Poly Throuple Technology

For so long, we had been defined entirely by what we liked.

We had our jobs, the careers we’d fought for and won, emerging from internships and grad programs and ennui into our various fields. There were our hobbies, the pointless activities we continued to do, despite sensing such time could be better spent. And there was the apartment in Williamsburg. Our place was a two-bedroom overlooking McCarren Park, full to bursting with bookshelves to hold all our things. We own a lot of things, more than you’d typically need to store in a two-bedroom. But then, we are not typical.

Feast your eyes on one section of the bookshelf nearest the black leather couch. Here is our limited-edition box set of Lord of the Rings DVDs. Here is the D&D Player’s Handbook. And here is a Boba Fett figurine posed like the Gangnam Style guy.

But we apologize. We are being obtuse. What we liked most of all was each other. All three of us, the glorious fabric of the relationship, the family we made of ourselves. This love based on expansive fairness. Our contract: None of us may be a have-not. Sure, you could be a did-not-want, and sometimes, maybe a have-more. But anything else would destabilize us.

We liked what we liked. And since we were engineers and scientists, we had endless money to spend on our desires. But, we agreed, we didn’t want to consume with total abandon. We all loved our DLC and our Wonder Woman costumes, but possessions did not correlate with meaning. A material life was not the one we wanted to live. This, then, led to an inquiry into what would come next.

We were losing the exhilaration we’d once felt, the wild emotional loops of our shared-identity roller coaster. Intimacy—what was it? What did we expect from it? We had long conversations on this topic, discoursing upon our needs over takeout, in parks, and on the couch at home. Meanwhile, we had parents for and against, parents who we’d never told, a web of complications one of us, for a while, actually tracked with a spreadsheet. There will always be a residual echo of the thrill we felt in studying this document. It was even more compelling than the exquisite corpse-style fanfiction we’d once written for Battlestar Galactica.

The comment we remember most clearly from those days had come from one of our reeling parents. “I’d have understood it if you were just gay. Why couldn’t you have just been gay?” We laughed at this, even as it hurt. Even as we lay awake at night contemplating our fear of—what was it, exactly? Not aloneness, surely. There were so many more of us. No singular other upon which all was riding. No. It was something else, something that lay in the way she so falsely posed gayness as simply acceptable and us, what we were, so very not.

Intimacy—what was it? What did we expect from it?

We fought, after that. What were we? There was terminology, sure. But where did we fit? The queers were uneasy around us. One of our number could not attend the ABCD parties to which we were invited—Anyone But Cis Dudes—and, when we declined to attend, we knew exactly, or at least thought we knew, what everyone was thinking. Why do the two of you hang around with the likes of him?

Meanwhile, the nerds didn’t work for us either. We’d be at our local GoT Pot—a potluck for collectively watching the latest Game of Thrones episode—and we would stare into our Red Wedding Jell-O, the countless marshmallow corpses swimming at the bottom of the bowl, seething as our so-called friends ranted about how Sansa was a dumb bitch, how she deserved absolutely everything she had gotten.

At least we have each other, we’d say in our moments of harmony. And those moments were sweet. They filled our apartment with enormous love. More people, more complexity, yes—but also more heft to the goodness, a fucking symphony of love.

Though we may sound on the verge of discussing the circumstances of our sexual life, we are not going to do it. Our life is not a social experiment, on display for your viewing pleasure. Isn’t it enough to know that we love each other? It will have to be. Because that’s all there is.

Well, that’s all there was for a while, anyway. Years, even.

But by now, we have gotten so used to this whole conversational arc. In fact, we’ve debated these points so many times, they resemble the ways we walk between the subway station and our apartment, always cutting through the park and avoiding its trashy edges. And this feels good, like we have dug out a place to be in the world. Like we finally know what we are, even if it’s never quite been said.

At least we have each other, we’d say in our moments of harmony.

And yet we find ourselves awake late one night, talking. We are feeling too settled, our routine too predictable. Sometimes we are fighting just for the sake of it; something needs to change. We go in circles, talking about us. The jobs, hobbies, shows, games, projects, families. But none of it breaks through. Our voices sway in the air, a pointless dance.

There is a silence.

Then, one of us breaks it.

She clears her throat. She says, “I want to have a child.”

*

We suspect you have concluded by now that our configuration makes possible a pregnancy without outside intervention. We also bet you would not be surprised that what we start with is research. We acquire the books, create an RSS feed for the blogs, get into debates about early childhood development, download special calendars for tracking ovulation.

