimination, and that isn't fair or good.  It also helps entrench cultural norms further and I think that is a definite negative.  Of course people need to be honest with their answers, and be open, but I think everyone will be far better off if we establish a baseline that you have to ask questions yourself if the answers are important, rather than just assuming things are the way you want them to be.

There are lots of questions like this.  For example, in Savage Love this week there was a dude asking about his obligations in a complex situation.  He is in a dom/sub arrangement where his girlfriend is allowed to have sex with other people, but only when he commands her to go and do so.  She comes back and tells him about the encounters afterwards, and they both enjoy this dynamic.  Do the two of them have an obligation to tell people that this is what is going on when she goes out and has a hookup?

I don't think they have a moral obligation to disclose.  They tell people she is involved with others, but not the details of their arrangement, and that seems like a fine compromise.  I imagine there are lots of people out there who would be horrified that someone they are dating has to ask permission to have sex with them, but I don't think they are entitled to that information before they say yes.  They are certainly entitled to the truth if they ask 'so, what is the deal with you and your boyfriend?' but without an ask that information is sufficiently out of their circle that they shouldn't expect it to be volunteered.

Kink is kind of like being in an open relationship in a lot of ways.  Telling random people about it is a real risk, and so it isn't appropriate to expect everyone in such a situation to be obligated to talk about it constantly just so it can be more comfortable for the 'normal' types.

Of course this kind of stuff is mostly academic when it comes to me.  I wouldn't get involved with someone who wasn't okay with all my stuff, and I already yell about it on the internet, so if someone is getting down and dirty with me they already know the deal.  I just don't like to put people who aren't in the secure situation I am on the spot and make them cope with the problems that cultural norms create for those of us who don't fit into them.

My recent experiences and thoughts about Relationship Anarchy feel like they support this position too.  RA is all about pushing back on assumptions about how relationships work, and you can't do that while you set up different rulesets for people who follow the norms and people who don't.  Honestly is required, and people should tell other information they are likely to want, but I won't impose a rule on the marginalized few that the mass of humanity completely ignores.

Gradually increasing disdain

Wendy forwarded me this link today to an article written by a Relationship Anarchist.  The author seems to be an anarchist in many ways, not just in relationships.  While usually I find anarchistic arguments interesting they almost always fail in the details; before destroying the economic system that keeps us all fed I would like to know how exactly the new system will distribute food!  However, RA is a completely different thing because implementing it, while it would change things a great deal, does not actually threaten our lives, merely big chunks of the current social order.

The article got me thinking on RA again, and its hard stance that monogamy is wrong and bad resonated with me.  I find myself with a great deal of ambivalence about this topic, because I can see compelling arguments for both sides.

First, a key definition:  Monogamy here refers to people forcing things on others.  If you want one partner, many or none, sexual or not, romantic or not, that is all good.  The thing that troubles me is people coercing others into specific numbers, not what they freely choose to do themselves.

If a friend told me that I could have no other friends but them I would laugh at them and never talk to them again.  If a lover told me that I was not allowed to have a relationship with my family anymore I would give them the heave ho.  If my uncle told me that I was not allowed to have sex with anyone I would tell him to fuck right off.  All of these people would be roundly condemned as being somewhere between insecure jerks and evil abusers.  In fact, those demands are so ridiculous that most people receiving such a demand would assume it was a joke at first.

And yet if a lover told me that I was not allowed to have sex with another person, or love another person, this is normal and expected.

That is messed right up.  A lover trying to isolate someone from their friends or family is a classic sign of abuse and one that people react immediately to.  You shouldn't cut people off from their support networks!  But demand that you be their sole partner for sex and romantic love and suddenly it is all good.  The more times I run this script in my head the more it settles into the conclusion that monogamy is an evil institution that needs to go.

But there are arguments the other way.  If people choose monogamy freely, who am I to criticize their choice?  So long as everyone is on board, informed, and able to leave, shouldn't I back off and let everyone do their own thing?  That is a strong argument for the stance I have taken about relationships so far, which is that I am doing the RA / polyamory thing and that other people are welcome to do what they please.

However, I ask myself if I would say the same thing if a friend of mine was getting into a serious relationship and told me "Yeah, so, my partner says I can't have friends anymore, so I can't see you again."  Would I happily answer "Oh yes, you are making an informed choice and this is fine."?  Fuck no.  I would tell them that this is a disaster, that their partner is a controlling asshole, and they need to get out.  I can't stop them from making the choice, but I will be damned if I am going to sit back and tell them it is a good thing to do.  So if I back off and say that monogamy is all fine and well, how is it that I justify this position when I so clearly see the problems with it?  If I just sign off on monogamy as a totally fine choice I end up making a special case for it and defining it as fine without any justification aside from "Well, that is just the way things are, and rocking the boat is likely to be messy."  and I DO NOT like that justification.

It is all complicated because I live in a system that glorifies and supports monogamy.  Most of the people I know are monogamous, and the prospect of telling them all that their relationships are borderline abusive by definition is ... daunting, to say the least.  I don't relish the idea of getting into that particular fight, and the fights would be nearly endless since I know so many people who are monogamous.  It would be especially difficult with people I care deeply about, people who do work hard to make the world a better place.  Is telling them that they are wrong, that they are being bad in placing rules limiting their partner's affection, that they must change, going to smash my relationships with them?  How much would it cost me to take the public stance that most of the people I know are doing it all wrong?

