Many Love

by Sophie Lucido Johnson

  With Jaedon and Luke, I was in the arguably easier position. I had the power because I was in control, I believed, of where my love went. I trusted myself to continue to be committed to Jaedon, and that was easy to do because I spend a lot of time in my own brain, monitoring my emotions. Jaedon was the one who had to wonder. If I stayed out an hour later than I had planned to, he had to wonder why. If I wanted to take Luke to a movie or a concert or a book reading, Jaedon had to wonder why I hadn’t invited him. He had to trust me—a person he’d known for only a year—to keep my promises and keep him safe. I was holding him over a ledge, and he had to trust that I wasn’t going to drop him.

  After we matched, I sent Luke a message, my first ever on Tinder. It said:

  I have to tell you this because this is the perfect opportunity: I have had a crush on you for years. Once I followed you around Langston Hughes Academy.

  He responded the next day:

  Oh cool! I think you are amazing! It’s funny, I just did an interview with a journalist from NYC and we talked a lot about Tindering in a small community like New Orleans vs. a place like New York and how here you kind of have to be prepared to know or at least recognize most people.

  Did you see that? He said he thought I was “amazing.”

  We chatted a little through the Tinder app, and I learned that Luke did not like fake mustaches or Bob Marley T-shirts, and that he was recently out of a relationship. He said he was “trying to figure out what kind of life he wanted to lead” and that his “love life was in limbo.” I offered to buy him a drink, he said sure, and then that was the end of our correspondence for a few weeks.

  Then my friend Molly—with whom I organized stand-up comedy shows—decided to throw a Molly-themed trivia night at a bar for her birthday. I liked this idea, because I hate regular birthday parties where you have to talk to people you don’t know; a trivia night provided an activity that would effectively prevent any actual social interaction. I showed up at the bar without a team, hoping to scrape one together once I got there. I arrived early—earlier than Molly, even—and sat awkwardly in the wet corner by the out-of-order jukebox, hoping I wouldn’t be noticed so I wouldn’t have to order a drink.

  After an interminable ten minutes, Molly came in with a suited-up guy on one arm and a tray of vanilla cupcakes in the other.

  “Sophie! You’re so . . . early and alone!” she said. Frankly, I was grateful that someone was talking to me. I was about to start making origami swans out of cocktail napkins.

  “Yeah, I don’t have a team,” I said.

  “Okay! That’s okay! Darren doesn’t, either!” She pushed the guy on her arm in my direction. “Darren! Sophie’s going to be on your team! You guys are a team now! Oh, and also I think my roommate is coming, and he doesn’t have a team. He’s just bringing in the rest of the cupcakes.”

  And yes, Molly and Luke were roommates; and hey, guess what, he also didn’t have a trivia team; and so I ended up on a trivia team with a man in a suit (whom I think Molly was probably sleeping with) named Darren and a man I had been infatuated with from afar for half a decade. A few minutes later, Luke’s sister and her boyfriend showed up, and our team of mostly strangers swelled to a formidable five. We named our team Weezer, and won by a margin so large that the second-place team didn’t have even half our point total.

  There was a little bit of a spark between Luke and me, but it was nothing major. Sometimes (uh, usually) when you meet someone in real life, they’re just not as good as your fantasy (I’m looking at you, Craigslist Boat Guy). He was fine, but I was very in love with Jaedon and didn’t really see things going anywhere with Luke. I felt satisfied knowing that I’d met the guy in real life, and that he had been good at trivia, and that that had been that.

  Luke, however, did not feel completely “that had been that” about me. He texted the next day to ask if I was going to a gala our mutual friends were throwing at the Pharmacy Museum. Since we ran in adjacent crowds (my stand-up partner was his roommate, for heaven’s sake), we were often invited to the same events. I told him that, yeah, I was going, and he texted back, “Cool,” and then I kind of forgot about the exchange; I was too invested in my relationship with Jaedon to be really thinking about anyone else—not even the guy.