There’s very little out there on raising children as a throuple. What will we tell the people at the hospital? Whose parents should come? What will we call ourselves? There’s Papa, yes, but what about each of the baby’s two mothers? For a while, we contemplate two of us obtaining a marriage license, just so as to hold that kind of legitimacy; we already call each other husband and wife. But eventually we abandon the bureaucracy, agreeing upon all the ways it would violate our base covenant.

When all the birth control has been properly resolved, the sex finally begins, and we are surprised by its quality. None of us has had sex for anything other than our own pleasure before. It’s eerie, the feeling of purpose that comes over us. We are left exhausted at the end and yet still pent-up. We giggle with this meaningful joy, fix breakfast briskly, even see work as less alien and tiresome than usual. But there is one thing, at least at first, that we do not consider.

This is the harsh reality: No amount of spreadsheets can cause one to actually get pregnant. Our periods come and go. Soon we are nearing the eight-month mark and growing weary of our purpose-driven sex life. We order toys on the internet. We luxuriate in an extended conversation about everyone’s most current kinks and desires to explore. Still nothing. We begin to discuss in vitro, expressing our shared interest in the miracle of birth through science. But wait—none of us has even been tested yet.

The next day, we make doctor’s appointments. Soon, we say to ourselves, we will narrow in on whose body might be resisting.

After this, two things happen in quick succession. First, one of us finds out that she is, as has been quietly suspected, incredibly unlikely to conceive. It is as if her body is allergic to creation. Another of us, two days later, finds out that she is pregnant.

She has to have it confirmed with a blood test. We wait with bated breath, not daring to hope—and then, after the email comes, we begin planning an evening of celebration. Food, movies, and a special nonalcoholic cocktail. Just the three of us, exulting in this ultimate arrival. This success.

But this lovely evening we imagine does not go to plan.

There’s very little out there on raising children as a throuple.

*

I find myself in the bedroom. I find myself locking the door.

They are out there with takeout from the jerk chicken place—my favorite—and watermelon for the booze-free cocktail. I was the one who’d wanted to make it.

And yet, I am sitting on the edge of our king-size bed, one hand on each knee. I am crying. It’s as though my body wants to squeeze itself to death. As though I’m giving birth, though not to the baby I’d imagined when I said, “I want to have a child.” That child I will probably never have. What I have is aloneness. What I have is an inhuman sound. My own untamed banshee voice, silencing the inner noise of our household.

My husband, my wife call out through the door.

“Are you okay?”

I have nothing to answer with.

*

Over the next few weeks, I live in a state of dream, of limbo.

Each morning I go into the kitchen and take out my Portal mug. I pour myself a coffee from our massive coffee pot, programmed to make the coffee ready right at 7 a.m.

Coming home from work I skirt the park. From the sidewalk, I observe our neighbors, denizens of the Brooklyn grass. There’s a hetero couple doing acroyoga. A guy meditating. Lesbian wives having a picnic with their two kids.

As I pass, a little boy comes around the corner carrying a stick. He mercilessly hits the park’s iron fence with his improvised weapon. He appears to be alone.

“Where’s your mom?” I call out.

“Trapped on the Death Star,” he announces.

I don’t miss a beat. I ask, “Are you part of the rebel alliance?”

“I’ll get you, Vader,” the child shouts, attacking the fence.

Then a man approaches, manifesting as if beamed in, his manner distinctly parental. He gives me a nod; then he faces his son. “Hey, Skywalker. Drop the lightsaber. Transmission just in from the Death Star. It’s time to set a course for dinner.”

The boy relinquishes the stick. His face is briefly radiant, writ with joy at his father upholding a fantasy the child believes is his own. Indeed, it’s something he has been given. A legacy. My very cells scream with need as I watch them walk away.

That night after dinner, I take my husband frantically into my arms. He looks at me quizzically for a moment, waiting for me to speak.

Confused, my husband gives me a hug. It is warm. Then clingy. Then excruciating.

I push him away.

There are ways of being with people that only make you feel more alone.

*

On Saturday morning, I’m sitting at the table picking at a turkey sandwich, silent.

I keep thinking about how I was the person who took us back from we to I. How this failure of mine makes me want to leave. And yet if I do, I’ll be even less likely to become a mother. I’d never thought the idea of parenting would make me feel so trapped.

My wife comes around the table, to my side, and grabs my forearm. She drags me up out of my chair. “You wanted a baby, and now you’re having one.” She looks me in the eyes, her expression defiant. She is daring me to voice a normative complaint.

Instead I lean forward and kiss her, right on the mouth. Part of me doesn’t even know what I’m doing. At first my wife is cold, unresponsive. Then she softens. She puts her arms around me. It is warm, then clingy. I try to push her away, but she takes me by the wrist.

