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Poly Book Club Assignment #10 - Threesome
Threesome
by Nash Popovic
I was excited to see a poly book available to read online. The most common excuse for not reading a book assigned in the poly bookclub is that they couldn't find the book or didn't have money to buy it. Threesome was offered online, entirely free and promised to be pro-poly.
Well, it was definitely pro-poly. It was also very short.
Plot synopsis with spoilers:
We start off being introduced to the main character, named Marko, as his girlfriend breaks up with him because she fell in love with another guy. The ironic thing is that they had an open relationship. They tried the spectrum, from swinging to "intimate friendship", to polyamory where they hoped to live in a commune someday of "freely chosen, likeminded people".
Maria was the one who said that their relationship should expand to include more people when Marko asked what would happen if one of them fell in love. She was the one who pushed to live together, partially to reduce her parents' influence on her children, who were raising them to be "princesses". They fought, but Marko was happy, believing that their issues always got resolved after their fights.
Then one day, she ran into a childhood friend at the airport, who wooed her with champagne & a big house. They began Skyping and emailing, and within a week, she wanted to leave Marko & move back to her homeland to be with the other guy.
Marko asked about including him instead of breaking up but Maria suddenly decided she wanted the wedding, church, & white picket fence (around a villa with a swimming pool in Spain). How many polys have lived through this story? We meet someone who seems to embrace polyamory, only to be dumped so he or she can be monogamous with someone else. He also tells of the crap his friends gave him, with the "well what did you expect with an open relationship?" line that most of us have also been through.
So Marko goes through the grief of a breakup, and eventually meets Di, a coworker. They have sex on the first date, and in the morning, she drops the bomb that she's "sort of" split up but not really with someone else. She says she's not ready for something serious. So Marko jumps on this and explains "intimate friendship", that casual variation of polyamory where people have close friendships, sometimes have sex, but they're not really a "couple", they're not pair-bonded. Di agreed.
They date for a while, and then Marko meets Francesca at a poly meeting. They also have sex on the first date. For both women, they proposed sex, not Marko. Marko tells Di about Francesca immediately, since they have an open relationship. He tries to meet Di's pseudo-ex but it never happens. Di doesn't ask about Francesca. Marko is not happy about the compartmentalization - he wants something more polyamorous rather than free-agenty or casual.
So Marko asks Di to meet Francesca, who resists, but agrees. Di & Francesca have nothing in common, but for some reason hit it off. The 2 women make plans to go shopping that weekend. So they all start seeing each other as pairs and all together. Eventually, they had a threesome. They melded into a triad seemingly effortlessly, and eventually Di stopped seeing her ex.
Marko tells of a conversation with a guy in the typical "so, do the girls have sex too?" mysoginistic way, that, again, almost all of us have had (unless we're strongly closeted). All three continue to see other people, but we don't meet most of them. A handful get their names mentioned, mostly men but occasionally Di experiments with women.
Then came the meet-the-parents scene. Typical religous parents concerned with appearances, god, "what about the children?", proclamations of doom, followed by a grudging acceptance. Yet again, something that many of us have experienced. The triad got invited to Di's parents' house for the holidays ... making Marko sleep alone on the sofa, naturally.
Francesca's parents accepted the triad immediately with jokes about opening up their own relationship. They've seen Jules et Jim, a poly movie that ends badly (that I will be reviewing). Marko's parents were dead.
Next they go on vacation. They all have a committment ceremony spontaneously on the beach. Then they decided to move in together. Marko explains the sleeping arrangement, which was they all slept where they felt like it on any given night. Sometimes it was all together, sometimes one of the girls wanted to sleep alone, sometimes Marko would crash on the couch & leave the girls to their own devices.
Everything has so far gone utterly smoothly, but Markos finally starts to tell us that it doesn't. The problems were things like not leaving clean towels in the bathroom, or smoking in the house, or a cluttered bedroom. They didn't argue, they voted on decisions, they had identical music tastes. Even the decision for one of them to stop working & the others to support her went smoothly.
And that's where it ends. There was no sum up, no breakup, not even a happily ever after. He talks about where the three of them are in their jobs and just stops. He ends with a paragraph about struggling to merge his escapism into movies with the real world, but does nothing to elaborate, explain, or solve the struggle.
I have mixed feelings about this story. On the one hand, it's refreshing to read a book that supports polyamory and where things work out for the characters. On the other hand, there was no real struggle, no conflict, nothing that the characters had to overcome or grow from. They just kinda worked. I love it when that happens in real life, but, as I always tell reporters when they ask about my relationships, it makes for a boring story. There's no real story arc and there's no conclusion, satisfying or otherwise. I really couldn't relate or identify with the characters, other than to nod a few times when Marko elaborates on some of his relationship philosophies. I didn't get drawn in and I wasn't emotionally invested in the characters.
I think it's great to have examples in literature that do not demonize alternative relationships, and this may be a decent book to give to someone who you're trying to explain polyamory to, especially if they're more willing to read a narrative rather than a reference book. But as a pure work of entertainment fiction, it was not that entertaining.
But it has motivated me to write my own autobiography of polyamory - something longer than a blog post, in a narrative style, that highlights the struggles & the achievements & the happiness of being polyamorous in a monogamous world. Someday I may even self-publish it.