  The night of the function, I had a friend over for dinner, and we got into one of those conversations—this time it was about the emotional trauma of buying a house—that went on for a lot longer than anyone thought it would. By the time we’d wrapped up (way after we’d finished eating dinner and dessert, and had finished the bottle of wine, and had washed all the dishes), it was late. I asked my friend if she still wanted to go to this Pharmacy Museum party, and she said, “Why not?”

  The Pharmacy Museum is filled with glass balls and tin cans of ointments. There are arm-length needles locked up in cabinets and blue bottles of “miracle tonic” on the shelves. There’s a faintly antiseptic scent to the whole place that makes it feel like you’re hanging out in a closed-down hospital. The space of the museum itself, however, is small—it’s three stories tall, but each story consists of one room about the size of a modest living room. I’d been to the Pharmacy Museum only during the day; when I walked through it at night, my immediate thought was, “Why would someone want to throw a party here? It’s barely a step up from being an actual haunted house.”

  But the museum had a courtyard, as do many of the buildings in the French Quarter. The courtyard was huge; hundreds of people schmoozed in summery semiformal outfits (per the invitation), holding plastic cups of white wine and throwing their heads back to laugh as though they were aristocrats in a period drama. I began to wonder how long I had to stay in order to honestly claim that I’d made an appearance. Five minutes? Seven?

  Much later I would learn that Luke had thought that by asking me if I was going to this party, he was asking me on a date. When I showed up three hours late, he thought I was playing hard to get, but he still assumed that we were on a date. At no point during the evening, however, did I consider being at the Pharmacy Museum function with Luke a date. I was excited to see him, so I stood next to him while my friend went to use the restroom, but I didn’t intend to stay there; the party was boring and I wanted to leave. Since the first time we met we’d been involved in trivia, I didn’t know much about his life. I asked him to tell me a little about himself, and the first thing he said was that he was on the board of a charter school.

  That, it turned out, was a bad place to start. I have a lot of very loud opinions about the charter school system in New Orleans. I can literally talk about it for hours without stopping to breathe. Since this is a book about love and not about charter schools, here’s the short version: I hate the charter school system in New Orleans with the fire of a thousand political pundits. I spent an hour scolding Luke for being on the board of a charter school. I didn’t let him get a word in edgewise. He could say nothing to assuage my doubts about him. He was not the man for me, and now I knew that for sure, and so after an hour on my soapbox, I stepped down and tried to find a friend at the party I could pawn Luke off on.

  But Luke didn’t want to be pawned off, and he followed me into every conversation I started with another person; he paid for my white wine when I went to the drinks table; he waited for me when I went to the bathroom. When I finally got myself together enough to leave the party, he walked me to the door and hugged me good-bye. “He’s nice, but dumb,” I thought. I went to Jaedon’s house afterward and climbed into bed with him. “I saw Luke tonight. Turns out we have nothing in common. He totally sucks.” I was satisfied with that reality and fell asleep easily despite the perpetual clicking of the ceiling fan.

  The next day, however, Luke sent me another text message. It said, “Do you want to go on a date?”

  Obviously, I didn’t really want to go on a date with Luke. Had he texted, “Do you want to catch up over coffee sometime?” I’d have given him a firm no. But I had never actually been asked out on a date (when someo
ne uses the word “date” in the asking) before. That’s not how it happens in the modern world; you leave the door open when you invite someone to do something just in case they’re not into it. You say, “Would you want to grab dinner sometime?” That way, if you get to dinner and the person you invited is aloof and detached, you can talk about Game of Thrones and salvage some of your dignity when you go home alone. Asking someone on an out-and-out date was a gutsy move. I admired Luke’s directness, his honesty. And I was also flattered, because I’d spent the entirety of a party scolding this guy and trying to get away from him, and here he was, asking me on a date, so I must be something special, huh? Anyway, what was two hours on a Friday night? It was nothing, really. So I said yes.