I allow her to lead me inside the bedroom.

My husband is out running errands, has left the bedroom a mess. Half-folded piles of laundry are still spread out on the bed. Lying atop sports bras, T-shirts, and a worn pair of yoga leggings, I watch my wife get naked. Is her belly already rounder? “Don’t stare,” she says. Then she tosses me on my back amid all the pillows.

There are ways of being with people that only make you feel more alone.

It’s the first time we can once again have sex without purpose. For a year now, all our sex has been focused on the baby. Now we push the laundry violently off the bed.

We lie together until late afternoon. I feel trapped in heaviness, languor, the softness of us together mixed with guilt at being two and not our full three. The sun goes behind clouds outside the window. She whispers in my ear, “I love you.”

I smile. “I know,” I say, quoting Han Solo.

She takes my head in her hands. “No, I love you.” She is staring at me. “I’m in this relationship because of you,” she says. Her eyes are large, wet.

My heart beats hard. “Okay,” I say.

I know what she’s doing. She’s proposing a new design idea. No longer will none of us be a have-not. Instead: I may have a baby, but you—you have me.

“This is kludgy,” I say.

“But it’s how I feel. Life isn’t software, you know,” my wife replies. Her voice is hard. I look at her and think, My God. This isn’t a new concept. Things have been this way for her the whole time.

*

The night of the ultrasound, we experience the same sense of misfired celebration we had on the night she discovered she was pregnant.

The way they look at me is tentative, happy, but with a caveat. I am that caveat. We eat takeout atop all the junk gathered on the kitchen table. The papers, the knickknacks, accumulation of our collective life.

“To having a boy,” my husband says. He raises his drink. “Am I allowed to say that?”

My wife shrugs. “Let’s just not get too cishet here. Androgynous toys only.”

“What about dolls?” my husband protests. “I always liked playing with dolls.”

“You would,” I say, teasing.

And he laughs.

That night, I lie thinking of this anticipated child. I’ve been thinking so much about the situation that I haven’t had time to really imagine him. Now I tell myself his story.

First, I imagine him in the park, running toward me. He is carrying a stick—a lightsaber. “Let’s head for a new galaxy,” I say. He takes my hand, excited for what will come next: a thousand small moments. First day of preschool, kindergarten, first grade. Halloween costumes. Swimming lessons. Androgynous toys. Raised to accept all people, especially and including himself. He will not suffer from the things I have. I imagine him gardening, playing dolls and soccer, doing political protests, jigsaw puzzles, drag, drugs, mathematics, marathons, all in joyful abandon. Can I love him, I wonder, while awaiting the day he realizes I’m not his “real” mother?

But what does real even mean?

The next morning, I watch my husband and my wife together. Her hand on his shoulder blades, so sweet and casual. A gesture I’ve witnessed many times before. Only now I sense space between their bodies. This invisible canyon into which grief pours and pours.

Sipping my coffee, I remark, “I think I should be the one to name him.”

Behind my wife, cooking pancakes on the stove—already he is practicing to be a father—my husband is listening. He spins, spatula in hand. “Isn’t that more of a collective decision?”

My wife frowns. “We have naming traditions in my family no one has ever broken.”

“I need to know there’s something about him that’s mine,” I say.

They glance at each other, and I am witness. The contract between them is naked before me now, their calculus cruel in its selflessness. How dare they do this for me, I think. But I find myself unable to speak. I am astounded by how intimacy can be built on nothing but belief. How much love resembles a rabid fandom bordering on religion.

My husband goes back to the pancakes. Channeling the Marxist fantasia of his college days, he declares, “A child isn’t something you own.”

“Maybe,” I say. “But I need to own this.”

*

Our son is born in December. A Christmas baby.

The labor process is so long that by the time he joins us, we feel we now live in the hospital. We are exhausted. Triumphant. Suffering. Eager. Bored. In pain.

It is midmorning, light flooding the room as the nurse hands the baby to us. We cradle him in our arms. The argument over his name has been bitter, but in the end I won out. Some of us despised the idea of naming him after a villain. But it will be his legacy, this beautiful epithet we have not quite agreed on, despite it being written on his birth certificate next to his hyphenated-in-triplicate last name.

Our son’s small squished red face takes on a perturbed cast. He opens his mouth a bit. We see his tongue. Nothing could have prepared us for the physical truth of him being real. How will we relate with this new being? Is he part of the collective, this we—or is he by necessity other?

We look down at him and smile uncertainly.

Our little Skywalker sleeps.

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