Join the discussion at http://www.shelfari.com/groups/12041/discussions/243089/Book-10-Threesome
by Nash Popovic
I was excited to see a poly book available to read online. The most common excuse for not reading a book assigned in the poly bookclub is that they couldn't find the book or didn't have money to buy it. Threesome was offered online, entirely free and promised to be pro-poly.
Well, it was definitely pro-poly. It was also very short.
Plot synopsis with spoilers:
We start off being introduced to the main character, named Marko, as his girlfriend breaks up with him because she fell in love with another guy. The ironic thing is that they had an open relationship. They tried the spectrum, from swinging to "intimate friendship", to polyamory where they hoped to live in a commune someday of "freely chosen, likeminded people".
Maria was the one who said that their relationship should expand to include more people when Marko asked what would happen if one of them fell in love. She was the one who pushed to live together, partially to reduce her parents' influence on her children, who were raising them to be "princesses". They fought, but Marko was happy, believing that their issues always got resolved after their fights.
Then one day, she ran into a childhood friend at the airport, who wooed her with champagne & a big house. They began Skyping and emailing, and within a week, she wanted to leave Marko & move back to her homeland to be with the other guy.
Marko asked about including him instead of breaking up but Maria suddenly decided she wanted the wedding, church, & white picket fence (around a villa with a swimming pool in Spain). How many polys have lived through this story? We meet someone who seems to embrace polyamory, only to be dumped so he or she can be monogamous with someone else. He also tells of the crap his friends gave him, with the "well what did you expect with an open relationship?" line that most of us have also been through.
So Marko goes through the grief of a breakup, and eventually meets Di, a coworker. They have sex on the first date, and in the morning, she drops the bomb that she's "sort of" split up but not really with someone else. She says she's not ready for something serious. So Marko jumps on this and explains "intimate friendship", that casual variation of polyamory where people have close friendships, sometimes have sex, but they're not really a "couple", they're not pair-bonded. Di agreed.
They date for a while, and then Marko meets Francesca at a poly meeting. They also have sex on the first date. For both women, they proposed sex, not Marko. Marko tells Di about Francesca immediately, since they have an open relationship. He tries to meet Di's pseudo-ex but it never happens. Di doesn't ask about Francesca. Marko is not happy about the compartmentalization - he wants something more polyamorous rather than free-agenty or casual.
So Marko asks Di to meet Francesca, who resists, but agrees. Di & Francesca have nothing in common, but for some reason hit it off. The 2 women make plans to go shopping that weekend. So they all start seeing each other as pairs and all together. Eventually, they had a threesome. They melded into a triad seemingly effortlessly, and eventually Di stopped seeing her ex.
Marko tells of a conversation with a guy in the typical "so, do the girls have sex too?" mysoginistic way, that, again, almost all of us have had (unless we're strongly closeted). All three continue to see other people, but we don't meet most of them. A handful get their names mentioned, mostly men but occasionally Di experiments with women.
Then came the meet-the-parents scene. Typical religous parents concerned with appearances, god, "what about the children?", proclamations of doom, followed by a grudging acceptance. Yet again, something that many of us have experienced. The triad got invited to Di's parents' house for the holidays ... making Marko sleep alone on the sofa, naturally.
Francesca's parents accepted the triad immediately with jokes about opening up their own relationship. They've seen Jules et Jim, a poly movie that ends badly (that I will be reviewing). Marko's parents were dead.
Next they go on vacation. They all have a committment ceremony spontaneously on the beach. Then they decided to move in together. Marko explains the sleeping arrangement, which was they all slept where they felt like it on any given night. Sometimes it was all together, sometimes one of the girls wanted to sleep alone, sometimes Marko would crash on the couch & leave the girls to their own devices.
Everything has so far gone utterly smoothly, but Markos finally starts to tell us that it doesn't. The problems were things like not leaving clean towels in the bathroom, or smoking in the house, or a cluttered bedroom. They didn't argue, they voted on decisions, they had identical music tastes. Even the decision for one of them to stop working & the others to support her went smoothly.
And that's where it ends. There was no sum up, no breakup, not even a happily ever after. He talks about where the three of them are in their jobs and just stops. He ends with a paragraph about struggling to merge his escapism into movies with the real world, but does nothing to elaborate, explain, or solve the struggle.
I have mixed feelings about this story. On the one hand, it's refreshing to read a book that supports polyamory and where things work out for the characters. On the other hand, there was no real struggle, no conflict, nothing that the characters had to overcome or grow from. They just kinda worked. I love it when that happens in real life, but, as I always tell reporters when they ask about my relationships, it makes for a boring story. There's no real story arc and there's no conclusion, satisfying or otherwise. I really couldn't relate or identify with the characters, other than to nod a few times when Marko elaborates on some of his relationship philosophies. I didn't get drawn in and I wasn't emotionally invested in the characters.
I think it's great to have examples in literature that do not demonize alternative relationships, and this may be a decent book to give to someone who you're trying to explain polyamory to, especially if they're more willing to read a narrative rather than a reference book. But as a pure work of entertainment fiction, it was not that entertaining.
But it has motivated me to write my own autobiography of polyamory - something longer than a blog post, in a narrative style, that highlights the struggles & the achievements & the happiness of being polyamorous in a monogamous world. Someday I may even self-publish it.
Join the discussion at http://www.shelfari.com/groups/12041/discussions/243089/Book-10-Threesome