  I said yes, but I added the caveat you have to add when you’re in a good, communicative, open relationship. My Tinder profile stipulated that I was “poly and partnered,” but just to be totally transparent, I texted Luke back that I had a primary partner and we were open; I wanted to make sure that wasn’t a deal-breaker. Luke texted back that he knew I was dating Jaedon (he had clearly done his Facebook homework). He worked with Jaedon, remember? He liked him very much. He was cool with dating someone in an open relationship. And so the date got the green light.

  We met at a bar where cigarette smoke clouded up the pool tables and people had to shout over the blasting wall television. The bar was crowded, and all the tables were occupied—some so much so that women were sitting on top of them. We decided to get a bottle of wine and some chocolate at the market nearby and sit on the bridge over the bayou instead.

  Not to brag, but I’m good at first dates. I chalk this up to my incredible ability to ask fun and unique personal questions (and follow-up questions) in a way that implies that I’m genuinely interested in the answers. This ability comes from spending my formative years eating lunch alone in my English teacher’s classroom, vowing that if I ever got to go on a date with a boy, I would make him feel like the most special person on earth. I kept a list of questions on a pale pink notepad, and added to it throughout middle school and into high school. I began to collect questions the way other people collect stamps or state quarters.

  After Luke and I had picked out an Argentinian Malbec (Luke is from Argentina; I can’t tell the difference between any wines—not even between whites and reds, or between wines that have gone bad and ones that cost a thousand dollars a bottle), we strolled along the old stone road lit up with Christmas lights strung on a wire running along the oak trees. I’d come up with my first question while we stood in the checkout line and opened my mouth to ask it: “What was the last album you really liked?” Only I didn’t say it. Luke did.

  Every time I tried to turn the conversation to him by asking a provocative question, Luke answered but then immediately asked me something in return. As we reached the bridge where we’d decided to sit, I was knee-deep in a story about the time my family went to the Bahamas when I was fourteen. This was perfectly strange; I wondered if I had met my match.

  Luke asked me what animal I was at heart (I know—this date was interesting and whimsical!), and I told Luke that I thought I was a macaw. Macaws are vegetarians, they’re big and loud, and, hauntingly, they self-mutilate when they feel distressed or lonely (by plucking out their feathers). This, incidentally, was the cutest way I’d ever found to tell a person that I struggle with self-mutilation. Luke perked up, telling me that he would be a bird, too.

  I told Luke that I had a sparrow tattooed on the back of my neck. I used to think they mated for life, I said. He said, “Huh. I just like them because they’re adventurous.”

  And then, of course, I fell in love with Luke. Not on that date, but a few dates later. The moment I knew I was going to fall in love with him was a Tuesday evening when Hannah and I were making salad for dinner (Hannah and Derek and I had, at this point, been living together for five years). Luke showed up unannounced and gave me a mixtape he’d made for me. Over dinner, Hannah and I put the tape on the stereo. It was very cool that Luke had made an actual tape in the first place. I mean, when was the last time someone gave you a physical cassette with a playlist on it? That’s right—it was probably 1991. In 2014, a mixtape was a very kitschy, hipster-in-a-hot-way kind of move. On top of that, the guy was a master of mixtapes. Midway through its second loop, I walked over to the stereo and pushed the stop button. “Oh no, Hannah,” I said. “This situation is going to hurt.”

  I couldn’t see how I could possibly maintain a relationship with Jaedon and go through these falling-in-love motions with Luke at the same time. I didn’t know how Jaedon was supposed to not feel jealous when I told him about this extraordinary mixtape. I didn’t know how Luke was supposed to continue to want to make me mixtapes if I was always spending Valentine’s Day with someone else. Everything felt, in the moment, too heightened to last. Later, I would learn that there are ways to make nearly any romantic situation—even impossible-seeming ones—work. In this case, though, I was right.