In addition to the personal cost I have to consider the activism cost.  Telling people "I want to do my relationships this way." is far easier, and far more likely to have them accept it.  Telling them that they are wrong for doing what they do will encounter much more pushback and possibly set back acceptance of my way of living.  This sort of dilemma is present in nearly all activism, and figuring out how extreme a position to take is not a simple thing.

On the flip side, actively deciding to not talk about a serious problem I see because it would be too inconvenient to deal with the pushback feels like cowardice.  What kind of world do I want?  One where people like me, loaded with privilege, refuse to be honest and push for change because they are worried that it might be too much work?  Or do I want a world where I pursue my convictions and upset some apple carts in an attempt to build a better society?

The longer I think about it the more I think that telling your partner that you are to be their sole outlet for all sexual and romantic feelings and actions is wrong.  Not wrong like murder is wrong, obviously, because they can walk away if they want to.  But still wrong, in the same way that criticizing someone about something they are sensitive about in front of people they want to impress is wrong.  Not the thing you should do, and certainly a thing you should look askance at if you see anyone else doing it, to find out if there are other signs of bad behaviour.

I know how I feel.  I know what I want.  Figuring out how to act, given that knowledge, is a much thornier problem.

Bash those genitals, stat

At Polywood this weekend I had a discussion with a few people about whether or not it would be physically possible to have sex with all the people.  That is, would it be possible to have sex with every living person on the planet?  If so, just how fast would you have to have that sex in order for it to work?  Would those people be coming in at you so quickly that it is merely inconvenient, or are we talking about sonic booms being created by onrushing sex partners?

Time to math.  And by math, I mean make all kinds of guesses and approximations and not worry too much about rounding errors.

First off we have to define sex.  Sex is widely variable of course, using many body parts, but I am going to just assume for my first approximation that it involves bashing groins together, since that is a pretty common form of sex.  The world has roughly 7.6 billion people, and I am going to guess that 2/3 of them are able to consent to sex, which is 5 billion.  I don't want to spend too much time on this, so let's assume I need to get it done in a year.  No holidays though, I am not a slacker, but I do need 8 hours of sleep a night.  I don't need time to eat, as I can just do that while the groin smashery is going on.

So, with 365 days available I have to have 'sex' with 239 people per second.  I will assume each person has to move 1 meter in towards me, move back and forth 10 cm three times, and then get 1 meter away again in the allotted time.  This gives them an average velocity of 620 meters/sec, or a cool 2233 km/h.  This is closing in on Mach 2, which means that every person doing this is going to be generating massive sonic booms with every bash of groins, as well as their movement.  Also just getting 239 people per second next to me is a major problem logistically.  Even if you could somehow get an infinite line of people walking 239 abreast, when they get close they suddenly have to accelerate to the above speeds, and setting up a situation where you have an infinite line of 239 people walking abreast is a massive undertaking on its own!

Another major problem is that this is assuming average velocity.  People are, in this simplification, making instantaneous changes in velocity and we know you can't do that... acceleration takes time.  This means that it is certain that their maximum speeds are going to be drastically greater than that, likely capping out around Mach 4.

Now we get to the real problem - the G forces on the people involved.  If you are moving at 4466 km/h and then have to decelerate to 0 m/s within a space of 5 cm that is a LOT of Gs.

And by a LOT, I mean 1,500,000 Gs.  Now there is a lot of debate over exactly how many Gs a person can survive for a really short time.  Maybe it is 50.  Maybe it is 100.  But what we are sure of is that 1.5 Million Gs reduces a person to a fine red mist instantly.  There is no 'sex' because all that happens is a bunch of miniscule organic particles fly into me at enormous speeds and I am killed by some combination of nano missiles that used to be a person and shockwaves.

Okay, so given that this experiment would destroy every person within hundreds of meters of it instantly, let us try to back it off a bit.  Let's assume I have thirty years to complete my sexual journey, I start with the oldest people first so they don't die before I can 'sex' them, and I have sex with five people simultaneously using a variety of body parts.  This decreases the required speed by 80% for the additional sexing outlets, and another 95% because of the increased time allowed.  (This is a guesstimate based on the fact that more people come of age given that this takes a lot longer so I have to have more sex than before.)  That gives me a 99% reduction in speed for the incoming bodies, which hopefully reduces the lethality of the situation.

99% is a big reduction, right?  It solves all the problems!

Not so much.  One advantage is that people moving this way are no longer creating sonic booms as nobody is breaking the sound barrier.  This reduces our destructive potential greatly.  It also means that you only need an infinite line of people walking twelve abreast, which is *way* more manageable.  Still requires some logistics, but it should be possible with enough money and effort.

The trouble is still the G forces that those people experience.  150 G is drastically smaller than 1,500,000 for sure.  It even puts us close to the survivable level of G forces, given that the times involved are extremely short.  But going back and force with those levels of Gs is going to paste your brain to your skull and kill you, even if your skeletal structure can stand the strain.  Is it possible that a human survives such a thing?  I suppose, but I think the expectation would be that everyone involved would die.  I think the corpses would remain intact, largely speaking, but I would expect near total fatalities.

Given that, I think you would find it extremely difficult to convince people to take part in a serious effort to have one person have sex with all other humans.

There are other techniques you could employ to make this go better.  You could collect all the voyeurs in the world and just have them watch and call that sex.  You could assume you have longer to live, or decide that you are only doing this with people that want to (which pretty much solves the problem immediately, really.)  New assumptions mean new calculations.  However, given my basic assumptions we can safely say that you absolutely cannot have sex with all the people in the world in one lifetime, even with an outrageous apparatus to support it and nearly infinite money at your disposal.

Sorry to disappoint.