I’m Getting Married & I Can’t Stop Thinking About Death

May 18, 2018

Kailey Tedesco's books She Used to be on a Milk Carton (April Gloaming Publications) and These Ghosts of Mine, Siamese (Dancing Girl Press) are both forthcoming. She is the editor-in-chief of a Rag Queen Periodical and a performing member of the NYC Poetry Brothel. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. You can find her poetry featured or forthcoming in Prelude, Prick of the Spindle, Bellevue Literary Review, Vanilla Sex Magazine, and more. For more information, please visit kaileytedesco.com.

Interview with Performer Eliza Gibson: 'Lesbian Divorce Happens'

May 11, 2016

Eliza Gibson knows how to write--and perform. She is currently performing in her newest performance piece "And Now, No Flip Flips?!", which draws from her personal life in a poignant and funny way. She uses humor to tell her story--which is one that is both common and hardly written about--divorce. In Gibson's case, she is portraying what divorce looks like for two women, which has been routinely ignored by mainstream media and culture. This is a huge step for the LGBTQIA community, and it's an amazing performance.

The Night We Didn’t Fall In Love

May 2, 2016

A female body in mom jeans looks at a water color of Bianca Stone’s depicting the three fates. Only one faces us and says in her speech bubble, “I’m filled with rooms I’ve never seen before.” It hangs in my living room. I am the female body, a room I see so much of I don’t see it at all. I see it so little that I’m usually digging my nails into my skin in order to get anything practical done without overwhelming anxiety. How do I get this out of the room? I got Netflix binge-streaming House of Cards to distract me from my loneliness and this. I miss something I’ve never had, stupid saudade. How much of the wine bottle has been drunk and will it get me to the end of the night?

Elias Goldensky, 'Portrait of Three Women,' ca. 1915.

Polyamory Commands Intimacy, Not Just a Fling

April 4, 2016

BY GHIA VITALE

This piece is part of the Relationship Issue. Read more here.

As someone who has been polyamorous for seven out of the 11 years I’ve been with my partner, I can say with utmost certainty that polyamory is not an experiment for me.

It is the path in life my heart wandered down and never turned back. And suddenly, the mainstream dating world knows about polyamory. Now that I can simply check off the “polyamorous” box in an OkCupid profile, I am still hesitant to dip my toe into the icy waters of online dating.

One of their most recent additions is a feature that allows you to link your account to a partner’s account in order to let users know whom you’re currently dating on the site. It’s actually no better than how Facebook only lets you be in one relationship. In other words, to Hell with the rest of your lovers if you’re poly because according to these websites, only one of them is worth mentioning. The threesome requests were frequent enough when I confessed that I was bisexual in my profile. I’m worried that no matter how much I stress that I’m not looking for flings, that’s all others seem to want me for. That’s how it went in the past, anyway.

One of my biggest hang-ups about poly dating is the same issue other experienced poly people struggle with: the risk of becoming collateral damage in someone else’s quest for self-discovery, novelty, freedom, and most importantly, love. A recent spike in popularity has saturated the poly community with widespread interest. That means the poly-curious population is increasing. While that might mean there’s more to love, it also means there’s more people there to mess it up. Many newbies embark upon their poly journey with pure intentions; others mistake our permanent lifestyle for whatever they wish would fulfill their temporary and misguided desires. How do I know their desires are misguided? I know this because I’ve been directly implicated in these personal quests for self-fulfillment that end in nothing except breakups.

I let everyone know that polyamory is the only way I roll. While people are more than happy to enjoy my company as a fling, the idea of having multiple significant others that are actually significant is beyond most people’s comprehension and it seeps through their behavior. Once I let them know there’s zero chance of a monogamous future happening (or even a monogamish one), the tone of our interaction change drastically. All of the sudden, our relationship is no longer headed in any kind of committal direction and I lose my viability as a “serious” partner whom they envision a future with. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not pressing for commitment before it’s appropriate. I’m all about free love and I believe each relationship being a unique expression of love. But even though we’ll both claim we want poly relationships, I’m the only person who means it. What they actually mean is that they want to indulge in multiple relationships at once without strings attached. That’s fine, but that’s not polyamory.

It’s always different variations of the same scenario: I meet someone who claims to be poly-curious, poly-friendly, or “open to being with a poly partner.” Then they realize they’re not as poly as they thought they were, that they just wanted to date around and explore before meeting a monogamous partner. Whether or not I consented to this involvement never mattered, so I’ve learned how to recognize the unique smell of this trainwreck smoke so I don’t have to stand the heat later on. I understand that these people usually mess up because they don’t know better. As the person who’s actually poly, I basically have to be the person who knows better. It just sucks to become seriously invested in someone because they seemed to say the right things at the right times and gave you the impression that polyamory was a long-term consideration for them. It no longer felt like a carpet being pulled from beneath me once I developed a healthy sense of paranoia about it. Even educating these people about poly doesn’t seem to make them go back into the hookup culture that better suits their yearnings.

Polyamory is about maintaining multiple relationships, not just the freedom to have as many flings. Too many people enter polyamory with the “playing the field” mindset. They’re more than happy to practice polyamory, but never actually be polyamorous. If they were actually living polyamory as opposed to practicing it, they would see polyamory as a part of their future rather than a quick fix. That’s just the problem: They don’t see polyamory as a part of their future. They only see polyamory as a situational means to their temporary ends. Yes, polyamory absolves you from having to choose 1 person over another, but there’s so much more to it than that. Polyamory is far more about building and maintaining connections than it is about driveby romances and hooking up.

As a polyamorous person, I want more than a good time. I want love.

Ghia Vitale is a writer from Long Island. She graduated from Purchase College with a BA in literature as well as minors in psychology and sociology. She has written for Ravishly and Quail Bell Magazine.

That Time I Went on Vacation with Someone I Barely Knew

December 28, 2015

But when you’re in your early twenties and on the kind of quick rebound Serena Williams might appreciate, you think differently. I had recently come back from a Midwest breakup with a long-distance boyfriend. Several gallons of ice cream later, I was still feeling empty. It was springtime, and the idea of getting through the approaching summer on my own wasn’t something I wanted to do.