  My priorities around Jaedon and Luke started to change. I began wanting to spend more time with Luke than Jaedon was comfortable with. There were only a few times that Jaedon and Luke and I all ended up at the same event—sometimes I did big comedy shows and invited them both, because you’re supposed to hustle tickets when you’re trying to make it in stand-up. I always decided beforehand which of them I was going to hang out with after the show; that decision was usually discussed with Jaedon first, and then communicated to Luke. I remember standing awkwardly between Jaedon and Luke outside an indie movie theater one time after a show, just before Luke and I were about to head out for dessert. Jaedon and Luke kept calling each other “man”—as in, “Hey, man, how are you?” “Yeah, man, I’m good, I’m good; what about you?” The exchange was uncomfortable, like when you and your new partner run into an ex. Only in this case, no one was anyone’s ex—at least, not yet.

  A few years before I started dating Jaedon and Luke, I had a nonmonogamous fling with another man I accidentally fell in love with—Jesse. (I’ve mentioned him before; he was the guy who gave me that “I love you” note.) I bring this up because after Jesse and I broke up, I learned one of the most important lessons about polyamory I would ever learn, and it carried over to all my relationships thereafter.

  Jesse broke up with me, and I was totally crushed—but I’d assured him that I would care about him no matter what shape our relationship needed to take, and I was going to keep my promise, period. I invited him to dinner every week. I told him about the shows I was in at the comedy theater. I went to his house when he invited all his friends over—even though I knew the new girl he was sleeping with would be there—because I was his friend, and this “conscious uncoupling” was going to be different than all the other breakups I’d had in the past. It didn’t matter that I hated him.

  I hated him and hated him and hated him—until I didn’t. At some point, after dinners and movie nights and calls to his mother in Florida, I began to see Jesse as a different man who existed outside the context of my past relationship with him, and I enjoyed having him around. For example: He knew a lot about birds. He told me once about how he watched hummingbirds harvest spiderwebs to build their nests, and I couldn’t think of anything more beautiful in the world. Over lunch, when it was just the two of us, Jesse would still tell me how sad he was. In those moments, all I could think about was how much I wanted this person to be happy. In fact, in those moments, it was all I wanted.

  And so, months after we broke up, I started to tell him that I loved him. And he said he loved me, too.

  The next spring, Jesse prepared to work on a farm where his ex would also be working. I asked if they were back together. No, he said, his ex was seeing a woman now, and it seemed serious; but he still cared for her very much, and he was interested in seeing what would happen over the summer they spent together.

  It surprised me that I didn’t feel jealous. I am, historically, a very jealous person. I like to have control over the people i
n my life, even if I don’t like to admit it. I loved Jesse so much, and it surprised me that I didn’t want to possess him. But I found myself hoping that things would go well with this woman, that maybe some healing could take place.

  I was actually discovering something very important about polyamory: it’s not so much about letting the people you love sleep around and attend exotic sex parties with frisky, leather-clad barmaids (clearly I know nothing of that world, as I’m pretty sure the barmaid thing went out of style in the 1980s); it’s not really about letting the people you love do anything. It’s more about allowing yourself to let go. In releasing whatever possession you think you have over another person, you give yourself permission to not worry about it. Mistrust is a heavy burden to have to lug around all the time.

  Luke never asked me to stop seeing Jaedon; he never said that he wanted more of my time or attention. He never complained about Jaedon or said that he felt jealous. When I asked him about jealousy, he said there was something about “coming into an open relationship as the new guy” that made him feel more guilty than jealous. To that end, it bears noting that there were definitely other reasons Jaedon and I decided to discontinue our physical romance. I firmly believe that relationships don’t end because new people come along to break them up; people come along to break them up because something else in the relationship is already off. Jaedon and I were in fundamentally different places in our lives. Nevertheless, it was true that I had fallen in love with Luke, though I still felt just as much in love with Jaedon as I ever did.